Oh, you clearly didn't try to drive a British car outside the UK. They have pretty damn good regional lock.

Just for the record. This is an opinion and can hardly be backed up by facts since there are not enough control experiments. It also depends on the DRM. OnLive for example never really complained about piracy or lost sales.

As for Steam going GOG. I doubt this will ever happen. Steam will believe in their DRM part at least doing some good forever.

Those two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the two arguments back each other up nicely. Look at them like this:

"Don't count pirated copies as lost sales, because we wouldn't have bought your games anyway. The reason we wouldn't have bought them anyway is that you refuse to sell them on terms we can accept. If you listened to us, and sold your games on terms we could accept, we would then buy the games, and hence wouldn't pirate them."

Eh... See, I agree that intrusive DRM is the worst, but I don't think it means you're justified in pirating a game.

I don't like Origin. I don't like that it scans your computer (yes I now Steam does it to, but theirs can be opted out of). I don't like that a forum ban=a game ban or that a game ban removes every game, not just one. And I don't like that you need to use it for Mass Effect 3.

However, I am not entitled to play Mass Effect 3. Piracy is a massive culture of entitlement that annoys me to no end. If you don't want to play ball with a company, then you don't play the game plain and simple. Playing Mass Effect 3 isn't a basic human right. You don't deserve to play it. it's a bit of entertainment you can either purchase and enjoy or forget about.

Obviously regional restrictions are a bit of a greyer area. I don't run into that issue a lot myself with games, though you would be shocked how many shows aren't available in Canada. However, I know a lot of pirates who claim they're doing so because it isn't available in their country, and then change to a new excuse when it finally is. A friend of mine torrented Game of Thrones because HBO is unavailable in my area, but did he buy the DVD/iTunes shows now that it's at our local shop? Now it's "overpriced" and "iTune DRM is crappy".

If you don't like something, don't buy it. Vote with your wallet. That doesn't mean you are entitled to take it anyway.

I am overseas volunteering right now and I have to say, dragging some discs over here that take forever to get to the movie or episodes is SO annoying. A friend of mine here brought a TB drive with like 100 burned movies and shows on it and he is having a much better time.

I think a lot of piracy is about convenience, which is ALWAYS what consumers crave. Valve understood that with Steam.

In general, the car analogy is much flawed. But in this context it is valid. Note that on purpose I wrote "Ferrari Testarossa 1984" - you can't buy this car from the manufacturer anymore. Besides, there were models that Ferrari sold only to the customers that already had had at least 10 other models. Is that fair? Of course it is - they sell it the way they want!

But all in all, come on, don't be childish, you can't have everything you want the way you want it! I know that with digital goods it's possible to deliver infinite amounts of the same item, but this doesn't matter. What I want to say you is that the producer (or whoever owns the product) can sell it in any way he imagines. And you can call it stupid, unfair, shout on forums - and I think many times we need to do that. But still, you can't use that as an excuse and take what doesn't belong to you.
There are other people/companies who'll gladly accept your money - go and buy (something different or maybe similar) from them. This is life - you can't have everything you want, just let go. I assure you that you can forget about this-and-this game or movie and still be happy. Don't be greedy.

But then piracy have to be treated as lost sales. Because if it is like you said then pirated copies are lost sales and publishers have 100% rights to count pirated copies as lost sales.

It's like you would say that customers that don't eat in McDonald's because they don't want to eat unhealthy food aren't lost sales.

I think many people are looking at piracy from the wrong perspective. The question isn't "am I entitled to watch XYZ". (Although you could make some compelling arguements about the relevance to pop culture and general access to it, but I digress).

It should be, "What harm have my actions?"

The only question I ask myself when I pirate is, do I harm somebody? For me it would unacceptable to pirate a GOG game. I have the income and GOG is a small company that needs the revenue it can get from customers like myself. The only GOG I would pirate would be Hostile Waters, because GOG isn't selling it anymore and I really want to play it. What I want to say is that I am the target group of GOG, with people like me they make most of their income. And I can afford it, therefore I buy them. If I would suddently become bankrupt, I would pirate GOGs (but then I probably have other worries...)

But what about shows like 30 Rock. Yes, I can get the very cheap on Amazon. But only as DVDs. I don't have a TV and, to be honest, I'm done swapping discs like a monkey. Therefore I no longer buy DVDs in general. So I pirate them. It's not like that show is an struggling underdog. (As a "counter point", I bought Louis CKs recent release, because I could download it hassle free). I'm not thinking I'm entitled to do so, and I certainly don't try to justify it. As, imo, I don't need justification, because my actions are irrelevant towards the success of 30 Rock. If at all, it was beneficial for them, I recommended the show to a friend of mine, who, after watching my copy of the first season, bought all 4 Season available in Germany (she likes DVDs and they really are cheap here, 10€ - 20€ a season).

We are born free and as long as our actions don't harm others, we are to act like free men. You don't have a "right" to a game, but you also don't need a justification if you pirate it. Consider if your actions have negatice consequenses and then decide. Chaotic Neutral if you will.

For full disclosure I should mention that I own all seasons of B5 and The Wire on DVD, those shows were just that awesome! (But I still watch pirated copies...)

Yeah, and it's really fantastic when another 1 000 000 people think that way that would actually buy with a bit different mindset. What harm do your actions have when you ride a train without a ticket? The train goes anyway... But it's the money that keeps it going. Sure, you might not buy a game, but you're going directly against wishes of creators of the game that put an incredible ammount of work into it and therefore DO have a say about that. You don't.

If someone downloads $500 worth of games in a month, should all of those be counted as lost sales, even if their realistic monthly spending budget for gaming with no piracy involved is $50?

Wrong, at least in Europe! A company is not allowed to prevent individuals from buying their stuff if they sell it to everyone else, unless they have a good reason to do so.* And even then, everyone is allowed to resell that stuff. European law explicitly states that there are no trading borders within the EU.

Of course, there is the other question if you actually have enough money to buy it.

* This does not apply to services, though. People and companies generally can refuse to offer the service,

That actually is an excellent example. As stated above, I do no harm in pirating something if I am not the "target demographic" of that particular product. Now let's move on to trains.

If I ride a train, I pay, of course. But what about scholl children? Or Students? They don't pay. In some countries they pay a "fee", but this is in no way related to the actual train rides. As a schoolkid my "fee" (or rather my parents) was about 3% - 5% of what I would have paid with regular "monthly tickets" (less if I take the "pay per trip" price as a number). Is that bad for the train company. No, because children aren't their main "money maker" (they would love to, but politics would never allow that).

No let's move to poor people who can't afford to ride the train (it is fucking expensive in Germany). What harm is done in them riding the train for free? Sure, they don't pay any "fee" or something comparable. But why on earth should you make those draw an overpriced ticket. And i Germany it is even worse, as riding a train without a ticket is a criminal offence in Germany and can (and has, I personally was the DA in such a case) get you jail time. This is just wrong, imo. Because they aren't the reasons those trains drive, they drive because commters have to go to work and I have to make my weekend trip to Cologne to get drunk. And as long as we are paying for the trains, what do I care if we can get some freeloaders on the ride, as long as the train remains a profitable business.

And the "gaming train" is very, very profitable (as is music and movies). Piracy would be a major issue of pirates would all stop buying stuff. But that isn't the case, they still spent a lot of money on the entertainment sector. (We had a forum topic about this not to long ago). So if somebody pays 300€ each month on movies, games and music (not me, but I know people who do), they can pirate whatever they want in my book.

Tl:dr Piracy is only bad if it leads to people spending less money on the entertainment sector. But my personal experience and several studies have shown that the opposite is the fact.

Thing is, the owners of those trains have freely decided to let them ride those trains. There are plenty of free or free to play games if you don't have money to buy them, games that developers themselves decided to put out for free. If you want free games, play those. Hell, I played free games half my childhood. However, the least you could do for people that put work into a paid game is to not play it. I just think it's incredibly disrespectful towards those who provided you with the entertainment to go against their wishes (or wishes of people who provide them with income). If you can find an official statement of the developer that you may feel free to pirate it, by all means.

Basically, I think that by pirating, you're acting like an ass. You don't actually NEED to play those games. If you have no issue with being an entitled, disrespectful bastard, well by all means.

The problem with the "vote with your wallet"-argument is that there is no way to tell how many people have not bought a product, let alone know why these people chose to not buy it. It is impossible to take no-sales into account because there exist no numbers of how many sales a company has not made.



EDIT:
Typo.

"The companies try to stick it to me." I think that pretty much sums up most companies, whether they sell games or something else.

Try buying a new car and wading through all the crap; or try to get a straight answer as to why certain services (cable, phone, etc.) keep finding reasons to raise their prices. Or why car insurance rates go up arbitrarily despite having no accidents or any other issues. Or why health insurance is so convoluted (in the US) that people are unable to understand it on their own.

But I don't think theft (to me, calling it "piracy" is just putting a different name on theft) is the answer; you (in the general sense) may benefit from it, but it's selfish and in the end you're just going to screw everybody else over, no matter what your justifications are.