Piracy.

You all knew this would appear! Don't act like you didn't want it.

Piracy is a tricky subject so I apologize if I don't explain things very well.

Now I do pirate games, i'll admit to that but it's usually games that don't sell very well, or even games that you cannot even acquire anymore. Let's start off by using vaporware for example. Say you wanted a game that came out in 94 on a DOS box and you couldn't purchase it anywhere from any retailer, is that still a crime? I don't think so, but if you sell the game for yourself, then it's a crime, I understand that.

Not a big of a rant, more of jsut stating my opinion.

tl;dr, Piracy is, acceptable if the game is no longer available to purchase and only using it for personal use.

It's a tricky topic to discuss. I don't know if there is a "right" or "wrong" in this case, but a gray area for sure. Though you could argue that just because it isn't commercially available anymore, you could always try ebay.

Yeah I suppose. I wish I could develop that point more but there really isn't much I can say before people say "NUHH EHH, THAT'S STEALING" but then how is it and just wsrghedshsdhtrfth

Yeah, but you get my point!

First off i have never liked the act of piracy, it's nothing I'm proud of.. i would much rather support an awesome group of developers, put food on their table and to help keep a franchise alive and i usually do given that i can afford to but so many things drive me to illegal downloads of games and it's usually of no fault of the developer. It's mostly because of a publisher's horrible DRM (what's this constant internet connection nonsense these days? you mean to tell me that now i can't disable my net traffic so i can free up some resources to better the performance of a given game and enjoy a single player campaign? absolutely ridiculous and you can bet that I'll boycott any uncracked version of it.), outrageous new release price... I'm sorry but $60-80 is not always in the cards or as mentioned above the lack of availability.

Now just to counter the ebay argument in resolution to finding older games, not everyone has credit card or wants to set up a pay pal account so that right there limits you to asking a friend if they're feeling generous or a continued scouring of flea markets and pawn shops then you also run into the chance of something being over priced because it's old.

I have to mention that gone are the days of brick and mortar rental chains for console games at least in my neck of the woods so now i can no longer do the honest thing of simply putting my name and number down at store counter, giving a clerk a little bit of cash, walking out and trying a game that i am so hyped on and desperately want to play for a week or so before i am eventually able buy it at it's full or otherwise price at the time. This has me looking to PC versions of games that i might otherwise be looking to play on a console and i know that it's one of the biggest causes of developers steering clear of the PC market today which makes me feel incredibly horrible because i would never want to have those options eliminated for others who don't deserve that kind of alienation, i wish i had other options when it came to that but i don't, monthly subscription "mail-a-copy" services are also unfortunately out of the question because those require credit cards as well.