Piracy is not legal, but it does have its place, whether the companies it affects want you to know it or not.
- Do I believe that it drops their income for a specific title? Yes.
- Do I believe a company will die because of piracy? Not particularly. If the game is good enough, and they manage their money wisely, they will survive to write the next one, which will hopefully be better than the last.
- Does piracy permanently harm a company? No. I believe it actually helps to get the name of the title, and the company out into the eyes of the consumers. If the title's good enough, more people will look for that company's next title. This will, in turn, bring in more overall cash flow.
- Do I believe copy protection works? No, at least not more than a few short months. If someone in the company is savvy enough to write the copy protection, someone outside the company will be savvy enough to break it. This is how it's been for many years. So, what ends up happening is the company wastes money developing what will become useless protection schemes.
I can't say I'm totally innocent, but as a general rule if I played a game and liked it, I bought it. Actually, every one of the games I've gotten in the last 8 years is off the store shelf. I do believe in supporting a company's hard work. And if I don't like the title, I sell it back to the store as a used title, recovering some of my cash.
I've got a pretty nice library of PS1/2/3 games, all original. The machines might die, but I'm hoping to eventually be able to play them on emulators.
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