Dee GR8T DEBATE!

[Phantom Killah]

People that say they plan on eventually buying all of the good games after pirating them are almost always lying to themselves

[TomGuycott]

I've never pirated a game made for anything later than the SNES. Even then, I only get games that either are impossible for me to find or to play (either because of rarity, or because it is so obscure), and usually when games are released later in some form, I end up buying them then. A good example would be Alien Soldier, which I tried on an emulator after hearing a good review of it, and when I found out it was coming out for the VC, I bought it there.

I believe that you should really support the developers of the stuff that you are enjoying by actually buying the product. Otherwise, they're not gonna be able to make more good stuff for you (save maybe the bigger companies).

[Vipershark]

People that say they plan on eventually buying all of the good games after pirating them are almost always lying to themselves

I don't do this.
I buy only the best of the best games that I pirate, as previously stated.

edit- As I already said, I loathe digital distribution, which unfortunately piracy is pushing us towards. If I like the game enough, I get the physical copy.

[Phantom Killah]

If I like the game enough, I get the physical copy.

How often have you actually done this?

[Vipershark]

A lot, actually.
Last night, I bought FFIVDS after trying it on my flashcart, and whenever I stop by Play N' Trade, I always pick up a few N64 games that I've downloaded and liked.

[Raytheon]

If I like the game enough, I get the physical copy.

How often have you actually done this?

I've done this too, even with old games.
I bought Age of Empires I + II in April, a Gamecube with Gotcha Force and SSBM earlier this year, etc.

[Cobalt Blue]

I live in south America. before the massification of cds the only way to play something was to buy the original cartridge. something that was a bitch but actually enforced you to enjoy every posible second you could milk from a single game since it was usually a game per month/semester. not counting on rental systems since we're actually speaking of owning games. i remember buying Ocarina of Time for the 64 and i spent over a year doing anything i could imagine with the game(from beating it with no shield, or only three hearts, etc.).

after CD-based system such as the Play station came out, the whole market suffered a revolution. it wasn't about selling a console and as most games as you could, but instead it was about selling as most consoles as posible since games were so cheap to pirate and get with the aid of the internet it was almost a joke. of course said games had no "extras" like a proper game would have(this is as in a case, posters, etc.) but it was all about playing FFVII/DDR/Winning Eleven. and its been like that since then, with the Ps2 still being sold everywhere and teh recent Wii/360 getting easily modded to play pirated games. but then, you'd hardly value any game, since its so easy to rack a library of 50+ games in no time, that you usually end buying/burning another one as soon as you don't pay attention to it anymore. you simply see value in it.

at the same time, isn't like we had a choice. a few years back there was literally no exclusive or oficial game stores to sell stuff besides places like blockbuster. and even then, the difference between playing the same game for 1/10 of its real price was out of any moral.

as if moral had anything to do anyway.

nowdays stuff is more accesible. there are stores but still no oficial representants from any major company such as sony or nintendo. you'd have a better time taking your console to a local workshop and get it modded for like 15$ since they are guaranteed to work.

tl;dr - an example would be that the last video game ad i saw on tv was Ocarina Of time and Tony Hawk 3's Soundtrack.