Piracy is generally practiced by regular adults. I kind of doubt that they can't afford the games. Pirates of modern games need (relatively) expensive computers and graphics to run them. If they can afford them, it stands to reason that they could afford a new game as well, especially most of these games are available at less of investment on consoles.

I remember awhile ago an article on Kotaku making the argument that pirates couldn't afford games, too. A few days later there was this sale on some indy games where people could pay anything they wanted for the games- even just a buck for, like, 5 of them. Despite this, the games were pirated extensively during that time, which kinda deflated that argument. I think some pirates have the mentality that they refuse to pay for anything at all.

In a way, I think that pirating old games is a little more defensible. In many cases, these games are unavailable for purchase outside of paying high prices on something like ebay.

In GoG's case pirating is free publicity. Imagine that everyone who will download a GoG torrent and installs the game will see that it is provided by GoG and will find out about the service... and maybe will come here and buy some games that are not available on torrents.

So it's not really a bad thing.

Pirates are also going to make sure that all games are available long after they've stopped being sold. It's a free archive of our media completely maintained by the public.

EDIT: For instance, no one should have any problem with people who bought games on GOG using a private tracker to download them during the PR stunt.

Agree.

Well, the "free" part is the problem. Usually people have the tendency to chose the free alternative (if exists) instead of paying money...

It's inevitable, no need to bother about that. I'm a user of that private tracker and yet I haven't downloaded the torrent. Why? Because I don't need it. If I'll feel the need to buy a game in digital form (I usually prefer to hunt for original, boxed versions) I'll buy it here.

As I've already said countless times before: piracy isn't an issue if you remove the political propaganda from it and deal with the facts. So said, please expect no answers from me if you'll start a discussion on the "piracy vs. legit" topic. I have no time to waste on this stupid stuff anymore these days :-P

Okay, here's a conundrum ... if I've paid for a game, but can't download it due to compatibility issues with the download manager, but I then "obtain" an .iso of said game and install using the license key that I own, is that legal?

It's all up to the copyright holder. Remember, as it currently stands, copyright infringement isn't a criminal matter, but a civil one. Therefore it requires the rights holder to take legal action against you at their own expense.

Although if the Digital Economy Bill somehow survives, that could all change.

Makes sense. Do you think it's worth my while asking their support team, or is that likely to land me in a whole heap of trouble? They are already aware of my ongoing issues with their download manager.

You could ask as a purely hypothetical question - "I've exhausted all other means, what if I were to download an 'alternative' copy from elsewhere?". Something like that.

Certainly don't make it sound like you've already gone ahead and done that though.

I've gone ahead and asked them - will be interesting to see their response.

"Someone suggested I should download a copy from elsewhere and use the license key I purchased through the EA Store, but I'm not sure of the legality of that?"

Depends, if you download via FTP you're not liable, but if you download via Torrent you're also uploading which would make you liable. But, either way you're making it appear that there are more people pirating so, I wouldn't recommend doing it.

But, that being said, the way that copyright law is applied, I'm sure that by now there's some provision in there to make downloading a no no as well. As of this time, I'm not aware of anybody in the US being sued for downloading, without uploading.

That seems like a reasonable enough question, to me.

But I had no end of trouble getting Crysis to stop crashing. I spent months with EA support on the matter. They even gave me a digital deluxe edition with a load of extras, to see if that would work.

In the end a simple crack solved the problem. I didn't really bother consulting their opinion on the matter though. So it would be interesting to know what their response is.

That's because they are not "real" gamers. A person truly enthused about gaming not only plays them, but is so into their hobby that they wish to help and support the future of their hobby of choice by putting their money into it. Hard times? Less money to spend? I can understand that. Simply buy less games and make more intelligent purchases. Places like GOG.com make it easy.