Contrary to what some people think, piracy can do some good. I know it because it happened to me.

I came from a low-middle class family, the only way I could really play game was thanks to piracy; I saved a ton of money to buy the console and 90% of my games were pirated (some were original).

But thanks to that I played so many great games that I otherwise would to have not played, and now that I'm an adult with a good income, I can buy them no problem.

Just to give a few examples:
1- Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, played pirated on the Wii; bought Awakening and Fates on the 3DS
2- Bioshock 1 and 2, pirated on PC; bought Infinite on PC when it came out
3- Monster Hunter Tri, pirated on the Wii; bought Monster Hunter 4 on the 3DS and recently World on PS4
4- 9 hours 9 persons 9 doors, emulated on DS; bought Virtue's Last Reward and Zero Time Dilemma on 3DS
5- Mass Effect 1 and 2, pirated on PC; bought Mass Effect 3 on PC

These are honestly just a few and the ones that immediately come to mind.

So to answer the OP question, yes I do think is okay to pirate games; maybe not everyone is like me and they continue to pirate, but I firmly believe piracy can work with some people.

i haven't bought a game in like 2 years

If you CAN buy it and chose to pirate it, then no. Not okay.

If you CANNOT buy it and pirate it, then there's no harm done.

You should always seek out legitimate ways to buy your games, but if you can't buy it - be it that you can't find it, it's not in print, the company hasn't made it available in your region, or if you just can't find a copy of it - then it's not like the company is missing out on a sale.

And yes, in an odd way this soooooort of applies to games that you just can't afford. Sort of. I mean, it's no different from borrowing, as far as I'm concerned. My brother couldn't afford Far Cry 5 so he borrowed it from me. Ubisoft didn't get a sale out of it and he's playing it, so in their eyes that's as good as stealing. (At least that's how they used to think).

It's a complicated topic, but I believe that's what it boils down to. if you CAN buy it, then you shouldn't pirate it.

I say yes, I have no moral qualms about pirating games myself.

If the publisher or developer has done something I don't support, I'm OK with piracy. I'll feel sorry about it, but hey, if a publisher wants to, say, kill my interest with some bad DRM, it's their fault as far as I can see. That said, it's been a really long time since I pirated a game because of something like that. I have enough games to play anyway, so I just skip the games with bad practices etc.

If a game's not available relatively easily, I'm absolutely OK with piracy without even feeling bad about it. If the publisher doesn't want to sell the game, to me it just means that I have to get it another way. Thanks to the size of my backlog, this hasn't caused me to pirate a game in a really long time either.

They get just as much money from people buying used copies of a game as they do from people pirating games.

I personally think it's okay to pirate a game as long as it isn't being sold officially anymore (Especially licensed games that'll never get a re-release).

For example, pirating Mario Sunshine is fine because Nintendo isn't selling that game anymore, but pirating Luigi's Mansion or Super Mario World is wrong because the former is getting a 3DS remake and the latter is on Virtual Console.

Sure, buying a used copy of an old game is the correct way to go, but if the company that made the game isn't getting anything from it anymore, does it even matter at that point if you bought it or not?

I think its perfectly fine to pirate a game. I mean Microsoft just did it

;D


..oh wait

No, it's never OK to pirate games in the vast majority of the cases ...

From a legal standpoint we have copyright laws for a reason so that the copyright holder has the exclusive potential to monetize their ownership of content. Just because the copyright holder does not have new copies for sale does not give one the excuse from one withholding purchase of a valid used copy or accessing it from a different format either ...

The only ethical aspect to piracy is a means to gain access to content that can't be legally obtained anymore or that there is not valid copies left in circulation ...

The only times I'd say it's okay to pirate a game is if you cannot legitimately get said game, or the only available options are overly expensive. Such examples of the 2nd would be playing Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, which hasn't gotten a re-release since it's Gamecube release and a used copy costs over 100 dollars. As for the 1st one, I suppose it's not available in your region...? I'm not all that familiar with that example...