I remember my friend basically paid for all his PC upgrades by investing in CD writer and just ripping stuff for people for equivalent of $5 a pop. If we didn'

I remember my friend basically paid for all his PC upgrades by investing in CD writer and just ripping stuff for people for equivalent of $5 a pop. If we didn't pirate we wouldn't "buy more games", maybe once a year, coz we were poor. Once steam become a thing and once I started earning wages and just bought stuff, it was easier and it come with updates. Piracy is mostly a service problem. And it also enables gamepass-like usage, download, play for 2 hours ,if you don't like it just delete it. I guess Steam refunds cover that angle well now. Sure, from time to time someone will go "fuck you Squeenix, I won't pay $70 for port 2 years after the release", but overall people who massively pirate usually can't afford most of what they pirate in the first place.