Who says they are?

“Only because you don’t want to understand it.

Not everyone has enough money, and even if they did it wouldn’t make your position any less short-sighted. It’s the classic industry view of “if you don’t like how we’re doing things, don’t buy it” which, if things actually played out that way, would itself lead to the collapse of the industry in many regions all the same. To cling to it is no better than daring everyone to just let the industry die. And that’s just pure arrogance.”

@Jon R

It has little to do with arrogance. If you don’t buy games because you’re not satisfied with the industry, but download them illegally anyways… then you’re just another hypocrite.

Everyone does have enough money… People that really are too poor wouldn’t even have a PC. If you can’t own both Unreal Tournament III and Far Cry 2, then you’ll have to make a choice which one to buy (first).

There’s really nothing unfair about that!!!! It certainly doesn’t give you the right to pirate [i]both[/i] games.

There are a gazillion people out there downloading their music illegally. They have this same argument; “we’re poor, don’t blame us”.

It’s stupid. Those same people go out to dance clubs, bars, restaurants and what not more. Spending their precious money on booze, food, entertainment and so on.

Spending money on games is a choice, people nowadays just don’t feel inclined to.

Even when I myself think games are generally too expensive, they will usually end up in a budget bin eventually. You do know some of the great games can be bought for 10$ if you wait about a year or so. So either you save more money and buy earlier, or you wait and buy cheap.

“Another random point – not so much about World of Goo, since it’s pretty lightweight in requirements, but… just because someone has the money to buy the hardware with which to run a game does not mean that, after purchasing the hardware, they would also have the money to buy the game. And I for one, were I offered the choice between buying a game that I couldn’t run, and pirating a game that I could run because I’d spent all my money on hardware. Well. I think you can see where I’m going with that. I imagine that there aren’t very many people genuinely in that situation, but the argument that having money for hardware = having money for games is not correct.”

@Malkav11:

You’re wrong. If you had money to buy expensive hardware, this means you have a certain income. It means you can afford to spend several hundred bucks on hardware. It means you had a choice what to spend your money on. It also means it’s very likely you will have money left afterward.

Only a fool would spend their very last money on something as ‘useless’ as computer hardware, if it would REALLY mean not being able to spend money on anything else.

You’re fooling yourself thinking you can’t buy games afterward. In fact, just to take an example… why buy an expensive PS3, if you can’t regularly spend about 60$ on new games?

Having money for hardware does mean you have money for games. It’s just that you do not wish to spend your money on games… that’s totally something different.

People that can buy the latest hardware really aren’t poor enough by far to justify their personal piracy.

Not everyone has enough money, and even if they did it wouldn’t make your position any less short-sighted. It’s the classic industry view of “if you don’t like how we’re doing things, don’t buy it” which, if things actually played out that way, would itself lead to the collapse of the industry in many regions all the same. To cling to it is no better than daring everyone to just let the industry die. And that’s just pure arrogance.

No one, or at least the person you quoted said anything about having a right to anything. All that basically said was; If a person can acquire something that is difficult to obtain for them – for free, which also doesn’t stop anyone else from having it as well then he doesn’t feel too judgmental towards that person. And the key word there is ‘too’ which implies that he feels at least something.

That’s a strawman. Everyone totally has enough money, people just decide to spend it differently. Those 20$ on drinks last weekend? Could have been savings towards the next Gears of War game.

Good for them that they apparently have different priorities, but don’t think this fact gives you the right to pirate a copy just so you can get your hands on it anyways. It just doesn’t work like that. Apart from the fact that ‘the internet’ isn’t free of grey zones and illegal activities.

I totally do not understand how ‘lack of funds’ is a legitimate reason to pirate a copy.