I'm going to be honest here and admit that originally, yes, I did pirate the game (i even created this account and came looking for such a thread to say so). does this mean i'm not going to buy the game? of course not, infact the next thing i'm going to do is purchase it on steam.
I admit now that i've not read through all of the thread however the theme seems to be that everyone is of the opinion that piracy harms sales. well I am sorry to burst your bubble but research shows this not to be the case, infact it goes so far to suggest that it increases sales of both the pirated game/novel/movies and other products made by the same person.
I assume most people have a favorite author right? and most of you will have been lent one of there books by a friend, or borrowed it from the library first. and now you buy all there books, pre-order hard copies for day 1 release.
piracy is exposure
exposure creates fans
fans become 'true fans'
and 'true fans' spend money.
the modern marketplace is saturated, for your product to thrive it must get exposure. putting up a torrent of a game is no different than saying to a friend 'I loved this game, why not give it a try' and lending them the disc, the only difference is you're lending it to a lot of friends at once, all over the world, and many of these 'friends' would have never discovered the game otherwise.
