StingingVelvet: The simple point is content producers have to appeal to consumer habits and desires to make money, right or wrong. Steam did this on PC and eliminated a lot of the piracy talk, the movie studious have been really slow to do it and it leaves people in the wrong region or who refuse to buy discs in a weird place where piracy is the most common sense option to see the content they want to see.

Once the future sorts itself out it won't be much of a problem, but for some reason the studious seem to think attacking customers is smart.

P1na: Yes, I understand what you mean. But as I said, my money is limited. Do I care about a game to buy it full price right away to reward them, and (very hopefully) push the industry in a direction I'm more interested it? Sure, I do care. However, do I care enough to allocate money for supporting videogame ideas, when there are so many causes at my place (mainly pollitical/cultural) that I feel are worth promoting? It has to be one hell of a game, that's for sure. Videogames are high on my entertainment priorities, but low on the ideological ones.

Apathy1989: 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.

StingingVelvet: Entertainment and art are core aspects of culture as well though. It would be a sad world without artists and artists need support. Given your situation full priced purchases should be rare, but when it's a game you really want to support I still think an early full price purchase can be called for. It's the only voice gamers have.

P1na: I agree with that. It's just that I live with government-shut newspapers that need financing to recover, or financing cuts to language schools. I care about those things a lot more than I do about bringing more innovation into the gaming industry, so the idea I support on a game needs to strongly resonate with me for me to give them that kind of support. But I digress and there's little more point to this beyond the "I agree" part.

StingingVelvet: Right. For me right now in the next 6 months I just want to buy Bioshock Infinite at full price. I want that to support the studio and singleplayer-focused gaming. Games like Dead Space 3 can wait, despite my interest in them, because I don't want to support them as much.

I look at it as a direct conversation with publishers.

P1na: I understand what you say. And I guess it's good for me as well that a new single player focused game is coming (first news I hear about this Bioshock infinite), but I found the first Bioshock so overly linear that despite it's fantastic atmosphere I got incredibly bored and didn't finish it. I have the 2nd one on steam, and I haven't even launched it yet.

I guess this exemplifies my point. I do want to support single player games, but I can't justify spending the full price in a game where all last entries in the franchise didn't get my interest. Not unless someone recommends it to me AND I have a free try of it, at least.

Qwertyman: So, you have to look at it like this: Would a publisher rather have 10 of my dollars (example sale price), or zero of my dollars? Since it costs them next to nothing to sell a product through digital distribution (don't have to account for the cost of manufacturing a physical good), I'm pretty sure they'd rather have something than nothing. I wish I had money to throw around at all of the publishers I respect and all of those badass kickstarter ideas, but I just don't have it right now.

Fictionvision: Most games that interest me now a days come out at a lower price point anyways.

RadicalJoe: Personally, I find piracy to be a legitimate practice for a multitude of reasons.

Call me a Marxist, or socialist or whatever, but if these publishers and developers are going to be such stingy cunts, that nickle, dime and even penny customers, I won't support them whatsoever. Not even buying their games at 75% to 90% off at a sale.

The thing is with that however, is that there is so many of these awful publishers and developers that I pirate almost every new game that comes out, that's if it doesn't look like an unbelievable shitstain of code that a mentally challenged vegetable would call a "game" (See: Ace Combat: Assault Horizon).

Why is this unparalleled shitfest going on in this industry? Well, while I do put some blame on the developers, it's mostly these giant publisher's fault's.

Activison with their blatant rehashing of the CoD genre, and any other game they get their hands on, EA with their shameless casualization of any franchise they come across, also resurrecting old series (some that can even be found on GoG, like Syndicate for example) and anally fisting them with the Fist of the North Star, upon other things- In short, the entire industry is a train wreck for any person who isn't a casual gamer.

And what's ironic is that casual gamers are the ones who are actually wanting these awful practices, along with DLC and other nuisances. I call that blind consumerism if anything. And because they are now the majority presence in the industry, us people who actually like to play games for more than thirty minutes aday have to put up with their stupidity. What a shame.

Now, we can point fingers all we want, but I still say that piracy is okay if you need to put up with all of the bullshit listed above. Just don't be an apologist about it, "Oh, well I was going to buy it after I tried it!", etc, because that's what sheep do. Don't be a sheep for some welshman to come along and ravage, be a wolf and fuck that welshman up. If someone instigates against your piracy, just say "fuck them" and continue.

Last but not least, I just have to thank GoG, and CD Projekt for being one of the few devs anymore that don't do any of the bullshit above. Free updates, no DRM, truly amazing work, guys.