The only games I "pirate" are abandonware. If they go back up for sale afterward I do buy them, yes.

Pirated Jagged Allliance 2. Saw that GOG had it for sale and made sure to buy the GOG version and delete the pirated copy. Feels good man.
Me, I was the opposite. When I was 16, I had a job and most of my disposable cash went to gaming. I remember buyinjg Fallout off the shelf or when I went to a local Radio Shack and saw that black, ominous box that housed The Legacy and bought it straight away. I used to pirate more these days than when I was a kid and didn't know you *could* pirate games.

Alsom the "Don't copy that floppy" campaign was still going strong back in those days :D.

Yep, I started gaming in early 90's so a lot of my beloved games were simply not distributed in my country (Spain). I pirated them back then, and I pirate nowadays the games you can't buy (commonly known as abandonware).

If there's a legal way (and a fair price) to acquire them, I buy them. So here I am.

I pirate oldies that are not on GOG, and share them with friends.

If one of the games in my massive abandonware folder come to GOG, I delete it, buy a copy, and stop sharing it. Instead showing friends a link to its gamecard instead.

It's been quite a while since I pirated any games (I've got enough to play as it is), but the few games I used to pirate were typically older games that had very limited availability (I wasn't too keen on paying $80 for a used copy). Since GOG launched I've bought nearly every game I pirated as they got added to the GOG catalog.

this topic is kinda redundant since i doubt many would admit here they pirate games they dont buy (without a "justification"). let alone do it with a gog game.

I have mostly selfish reasons to avoid piracy. Buying them is usually just so much less hassle and complications. But I do feel also somewhat that I'm not entitled to play something that I didn't pay the developer or publisher for. I'd probably even prefer "buying" something from Steam, to pirating it. As long as the price is right; I can wait for the price to drop, no problem.

I could go to piracy if something was pretty much impossible to obtain otherwise. So as some others said, e.g. "abandonware" (especially for some dead platforms), if I really feel something can't be obtained otherwise and the game is an important part of gaming history.

An anecdote: I once got an urge to get Heavy Gear, but of course the original hadn't been sold anywhere for years. So I did check some pirate sites for it as well, and I think I eventually got hold of some (possibly an inferior ripped) version of it. Then, some months later I was perusing my PC game collection, and found the original there too. Doh! I had completely forgotten I had already purchased the game before, so I had used quite a lot of resources in vain to find an "unofficial" version of it.

I guess there's some grey area too. In order to play some old SNES game, you'd possibly have to buy Nintendo Wii in order to download an emulated version of it legally. I hate when good (old) games are locked out from other systems only to promote certain piece of hardware, but that's the console gaming market for you I guess. I kinda liked it that Sega exited the console HW business so their games became available for other systems too. I wish Nintendo does the same at some point.

Fortunately the Vista-promoting "Halo 2" wasn't that great a game, though. I bought it later for XBox, no need to upgrade for Vista.

Depends. For really good games I give certain considerations, but I don't pirate that much anyway. As a rule of thumb, I replace all my (previously) abandonware titles with something tangible, preferably GOG.

I did even that with a couple of games, at least the Journeyman Project Trilogy and The Dark Eye. I just felt I had to get them, and paid premium price for them, even though I had to buy them overseas (both from Ebay I think). I think they were not second-hand though, but shrink-wrapped, e.g. the person selling The Dark Eye apparently had several shrink-wrapped copies of it.

I remember The Dark Eye purchase quite well because I happened to order it (from Ebay seller) just before the 9/11 WTC attacks. When the guy was supposed to send the game to me, US mail offices were apparently blocked for some time due to the WTC attacks, and I was getting nervous whether I should pull back my credit card payment, even though the seller promised that he had sent the game already, I just didn't receive it. I did, eventually.

So I guess that is my primary personal memory of 9/11. PC gaming related, go figure.

Yes, almost always unless it's not for sale or I really don't enjoy the game. I don't pirate these days but until I got my own Internet connection almost 18 months ago getting a CD image from a friend was the only was I heard about the games I then went out and bought for myself. With games having no advertising outside of game magazines the entire new game market here was pretty much driven by sharing. And the market seemed to do quite well - the main problem being the actual pirates (the exact meaning of the term seems to change over time) poaching sales by selling knockoffs to people who don't know better and are trying to buy legit copies.

I have technically pirated two games in my life: "Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines" and "Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic".

I downloaded Shadow Magic from a warez site a couple years ago to see if I would like it. I played it for a day or two then deleted it. As soon as it became available on GOG I bought it again. Mostly out of guilt for pirating, because, although it is a good game, I don't see myself getting around to ever playing it again.

VTM:B I actually bought in a store when it came out, played it, then gave it to my cousin. I later wanted to play it again, but he had lost the discs in the meantime. At the time it was only available for sale on E-bay and such for around $150 (like 5 years ago, give or take). Since my cousin had lost the discs and I had paid for it once already, I just used a warez site to download it again. I only consider this 'technically' pirating, since I didn't add any unbought games to circulation; I essentially replaced my cousin's lost copy that I had bought in the first place. Having said that, if GOG released the title, I would most likely re-purchase it just to cross all my T's and dot my I's.

Aye! I wanna be a mighty pirat...No i am a mighty pirate already!

Pirating was how we played our games. In Turkey the gaming market wasn't well developed, a few games came here was very expensive and we were a kid. There is nothing like "buying" a game in my country(now it is changing but slowly). My friend's still simply download and play the games. For them it is the "natural" way. It is the "only" way.

Now i am working i am giving a substantial amount of salary to games that i pirated in past. I already bought 250-300 games for the last 4 months.

I pirated Dead Island, I had it on Steam (*spits in Steams general direction") and it buggered up the game twice on me making it unplayable, lost about 90 hours, so I got a pirate version that wont connect to Steam (*spits in Steams general direction"). I cant play Ryder White, but I'll get over it.

I have since replaced my other Steam games with 360 versions, never going back there again.

EDIT : I will probably get a 360 version of DI if it ever drops in price, its still about €35 here 2nd hand.

Sure. I more or less treat pirated games as demos, as developers rarely bother with them nowadays, and reviews are always biased in some way, and I'm not going to just charge in with my wallet blindly.
I'm not a saint, but I bought most of the games I downloaded and thought "oh yeah, this deserves my money".