Really the shoddiness of the products released has much more of an impact than piracy. We all saw this happen with FFOW and various other games. The simple fact is that developers treat their PC games as continued works in progress, and so a lot of people don't want to shell out $50 for what basically amounts to a beta.
I think another big problem is the gray area as far as what videogames are: toys, art, or akin to sport. Whydo they create the games, just to make money, or to actually make something meaningful? I mean, it's pretty obvious that most game companies don't give a shit about the gamer or their developers, and the ones that clearly do (Valve) are performing very well. It's a pretty corrupt industry, with review websites paid off by game companies to give favorable reviews and various other shitty business practices.
So yeah, in short, fuck 'em. If you're working with a medium whose very base is tech-savy people, expect those people to use that technology to their benefit. There's no real reason why a game should cost 49.99, especially given digital-only distribution.
PC gaming is significantly worse right now than it was two or three years ago, and it's the developers' fault, not the pirates'. I've been playing my Wii much more than my PC lately simply because there's much more innovation and creativity happening on that front.
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