Just because someone is a pirate, doesn't mean they're supporting it on this site.

For example, if someone said "do you think pirating is okay?", and someone there said they were a pirate, and thought it was okay. All they did was answer the question, and should not be banned for doing so.

No.

There's really a rather comical effect behind raising prices on games: it encourages more piracy, due to the supply and demand equation resulting in a lower equilibrium point. Only a handful of companies seem to have caught on that their real enemy is themselves, not the consumer. And the more they try to fight piracy and alienate customers, lowering customers' acceptable prices for things while ironically raising the actual prices further, the more piracy will increase. It's really simple economics going on here, the market doing what it's always done, but the industry seems to have gotten the mistaken impression that they are above normal market mechanics.

If the industry wishes to curb piracy, they need to make products which people will buy. This means more than just compelling content; it's also having a compelling price. If that means lowering the budgets for making games, so be it. Quality is not a measure of how much you invest, but rather of how much you get out of your investment and how well that output is accepted by the mass of consumers willing to pay for it. I can think of no finer examples than Wii Sports and Shenmue as illustrations of getting it right and getting it wrong. Wii Sports cost very little to develop, but is a genuine system-selling title that the mass of consumers finds instantly appealing. Shenmue, by contrast, cost an excessive amount to make (reportedly, every DreamCast owner on the planet would have had to have bought 3 copies of the game for it to break even), and it had niche appeal at best.

I know the industry goes on and on about "art", but really, that's an excuse. You cannot "make art". "Art" is not a job in and of itself, it's a side-effect of doing an actual job well. What is and is not "art" is decided after the fact, and all you can do is create something and present it for assessment. The job of a game is not to be "art", the job of a game is to entertain the player.

Should we ban people who buy used games too? Should we ban people who turn in their used games to gamestop, or sell them on e-bay? What about people renting games? These people hurt the industry as well, demonstrably more than pirates even. Publishers and developers loathe gamestop, back when renting first started various videogame companies tried to sue blockbuster (and failed). 2nd hand sales and rentals may be legal but they are a massive drain on companies, they are parasites the same as pirates.

Maybe we should ban gamestop employees too, and anybody with an E-bay profile, just to make sure they don't advocate their parasitic ways and poison the minds of good upright supporters such as ourselves. Won't somebody think of the children?

Today pirates and modders. Tomorrow blacksheep.

Sky Render

You make some interesting points and many of them are true.

If you take real examples of places where poverty plays a large part in piracy you will see that in these places the video games market has been set back as the cost of launching consoles and games don't make any sence this is due to piracy in these places.

There are a percentage that will take the free or low cost route even if they can afford full price from a retail point of view price is not the main reason people don't buy things.

In most cases it is in fourth or fifth place in people mind.

is changing the case of a ps2 to a see though one considered modding?

piracy yes modding no to a degree expel (if I own star fox on the snes but I want to play it on the go so I do a mod program so I can play it on a psp or ds ) I don't see the problem with that the person has bought the game in full and no were sells it new any more meaning nintendo doesn't make a profit on them any more but if you mod to play new games were the company is still making money of the game you should be banned

Price is always a driving factor in capitalist markets. It isn't the only factor, but it is the only factor which can be measured somewhat scientifically. No matter what our individual values may be, we have to reduce it to a price value once we make a market decision.

And yes, it is true that there are a few people who will not buy at any price. They are at the extreme end of the unsatisfied demand market, what we call unreasonable demand. There are actually people at the other extreme too, who consider any price to be acceptable; this is how certain companies are able to sell designer watches at exorbitant prices and still get sales. But neither group is significant compared to the mass of consumers who are willing to pay a price for goods and services, but not just any price.

I am not surprised that consoles don't take off in more limited economies. They truly are luxury goods, and with the few exceptions of what we call the "first world", most nations don't have the sort of spare funds lying about to buy expensive electronics for entertainment purposes only.

I think this says it all.

Selling something you own is not illegal while something is legal there is no problem.

Also selling used games serves to allow people to buy new game's

It is not up to any of us to tell each other how to behave, but piracy hurts gaming which in turn hurts gamers