The fact that you bring up families where both parents work as an example of "having it rough" once again shows how ignorant of the real world you are. Most people in this world are lucky if they can take care of a family on JUST two salaries. In the countries where piracy is really rampant you're lucky if you make it past ten years old before you get your first full-time job. You and I are so ridiculously spoiled compared to the people in a place like Zimbabwe (where software piracy exceeds 90%), and the fact that you keep acting as if everyone in the world is even remotely close to your standard of living is just shameful.
Having no parents and no home is a lot less of a detractor from going to a top-ranked university than living in a country where there are no credible universities at all. That girl was far more privileged than the average pirate because the opportunities existed for her in the first place. Most people in third world countries don't ever get the opportunities that Americans get, plain and simple. You can set up all the hoops in the world to try and show how AMERICANS or citizens of equally wealthy nations can make it happen, but it speaks no truth to the reality that the majority of the world's population lives in.
There are no Harvards in Africa or South America, there aren't even jobs in a lot of these places, and you're going to tell me that all they have to do is work hard and opportunity is going to cross the ocean to go find them in a place where opportunities don't otherwise exist? Give me a break, man. Open your eyes to the world. Stop acting as if reality stops at the boarder and that the experiences of people outside of the US and Europe don't count.
Seriously, I will give you the money to go live in an African nation just so you can understand what I'm talking about. Make arrangements, provide proof that you are really doing it, and I will start feeding you funds. Because I'm telling you now, it will open your eyes. You will never be able to look at your current life experiences again. You will, if you're a religious person, probably thank god every minute of every day for the "rough" life you had in a wealthy nation.
And the funny thing is, a lot of people in this world live in those conditions and still manage to get a PC. For many it is literally the one luxury they have. You'd be shocked at how prolific a technology it is. But not nearly as shocked as you would be at how people actually live in this world.
Again, you are massively privileged. Those 5 games you buy a year would cost the average Venezuelan something like 1/4th of their annual salary. The average American barely even spends 1/4th of their earnings on food, an absolute necessity, and to say that someone should pay the same fraction of their living wages (if they are living wages) to have a tiny fraction of the privilege you get is disgusting. Why should a poor person, a truly poor person, be held to the same standards as the wealthy when letting them off the hook doesn't hurt anybody at all? No company is going out of business because of the fact that 90% of piracy used in Armenia is pirated, after all, so why attack the Armenians who pirate?
Piracy is very, very small in the US compared to these other countries, so all the effort Ubisoft is putting into this isn't even going to affect you and me. On top of that, a lot of hacking occurs in the US so the ones who do pirate will get their goods without issue. But to people who live in abject poverty, it is a big deal and there is no way around it. Georgians don't get to skip lunch for a week in order to pay for a game because they'd never get the money in time. They'd have to skip lunch for months IF they could buy it at the price we get it for, only there's that fact that they actually pay more than we do.
Seriously, get to learn about our world someday. If you knew the reality that most people outside of the Western world face, you wouldn't be here making such narrow-minded arguments.
Edit: Oh, I don't have any idea what a good number of games to buy in a year is. I might buy about as many as you. Frankly, I was playing Dragon Quest Monsters Joker earlier today just minutes before I read the announcement for the sequel. When I find a game I truly like, that game can last me years. But we are talking about people that would have to save up for a year just to get a single game from a legitmate retail source, which is where most pirates fall on the economic spectrum, so it's really irrelevant what I think a "good amount" is.
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