You're comparing orange and apples my friend. Because food and Mountain Dew are physical products. I'm going to leave this right here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4
Watch it and then try to come up with something better than saying my argument is stupid. If I have the money, the interest, or in this case the means, why should I have to wait like everyone else and accept that cycle? It's outdated and it's changing thanks to the Internet. Now we live in global economy. This site is a proof of that.

Because you are not the ruler of the world and owner of the media that you want to watch. We live in the age of internet so everything is dumbed down. I will not talk about ethics right now and talking about law is pointless. I know that there are digital crusaders that want to believe since we live in age of internet everything on it should be free and crap like that. Its not the point. Point here is. Why you wanting the watch the movie right now is more important than the owners wanting you to be able to watch the movie in lets say 4 months? You have the money but they don't want the money now. They as the owners of property have decided that you will be able to see it in 4 months.
Oh and I will be honest now and say I hate people stealing movies and games from internet and acting like its ok. If you do that at least stop acting like you are the one thats just and have good reason to do what you do.
Plus I wont watch the youtube clip you have posted because I live in China where youtube is blocked.

Thanks for the reply.
It was your own level of honesty that engaged me to reply, and it is a good discussion to have, though as you say, much better in person.

Cheers

Yeah but the problem is that with movies its not as easy as with games. Plus comparing Steam to movies makes little sense. People still have to wait for releases in their regions or content is locked/ blocked the same way its with movies. To be honest its pretty much similar state of what is available and how long you have to wait for the content. The thing steam did is all that deals and good prices. It helped a bit with the piracy but its not like that much has changed.
My point is that as messed up as the situation is it does not look fair to me to say I pirate stuff because I don't want to wait until the thing is available. Like I said you do what you have to do and I wont judge that but for me its strange reasoning that could lead to the thinking (why wait till the game is officially released anywhere if we can torrent it a month/week/day before launch).

Somebody above said that, in my case, money wasn't an issue. Well, it is, very much so. I spent a lot of money on games this last year because I wanted to build my online collection. I've done some preorders here and there, but in general I don't for 3 reasons:

1- 1 out of 5 as duds is pretty damn catastrophic for me. I can't just let 60€ go down the drain because I misjudged a game. I'm still feeling stupid for Borderlands 2, and I got that one on sale. And I don't read many reviews outside this forum.

2- I don't follow the gaming news. I don't know when a game comes out, I just go browse every so often and see what popped up. Unless some friend goes all "OMFG!!! THEY ARE RELEASING SCII!!! BUY BUY BUY BUY!!!" I won't acknowledge it until the day I feel like checking the newcomers, which can happen to be the 1st week or the 4th month.

3- What sense is there in paying full price for a game I won't play right away? Do I have to plan my "gaming schedule" so I'm free the week they release the game in question? Seriously, chances are I'm always already playing one game or the other, and know what I'm planning next. Even when I know about releases (GOG obvious example) I won't buy the game until I plan to actually start playing. I might get it on a sale even if I'm not playing it right away, though.

Unless I want to support the company. I like how Omerta is releasing on GOG day 1, so I'm seriously considering to preorder. I tried The Witcher 2 (pirate), and it was kinda clunky on my PC, so I decided to play a beautiful game like that when I had a computer that could run it at max graphics. That would normally have meant no sale for any other company, but I still got it here (and at 30+$) without having actually played it. But I'm not going to take decisions like that very often.

In the particular case of DmC, at this point I won't bother with it anymore. I felt like playing because I got this friend nagging me abut it (which is why I know of the storyline changes etc), but if I let the impulse buy pass, I have no longer any reason to. It's value is higher than zero, but it's like that game you have in the corner of the shelf and you only try when you're really bored. I might have a good time with it, but so will I with many others, and I'll have other impulses later. And with the predictable horrible control without gamepad and the new story (which would need to not only be interesting on it's own, but also make up for the horrible mess of the previous installments)... it's fate is sealed. I might get it when it gets 5€, if capcom's lucky.
If they don't feel it's worth to bring it to me, I usually don't feel it's worth it for me to import it. And even if the game was utter awesomeness and I was willing to import it, chances are it will be region locked for console. So I never import.

It's getting more difficult to judge games just by previews and reviews as I seriously think most of them have been bought and paid for by the devs/publishers. I have bought many 9/10 games that were quite shit and found gems of games that had only received 7/10 scores.

If companies released demos prior to a games release, maybe that would help combat piracy, but not all of them release demos....sometimes because they will actually stop people buying the game .

Honesty? Well, of course. Why would I lie, specially on the internet to a bunch of people I'll likely never meet?

I can assure you I'll be reflecting on those in the near future. I'm the kind of person who prefers to... mull over? Is that the right verb? Anyway, I prefer to slowly and carefully think about new viewpoints presented to me. And I'm willing to bet if I ever stop pirating, it will mainly come from reasons around that. Thanks for sharing.

I restrict my piracy efforts to...

* Games I have but which aren't usable any more (Freespace 2, before I found out GOG had it)
* Games I have, but don't want to bother finding the discs for (Baldur's Gate 2)
* Older Japanese import games (mostly visual novels)
* Japanese anime as it airs (though if there IS a legal stream (which is becoming increasingly common,) I'll generally run it for a re-watch and click a few ads.)
* Console games (Playstation 2 and older,) when I can't find the game I want at the locally owned game store in town.

Well clearly there's not much sense in you doing it all the time. But for the developers and publishers that you think are taking important risks it's probably worth doing once in awhile. It's like Kickstarter, you don't know that it will turn out, but you can see they're trying something that's worth supporting. Even the duds can sometimes move the genre forward, though it sucks to have spent money on one.

I'm sorry you don't like BL2, I don't smoke weed but almost wish I did with how much fun I have with that game it seems like it could only make it more fun (I haven't even been able to drink for a month!). The DLCs are hilarious and well done as well (except for possibly Big Game Hunt which has probably sent more than one controller flying across living rooms around the world).

iTunes is the classic example of "doing it wrong", not easy, not particularly good, and not particularly cheap.

While I would like to live by the standards you have OP, in reality you are the exception rather than the reality. Most pirates will play the game, finish it, and only if they REALLY REALLY like it will they buy it.

Thats just wrong. That goes beyond the 'demo' you seem to be getting from piracy.

For me it boils down to something simple:
It isn't up to you whether you can have somebody else's stuff

Everything else is just fluff, justifications, excuses, whiny entitlement or the human instinct to be a selfish asshat and take because (generic nonspecific)you can.

edit- or to decide what you'd have to pay for them to sell it to you. As the buyer your choice is to pay what they ask or don't.
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YOU don't have the right to decide that OTHER PEOPLE have to "share" what they have with you because you want it you don't want to pay for it and you don't like calling it theft if they still have a copy too so whats the harm. the harm(for those who don't want to recognize lost revenue from some people not buying it because they can get it free) is violating their rights to their own damned property. Whatever the exact wording on what constitutes theft that was the point behind the laws and you(still a rhetorical you addressed to nobody in particular) know it.
If the owner wants to release it for free thats his right. it isn't the right of some guy who cracked their software and posted it to pirate bay.
Besides at best even at the height of entitlement and delusions you'd still have to know downloading copies and not paying for them was being a parasite so whats the point of arguing about how "right" it is?
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edit-

I'm not jealous that "you got it for free and I paid for it" because I could just as easily take it with just as low a fear of consequences as pirates.

I heard the same retarded defenses on another forum I used to frequent. Some people(nearly all members of a related group of "clans") hacked an online game that had a micropayment system. Many gave themselves in excess of 5,000,000 "hero points"(those who took fewer got off with a warning and the items removed(the owners had "nice guy" issues and were constantly soft on such things)) that were sold 100 for $1 and claimed they didn't actually take anything and deserved to be unbanned. "But we didn't really take anything. It isn't like you have a limited stock of those points" "well i didn't really steal that many because I'd never have actually spent $500 on this crap! The only revenue you really lost was the maybe $30 I wasn't going to spend after getting them free. So really I should at most get a warning like the guy who only took 3000 of them" and "Yes I took 500k but I paid for 10k and you really overcharge so I think that was fair enough. Don't I even get credit for that?"
That in addition to "if you were in a position to do so you'd have abused it too" defense.
edit(last one I swear)- I forgot the best one: finding some way to blame the victims for either making it possible or deserving it somehow "Really its your own fault for leaving an opening that allowed me to do it can't blame me for taking advantage. So if you must blame somebody blame yourself" that from the originator who only took smaller amounts as needed to avoid suspicion urged his fellows to keep it low and under the radar and then turned in everybody who went nuts with it as soon as it became clear they were all about to be caught hoping for a deal of some sort. Which lead to those already caught to attempt to win points by confessing lol. It doesn't count if you are already called out on it.
"Of course I pirated Diablo 3. Did you see the drm on that thing the company deserves it you think I'm giving my money to support that?"

You've got me on release dates but in every other way Steam made paying for games easier than pirating them, offered benefits for legit copies and offered sales and regional pricing to help people in poorer countries afford official versions. It was a game changer and I haven't heard nearly as much PC piracy talk from publishers the last few years as I heard in the mid-00's.

Movies have nothing similar, or at least are just now developing it.