Piracy not theft because its a copy..

[NJ5]

sc94597 said:
There is one point for the other side of the argument that I want to bring up. I've been thinking of an answer if it ever came up. "How is buying used games better than pirating?" If this ever came up I would have responded with something like " you have the justification of knowing you earned the game rather than taking it", but then I realized that pirates don't have those type of morals. They don't seem to care how they get the game, but rather what is the easiest(not always true, because pirating can get hard), and / or cheapest way to get it. Now I'm feeling blank with an answer. In both you are not supporting the developer. One just is free, or cheaper while the other isn't. One is also illegal, while the other isn't, but in terms of game piracy there isn't much law enforcement in place with the exception of the people who are dumb enough to sell modded consoles and games.

I don't know what fraction of sold games end up in the "used section" at stores, but for those that do, buying used kind of supports the full price paid for a new copy, since it gives more value to the original copy.

That's the only good answer I see to that point, but it's hard to quantify really how much buying a used copy contributes to developers.

On the other hand, someone who buys a used copy is much more likely to buy the new game than someone who pirates... which leads me to believe that used game sales harm the industry more than pirating does.