video games are a luxury, having a PC powerful enough to play the said games is also a luxury. Not all people can afford luxury, but it does not mean they don't want to experience luxury, everybody does. So, how can you experience luxury without paying for it? You have your answer in the title of this thread.
Piracy is a criminal act, the funny part is that many people don't realize and see it as petty thievery or not at all. But the same concept of luxury can be applied to a lot of commodities - expensive watches, handbags, cars, houses, jewelry, etc. The problem is that out of the things I listed, all those are material things, if you steal them, the authorities have proof of you owning it in physical space.
Video Games are software, they only exist as information stored on some medium, so technically, the software is non-physical entity, which leads some people to not consider stealing software the same as stealing a car. But fact of the matter is software is still property, even if virtual or informational only, and it's still theft.
The whole concept of software/video game piracy is so rampant is because the authorities have trouble establishing the fact that you actually stole it reliably. Say you steal a car, they catch you in that car, the proof is undeniable. But with software it's tricky. First of all, you can erase the software from your harddrive and then overwrite the data on top, at that point there will be no proof that you ever had the stolen property. Another intricacy that I'm not sure how it will stand up in court is this - pirated software is technically already altered software, plus it's distributed from a place that is not associated with the legal software owner. Basically speaking, if a person is to go on a torrent site and download cracked software, if brought up in court they can say in their defense "I downloaded the software from the internet (the service I paid for) free of charge, there was no note stating that I have to pay for it" It's true that such statement goes out the window once you install the software and click Agree on the EULA screen. So, maybe this is a bit convoluted but I hope it makes sense to some as to where I was going with this idea. Again, I'm not a lawyer, if there's been rulings on such thing, I'd appreciate somebody informing me.
Interesting thing I find is the following, say a TV series airs on public television. There are websites that record those episodes and put them up for download for free. I mean, ok the episode aired, you paid for your TV to watch it, why should you not be able to record it to watch at a later time? I know that the TV companies have gone after people who downloaded these recorded episodes to watch because they were unable to make the time to watch it during the time it was airing. I find that baffling.