It's good, because the casual people don't usually know any release dates.

Wrong and wrong...

1) while you are playing a game you pirated for a free you are not doing another legal activity that would have cost you money ( like maybe you woudn't have bought that game but you would have bought another and now you won't because this one you pirated keeps you busy). So there is a clear negative economic impact..........

2) Tell that to the Stardock folks that has the online servers of their latest games swamped by people using pirated copies. It was so bad the legit users coudn't even play because the servers coudn't handle the stress..

PS : besides the fact that I woudn't have bought that game argument is one of the most BS argument ever. Yeah right, you pirated the game and played it 100s of hours but never ever would have considered buying it otherwise ? So you are really a lazy cheap ass....

1- That's just your assumption, and in no way does it relate to theft.

2- That's a special case which is quite rare... and it still has nothing to do with theft.

Regarding your PS, that completely sidesteps the point again. My point was that you can't simply assume every single downloaded copy would be sold. For all you know, half the people who download the game never even try it more than once. There's no accurate information to know what happens there.

And you can't assume either that some of the people that downloaded it woudn't have purchased it otherwise.

That is just an assumption too..

1) or you could just watch tv pointlessly (much more likely), plus chances are if you pirated one game other ones you have are also pirated

Microsoft shouldmake more of an effort to stop piracy. Its Killing the industry!

To me, pirating is as if you went into a store and stole a game.

I don't mind is someone does actually buy the game afterwards but it's still not moral.

Anyway, Sims 3 sold very well for its first week, I didn't expect this, as many people said they wouldn't buy it and stick with Sims 2...

That reminds me of when people said they wouldn't buy Sims 2 and stick with Sims 1... Then they're at the store, first thing in the morning waiting to get their hands on it to buy it. Ahh the irony!

They are not that many games that sell over a million units on one platform in the first week.  But like I said in another post, PC games have Very long legs indeed and im sure the Sims 3 will sell millions upon millions of units.

Well I wasn't sure if people cared about the Sims anymore. 1.2 is more than enough to show me its still a very popular franchise.

Did you follow up with the whole story? Seems to me you just cherry pick 1 part to support your argument.