Not at all, piracy is my friend, when I need to download $300 Sega Saturn imports.

Please go live in a third world country for 1 month, please. Maybe then you'd stop with you naive elitist crap and bullshit. Just because you were born in the US doesn't make you more deserving of anything than people in other places. Game makers shoud be smart about this and start charging relative prices.

Agreed, having been to many third world countries (okay, 1 or 2), the price of real copies of video games is ridiculous. In the US$80 - 120 range, it's not like $50 is bad enough.

You, my dear friend, have been brainwashed by capitalism. I'm not going to say that Piracy is good, that it doesn't hurt the industry or that it's everyone right to pirate. Which you seem to think I will.

"You've fallen into the trap of believing that in some way you just DESERVE to have these things..."
Why shouldn't I? Really, what's to say that some rich kid that inherited his money deserves his lifestyle better than I do? Capitalism, that's what.

"I don't have the money to go out and buy video games... "
You don't have the money to buy them. If you pirated them then, how would you be able to cheat the people that made them off profit?

"You idiots who think these game developers are just sitting back getting rich..."
I seriously doubt that there is anyone in this thread who thinks this is what happens. If they do, they are indeed idiots.

I try very, very hard to spend all my money every month. And I usually do. It's not that much money though, and it never covers all that I want to spend it on. I support the Videogame industry with my money. The TV-industry. The Manga-industry. I support the PC-industry. I support the broadband industry. I simply cannot give any more love to any of the copyright holders. I do what I can. When I finish my education and get a decent job I'll be able to spread more love.

I'm not saying it's right of me to pirate. It's illegal, for one. But reading the latest One Piece manga chapter online  does not give me a bad conscience since I have all 44 volumes currently released in swedish in my bookshelf as well as the latest 10 volumes in japanese, and I will buy every last one.

I can understand where you are coming from, but you need to realize that all is not black and white. Not even piracy. There are people with a different world-view than yours, different sets of rules to define reality. That does not necessarily mean that you are right and they are wrong. It does not mean that their morals are worth more than yours. The world looks very different depending on where you view it from.

Piracy shifts money away from the industry pirated. That's true. But those money go somewhere. They do not just dissappear. What one industry looses from piracy, another gains. The money might go to things like houses, food, healthproducs, savings, whatever. The same is true for stealing, with the exception that stealing makes someone lose money as well. With piracy, the wealth you gain from an extra video-game is not equal to the loss someone elses videogame.

It is my firm belief that every human on this planet deserve as high a livingstandard as can possibly be provided for them, given that that standard does not negatively effect someone else's. If thinking this makes me colder and less humane, so be it.

While I understand your position Kcua and Vlad, the situation goes deeper than being fair to people who can't afford games. With X amount of piracy, there is X amount of money lost in revenue for the publisher.

When the publisher makes lower profits, the less trickles down to the developer.

When the developer is living paycheck to paycheck from the publisher, they can't afford to have less money come to them in profits.

When this DOES happen from piracy, people lose their jobs. In extreme cases, entire studios close.

So at the end of the situation, the game you enjoyed so much, the one you pirated, may never have a sequel because the studio might be out of business due to money lost via piracy.

Since the big studios are putting out CRAP lately and only the small studios are bringing us new ideas in games, we as gamers cannot afford to lose these small studios.

I see nothing wrong with pirating games, music, movies or anything when you are poor. Also game prices are too high anyway. I don't care how good a game is, no game is worth more than £20. So as far as I am concerned piracy is fine. If you can afford to buy it then you should but if you can't then pirate away.

I hate it but I also hate game pricing.

For me its simple:

if you have the money to buy but don't simply to save that money to blow elsewhere in the full knowledge you're ripping of people trying to earn their money developing games for you to play - then I hate piracy and I'm really not interested in your justifications as they're meaningless. You just don't want to pay for what you can rip off.

if you're tight for money, young and love games - well, I'm not sure I wouldn't do the same thing, but you should buy where you can, particularly if you actually like the game you've ripped off, and aim to lose the habit as an adult

if you live somewhere poor, just have no funds, but can get enough access to the net to try and grab some release from the poverty around you - I can completely sympathize

Hate it!

Thing is you can't have any high living standard without other people working and making stuff for you. And people won't do anything for you if they don't get anything in return (ie: money). So if someone has more money than you, it's because he earned it at some point. Of course you can argue about people getting money more easily than they should, like with stocks or inherited, but that's not the point.

And of course the money goes somewhere else, but the developer doesn't get paid for his work.