@jn2002dk what is the point of drawing the distinction between piracy and theft if you agree that it's immoral either way? Please understand, I'm not writing to attack you or even your position, but I'm very against piracy and I feel like even a vague suggestion that it's a "victimless crime" deserves a response.

The argument about devs and publishers not getting their cut is only part of the story. Piracy is anti-competitive and ultimately bad for not just devs, but consumers too. Even if you don't assume that a single pirated game equates to one lost sale, it has a tangible financial impact.

1. Devs spend $1mil building a game.

2. They think they can sell 200k copies at $60, for $1.2mil revenue, or $200k profit.

3. Devs don't build any piracy countermeasures because they naively believe people won't copy and redistribute the software.

4. The game becomes very popular, enjoys a robust fan base, of no less than 300k regular users.

5. But the game falls short of sales projections. Devs sell only 100k units, generating revenue of $600k, for a loss of -$400k on the project. The game is pirated at a 2:1 ratio of unlicensed to licensed users.

6. The developer axes the IP and halts all further work because they are bleeding money (This is EXACTLY what happened with EA's Spore).

7. For their next project, devs have two choices. A) increase the budget to build in piracy countermeasures; B) reallocate their money away from programming, QA, or art direction in order to fund piracy countermeasures.

8. They now need to either A) sell more units at $60 in order to turn a profit; or B) plan on less sales because the game has known issues from a lack of funding for QA or development (funding went to combat piracy instead) which make the game worse.

8. Either way, as a direct result of piracy, it is harder to greenlight production of new software with a price of $60 per license.

9. As a result, one of two things will happen. Either the cost of software will go up, or the amount of software on the market will decrease because it's not financially viable to sell something people can get for free.

Push it to the extreme. If developers didn't have the exclusive right to dictate the terms of software distribution, then the only way they could earn any money at all would be to sell the first copy of their game (the only copy they're guaranteed to monetize) to some "philanthropic" pirate for an exorbitant price. And what incentive would he have to distribute copies for free anyway? Capitalism doesn't work that way. He'd keep a copy for himself, and then compete with the developer for further sales.

The conversation about the costs and benefits of piracy look very different from the inside of a developer's board room. You aren't depriving anyone of anything directly, but there are a lot of moving parts and Piracy affects the industry in a lot of ways. Piracy could easily be used to justify an industry wide increase of the retail cost of games. And if the cost of a game goes up to $70, the people who are shelling out are going to feel like their extra $10 subsidizes other people's illegal behavior. Not a good public image for pirates, and those purchasers won't care if you call it theft or not. They'll feel the same as if those pirates reached into their wallets and took the $10 themselves.