That doesn't mean games aren't overpriced from a consumer standpoint, it just means developers are spending too much making the games.

 Haha, cute.

 Wrong! Almost every single friend I have that is a gamer, is a group 2 person. Few 1 and 3, but 2 is by far the most normal.

Although I agree with you when you say that games aren't overpriced considering the amount of money that must be poured into them, I wholeheartedly disagree that stopping piracy will bring down prices.  In fact, I could make the opposite argument: In the absence of a lower cost avenue of "acquiring" their software, they could raise prices further because they have complete control over distribution of their software due to the lack of "competition" (a term I use very, very loosely here).

In the end, it's more sensible to frame software developers' actions from the perspective that they will do that which maximizes their profit.  Whether that means stamping out piracy, as Microsoft pursues so aggressively today, or allowing piracy to maximize exposure to their software, as Microsoft originally did to put Windows on the map, it is only to serve that one objective.

I can agree with that, but sadly if people don't see OMG KILLER GRAPHICS 60 HOUR AAA GAME!!!!!!!! they think it must suck and then it doesn't make money.  If a game doesn't make money, it isn't a success.  Games like MGS4's, FFXIII's, and Gears of War 2's raise an unrealistic bar.

That was more of a joke, I wasn't serious.

My sarcasm detector is confused because of all the times I've seen people use that actual argument seriously.  It's actually pretty reassuring to see so many of these insane arguments on vgchartz turn out to be nothing more than sarcasm.

I take any chance I can to take cheap shots at pirates and call them dicks, even if it means bad jokes. 

Actually the breakdown is more like this:

1. People who never/almost never play pirated games

2. Little torrent whores who download pirated copies of as many of the games they want as possible, but have some shred of guilt/paranoia of being caught and so love to claim the "actual purchase copies of the good games" despite rarely doing this and coincidentally only doing it on games that have already hit the bargain bin.

3. Actual Hackers.

DRM is suppose to shift people from group 2 to 1, the more DRM you use the longer and harder it is for people to hack the game resulting in downloaders who give up with waiting and dealing with the hassle and instead spend $50 on the game. So far DRM has has been very unimportant to group #1, which means every year game companies push the envelope just a little further.

You have no clue what you are talking about. DRM is no problem for hackers, and it only hurts paying consumers. It's when the pirated product is superior, to the retail version, that the real problems will start to rain down over those trying to enforce DRM on consumers, because the choice between a superior free product, to an inferior expensive product is not a hard one...

They are shooting themself in the foot, it's as simple as that.

I doubt Im making my fellow game developers look bad by telling you what some people out there are trying to do. I already know of the easier process if someone really wanted to kill a machine, which just is a matter of shutting a cpu fan down, turning off the alarms that warn of overheating and the alarm that shuts down the machine when it overheats. Oven box syndrome. I'm just saying what I've heard people discuss on the topic of anti-piracy measures.

The worst part of this is that you wouldn't be able to trace the issue to the point that you could prove a company nor person did indeed fry your computer.

Yet I digress. I already made my point in another thread on how piracy only hurts gamers in the end, and I think we're on the same page there.

A better question is this - would you pirate a game if it were only between $10-$20 to buy?