Can piracy be a good thing?

[aavidbacon]

Well, in Brasil the ps2 dominated due to piracy. I have 10-$20 games at the corner of my house, but I still buy the official copy sometimes( is $60), when I like the game very much and want to retribute to the devs. But the true is that if I were to pay full price I wouldn´t have half of the games I have. I woudn´t have the money for it. A ps2 game was $120 back in 2000-2006 period and the sku was $500-$600 depending on the dollar price. So most people aquired it on trips and then pirated most of the games, buying only a few.
Piracy does help hw, doesn´t help the industry and help customers who otherwise woudn´t be able to enjoy fully the gamming experience. The best way to avoid piracy would be to relesase the game free, but incomplete and then sell a website admission, were you could get the rest of the game and monthly patches adding to the game. This way you would atract quite a lot of people in the first minute and if the game was any good they would buy the admission.