>"Piracy is theft."
Very interesting. Tell me more.
>"People who worked hard on those games deserve to be paid for them."
Sure, and they were.
>"But you stole a sale from them, they would've been paid more if you hadn't pirated the game."
How do you know? Maybe I wouldn't have purchased it, just like I haven't purchased thousands of other games. Also, if I play the game and like it, isn't that going to make me more likely to tell people about it, and effectively advertise it for free?
>"But still, you could have have paid for it."
Okay, but the odds of me purchasing that game based on the number of games I haven't purchased is so exceedingly low that I, very likely, would not have purchased it anyway.
>"...And you advertising the game by word of mouth doesn't make up for stealing $60 from them."
Hey, right hemisphere, a "cheap" ad in a local newspaper costs $500 or more, and it gets used to line bird cages and wipe asses before being forgotten a week later. I might spend the rest of my life talking about this game and exposing tens of thousands of people to its existence. They should be paying me.
>"But what if you don't like the game?"
Then I wouldn't have stolen anything, because I would be deleting the ROM. In fact, they would have stolen something from me: time. Life's most precious resource.
>"Okay, but, you see..."
No, sorry bro.