people - you live in fairy tale world. Piracy will be alive forever, at least until people are alive who play games or consume digital content.
Media Piracy - not bad! I had a conversation with some gamers that I know and every one of them pirated at least some media content at different times and I do not blame them for that.
I will tell you why people use pirated content - not everyone has a lot of money, great computers and laptops, huge houses and large pools. those b@st@rds who steal money from budgets (millionaires, billionaires) - such robbers in-laws - they have a lot of stolen money and can buy what they want, sometimes even other alive people. But if we take simple men or women who do not have enough money to buy 60-dollar game, what then, they can download a pirated game, that will be their choice.
If you ask me how to defeat Piracy - I will answer there is no need to defeat it or fight it. There is no way to defeat pirates who do that not for money but because they like what they do. I respect such people - media pirates - who crack DRM and after that publish games on different torrents or file-sharing sites.
I hate those people that try to insert viruses in such game versions (repacks), that is real m@r@ns and scummers only such humans deserve to be beaten!

I still wouldn't buy a game for more than $20 even if i tripped on a mushroom on the moon's third rotational cycle.

They are trying to push the normal 'full priced game' over $100, and i don't see it working, but they are doing it anyways. Some games sure will sell.

But i agree hypotheticals are stupid. Don't buy any game until it's at least 5 years old and on heavy discount. Then we'll know if it's good, and will be cheaper (probably). In some cases like Suicide Squad, it will have shut down already and you won't have a chance to try out a shitty always-online woke product.

Money is first and foremost the biggest reason. As mentioned unless you make things super cheap where it's easier to go to the store, or you raise everyone's wages and money to where they have enough disposable income it doesn't matter. Or lower Copyright where people will honor it but it won't be getting in the way, like 10 years for digital media or something. That or remove the internet and all telecommunication, and even mail.

Otherwise stopping it is impossible.

Remember back in 2008 with the push of the XBone, where they wanted to charge you for loaning or selling a disc to your friend. But sharing It's a natural inclination, even in children to share something. Loan a book, a movie, even share food. If they could get away with it, everything would be Pay Per View, and you'd never own anything, where even the cabinets that had the game had violate RAM to hold the game and if the power went out the game went with it. So much an issue in fact MAME was contacted by some companies when they lost their game files and that media was almost lost for all time.

It's funny that in the beginning they were trying to ban file sharing, which is what it was. But banning the most basic fundamental use of computers wasn't going to fly, so they decide to call you a criminal for being a nice guy, and call it something else.

It looks like that Unreal 1,Unreal 2,Unreal Tournament,Unreal Tournament 2004,Unreal Tournament 3 got removed from both Steam and GOG.com as digital re-releases who knows maybe even Jazz Jackrabbit 1 & 2 Collections featuring Holiday Hare '94,Holiday Hare '95,Holiday Hare '98 also known as Christmas Chronicles,Epic Pinball,Jill of The Jungle 1,Jill of the Jungle 2,Jill of the Jungle 3,but I might be wrong as well. I guess however things turned out to be little bit complicated for in case of Unreal Tournament 4,Paragon. As for Epic Games they added their own Epic Games Store in Playstation Store however still no classics right there I guess.

The irony of this thread... The only pirated games I play are Civilization and Civilization 2, but that's because they're not available for sale... (and I used to own civ 2, the CD got lost, or I gave it, or sold it don't remember, it was eons ago). Get these games on GOG and it's an insta-buy.

Only one i'll claim is Skyrim since i hate the DRM and the steam client that much. (And yes i have that game on physical disc)

Civilization Chronicles is still available on CD (only just though, with one copy left at time of posting). However, this only has the Windows version of the original Civilization - you'll have to stay with Blackbeard to get the original DOS version...

(related forum thread...)

But that was 1990s money. Today that would be closer to $48. =/

I could not agree more. It always big corporations problem, that we have terrible laws right now that overprotect corporations. We should reverse that and fix that problem.

When i say $20 or less, i was thinking back in 2016 when FF13-3 lightning returns finally dropped to $20 after 1-2 years.

And if you calculate via inflation, doesn't really matter. There's laptops that cost thousands of dollars early 90's, and there's laptops much stronger today that cost thousands of dollars. I used to scour my dad's computer brochures and computers were always out of the price range. But you can get for $1,999.99 a computer that's a 266Mhz DX386 with a 14 inch plasma screen, floppy drive and a new CD-ROM, a 400Mb hard drive and came pre-installed with Windows 3.11 !

Hell the original apple released with a price tag of $666.66. (no i'm not making that up).

Unless the game i think could give me hundreds, or thousand of hours of time (Diablo 1-2 and starcraft probably the only ones that i think qualify) then i couldn't justify a price too high. I guess just the price of being forced to be frugal.

Apparently you don't buy food. $20 is nothing today. And you are comparing a developer's labor with PC hardware which is nonsensical. If you spend 2-7 years on a project and sell it for $20, unless you get very lucky you are going to be bankrupt.

I dont support piracy.

However, I would like to point out that sometimes there are difficulties with developer and gog support. (see screenshot)

But the forum really does suffer from a lack of moderation. Sometimes I see a lot of threads with ad spam in the titles.

I even make thread right there. About computer piracy I even posted YouTube video link right there in GBATemp Forum.
Maybe moderation and both administration are thinking that I’m behaving like shitposter,internet troll,spammer,clickbaiter,but I just only have difficulties expressing my own thoughts and I don’t have the best social skills I am not professional I am not expert with social relations.
You can see that YouTube video I sent in GBATemp Forum What is your relationship with cracked games? This is the thread title Page 4.
https://gbatemp.net/threads/what-is-your-relationship-with-cracked-games.626368/

Depends on what you qualify as 'food'. There's regular deals on potatoes for $3 for 5lb, $1/lb onions and i can usually find $1/lb for carrots. on top of buying meat and other veggies and food on discount. Still costs a bit, but i can stretch $100 pretty far. As well as free food from a few places.

Home cooking only takes twenty minutes or so. Add some seasonings, oil, and eat away. On the other hand, if you plan on going out to eat, expect $10/person for takeout, and $20/person when dining.

And spaghetti noodles are cheaper (by the pound) than ramen, so a little seasoning plus noodles can go a long ways. Actually it's a bit better, i can't have ramen by themselves and leaves me like i drank a bunch of pop; as in full felling belly, but empty of content.

Worst case, cat/dogfood is edible, though may not taste the best but will get you by.

Should for instance nowadays Epic Games or Digital Extremes consider patching Unreal Gold after version 226 build or not?
https://www.reddit.com/r/unrealtournament/comments/1ciwce2/another_dumbass_needs_help_with_unreal_and_utgoty/
https://www.reddit.com/r/unrealtournament/comments/1c4x3vv/this_guy_is_reverse_engineering_ut99/
https://www.reddit.com/r/unrealtournament/comments/18hc9v9/tim_sweeney_about_unreal_tournament_3_x/
His own reasons seems to be still unclear.
https://www.reddit.com/r/unrealtournament/comments/uyst7w/still_hoping_for_an_unreal_comeback_either/
Would you consider such unofficial,fanmade projects as computer piracy or not?
https://www.jazz2online.com/jcf/showthread.php?t=19325
https://www.oldunreal.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=10623
https://www.unrealsp.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2459