I'm sorry, but I'm just sick of this crappy 'argument' * .. let me tell you why:
To apply the same logic behind this argument to real life, it is the exact same thing as going to a restaurant, ordering pizza, eating it and then refusing to pay, because it's "just another pizza". So why did you order it then? AND eat it?!
..back to games: if several thousand people pirate a game, and tell everyone how awesome it is, and THEN justify the theft by saying "well, the game should have been more original" .. then I'd just like to hit them in the face. Sorry.
According to this logic, people pirate games like Call of Duty 4 because it's "just anoher fps", but not because it's an awesome game. And then the very same people then go and buy Spore, because it's so original. Somehow I doubt that.
If a game is so boring and standard that you don't like it .. then why pirate it?!
I agree however, that publishers should headbutt themselves for some of their policies. Senseless DRM for one. Or my personal favorite: not releasing demos.. or only releasing demos for the consoles, whick just makes me to fuc#*%&§!.. well, I just don't like it O_o
* Please note that I'm sick about your argument, not you as a person since I obviously don't know you ;-)

That's a terrible analogy. You eat to live. You don't play games to stay alive (boring weekends aside). You play games for entertainment. I don't eat pizza to entertain myself, and I don't know anyone who does. You wouldn't compare books or music to having to drink water, would you? It just doesn't work.

Like I said, people pirate it or don't and don't play it. Isn't a person that doesn't play also hurting them like a pirate is (a non sale is not a negative sale).
Piracy that, piracy this! I never heard a game with an original game sometimes costing a 10th of those block busters don't complain about piracy.... I wonder why.
Piracy is a excuse is lame, and no PC isn't dying nor will ever be, but apparently people measure an industry success by the number of "exclusive" games.
And no, I didn't find COD 4 an awesome game, nor did I pirate it, what for if I don't like it.
I believe that users like to reward game companies for innovative games, apparently I was wrong.
PS: No one has the numbers on piracy, it is impossible
HINT: Got check the seed numbers on some popular PS2 games.
Although I do admit sometimes people use pirate copies as form of demo, since those have gone missing from some time now.

I've seen this particular discussion get real ugly real fast, so I'll just say that I disagree with you. My analogy is simply awesome :-)
(But I invite you to open a new thread on this point, so that we may hate each other to death in private, i.e. for the amusement of the rest of the board :-)
I think people do indeed reward innovative games. Just think Portal.

I also agree with that. In the recent few months, the only few videogame ads I've seen on television were only for Pure and Dead Space. Not a single other game except the occasional EA Sports rehash.
Dead Space itself got a good review and the commercials themselves actually made me more curious about the game.

Ermmm, they have to pay for ads on TV, we were talking about them having ads in their games, so they can make money.

I think that PC game companies are relying on the "Well our game didn't sell well because it was pirated" idea a bit to much anymore.
Don't take my word for it, go ask stardock entertainment what their take on it is.

I will be the first one to admit this, since so far, all other users are busy moralizing:
I'm not going to preach, I'm merely going to write down my experiences.
First a big admission, that most people are "afraid to make":
I did pirate games, and sometimes still do.
Eh? You admit to being a criminal?!
Yes and no:
-I mainly pirated games that I couldn't get any other way. GOG is a godsend as not only can I get now all these titles legally, and not only do they spare me the hassle of hunting down an old game that really few people seed but they also put effort into making the games run on modern systems.
-I also pirate obscure titles I've never heard of before. I'm forced to do this since game reviews nowadays only focus on bestseller, well known titles, and even those reviews are utter crap of propaganda with little actual balanced analysis.
So you still pirate stuff and play it?
NO.
I'm forced to get my hands on a copy to see whether a game is worth my money. I could even "borrow" it from a friend of mine, but sadly here in Middle Europe I'm the "odd one" (from the general populace, not the very rich kids) for even contemplating "BUYING" games.
It's true, I've been often ridiculed and even harassed for trying to legally obtain all the titles I own.
In the days when game making wasn't so "institutionalized", I could get fairly good information. "Game Magazines" were small, outlandish papers where the reviews wrote down their true impressions about a game. The many DEMOs that were around that time were perfectly good at representing most games.
Nowadays demos are rare and magazines are less than useless. So if I run across an interesting title, I will often download a pirate version, see how it is:
...and GO OUT AND BUY IT, if it's ANY GOOD!
I got A.I.M. this way, and by now I own a legal copy of both A.I.M. 1 and A.I.M. 2.
Here in Hungary many people are awed at my collection of games: all in their own cases, with manuals, and all the bells and whistles a legal copy goes with.
...and still can't get in their heads why I spend "money" on this.

Ah.... I still remember whole afternoons messing around with autoexec.bat and config.sys to get 600kb of base memory free so certain games could run

Oh Christ I forgot about that :) I tell you, when I got my hands on QEMM back in the day I was a happy camper, but before that what a nightmare. Best I ever managed was to get 623K free :) Hell, I remember when I was writing a game at one point I hit the 640K limit and had to learn how to use XMS (via himem.sys) in order to keep going. Granted I should have written it better, but I was young then :) Again, I can't imagine what people would do these days if they got hit with the same issues. Might be worth it have things that complicated again to cull the wheat from the chaff.

QEMM, wow there's a blast from the past.

Only thing that stops me from even looking at Dead Space PC version is its limited installs with no revokes at its current price.
Sorry, EA.
And no, I refuse to buy a console (X-360) to play Dead Space on, as well.
It's a shame, 'cause Dead Space looks pretty sweet, too.
Well, I can think of it this way -- more money for me to save on new games this Fall.
Chalk up this list of new games I plan to ignore b/c of the install limits on its DRM -- Mass Effect PC (still), Dead Space PC, Spore, and Far Cry 2 PC.

Yeah EA has lost hundreds from me just in the past few months. Dummies.

It's a shame b/c they've actually put out some new titles I actually have an interest in.
One of the reasons I upgraded from a GeForce 6600 GT to a GeForce 8800 GT earlier in the year was so I could play some of these brand new games.
Well, at least a lot of the older games run much better now...