Why do People Pirate Games?

• To get old games running (outdated copy protection)
• to un-censor them
• lack of availability and of course
• because sometimes price is too high for what u get und you don't want to wait for a sale

I'm not sure if this counts, but to play starcraft 2 I downloaded a crack for it because I really do not like using battle net,

My salary is ~$300. Triple A title costs $60-100. Btw, most games in my library I got for free, so don't judge me on spending too much on games

There are different reasons:

• The most understandable, but still illegal, is the kid with no job, that simply can't afford to buy many games. I admit I was one of them years ago.
• There is people that pirate games just to use it as a long demo, then, eventually, buy the game.
• The worst case: people that spends a lot of money for other things, but "games are too much expensive and/or not worth becauz are short!11!". Usually wrote by an iPhone and after bought a 15-20$ cinema tickets for a movie that lasts 1,5 hours.

Honestly, because games are overpriced for some markets.

For example, average salary in my country is 250-300€ monthly. Paying 30-60€ on something other than food, gas, bills, etc seems a lot.

To avoid bullshit DRM.
To avoid giving EA or Ubisoft money.
To test if I like a game and/or if it runs stable.

Game too expensive? Being patient: waiting for the next few sales.

Some possible ones

No/little money, or no/limited access. -> can't afford or purchase. (Bulk music prices, for example, can be prohibitive)

Or greater ease of access/utility. -> Emulation. Mostly being able to play games with enhanced features, control, graphics, etc.

Greed. -> You can get it for free, why pay.

Hypocrisy -> Shadow of war, for example, people feeling entitled because they don't like that the game has a particular mechanic, and yet decide to play it while ignoring that mechanic, but not paying for the game.

So we could test the game before actually buying it ? ;)

A few potential reasons.
money. If I'm just broke, it's the only way.
location. If the game won't even be sold to me, how else to get it?
Discontinued. Some of the older games flat out don't exist to buy.
DRM. If I BUY the game and it won't let me play a single player only game offline...
Bad Dev, If a great game comes out, but was made by literally Hitler himself, I don't want to fund him.
Platform, while maybe not the best reason, but if I want to play an exclusive, but don't feel like buying and setting up a whole new console, piracy and emulation does it.

Now I'm not saying that it's right, but I'm saying these are a few reasons someone might have.

Why not ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Because there was once a time when publishers released a playable demo for every upcoming release and (at least) PC gamers won't put up with today's publisher's shit.

Well, I haven't pirated games for over 2 years now after I joined Steam and SG, but my reason to pirate was: I couldn't afford it and I didn't have the patience to wait until I could. I'm still a bit impatient today (I've been dying to play many amazing games on my wishlist for a very long time now), but Steam and SG help me control that impatience, because now when I think about pirating a game I think:

• But if I pirate I won't get achievements for the game, and probably many other features that are only available for legal copies
• But I have bought and won so many other great games, I'll just play those instead

And that keeps me away from it. In fact, I've been turning away from all piracy in the past few years. I still pirate sometimes (mostly music that's not available on Spotify and TV shows - although some months I use Netflix), but the majority of stuff in my computer today are legal.

I strongly believe piracy is not a harmful crime though, like most others are, so I don't condemn anyone for pirating, as long as you can't afford it and are not just doing it for the sake of it. Most of the games I pirated in my childhood I've bought on Steam and pirating them actually made me want to buy them more. I would never choose to pirate something if I had the money to buy it.

This is my opinion only, some people really want to buy the game (including kid with no job, people who got money but can't afford to buy all their wish list in one time, or people who don't have the money but try to saving some to buy some games), but really want to know how the game play. So they just take the pirated one.

The problem is sometimes they forget that they had already play the game and suddenly they have no interest in buying this one (only happen when single player or campaign only). Unless, they want to play the multiplayer on the game which is popular, they have to buy it.

Other one is they just want to play the game and they aren't interested in buying even popular. You can say they are stingy one.
Last, i have experienced until now that some people i know still played some pirated one even AAA or other games. They just playing for fun only, don't care if they bought or not.

I used to when I was younger and digital wasn't a thing yet, but ever since I started with my early jobs and now that I'm pretty well off I just buy whatever I'm interested in. Of course, I'm not crazy and I still wait for sales. Demo could be an argument for pirating, but I just skip games that don't have one. You can't have your cake and eat it at the same time.

I've pirated maybe 4 or 5 games in my life. 4 of them were when I was younger and had no moneys to spend and I really wanted to play a game..:P Last game was the Witcher 3. Had no job at the time and almost 6 months after having finished the game I had enough saved up to buy the game properly so I did and played through it 2 more times :P Fourth time to come soon!

Edit: The games that I have pirated and really enjoyed (Witcher 3, Crysis, Darksiders and RAGE) I have actually purchased when I had the chance to :P Not just so I could play them legally but also because I wanted to support the devs that created the games I liked so much.

Plenty of reasons exist in reality. The most common I'm aware of are wanting to try a game before throwing their money at it and or flat out refusing to want to pay for something people have poured their lives into, countless hours away from family and loved ones, many growing ill due to the working conditions they willingly endure in to produce a product that they can be proud of. Sure that's not the case for every individual, but how would you feel as a developer of something you worked hard on, just to receive death threats?

Don't pirate games, people work hard.

It is quite obvious that people do what benefit them in most cases. Better if they have an excuse.

• Gamers that have no disposable income (been there).
• Gamers with outdated PC that want to test a game to see if they can run it before buying it (been there).
• Gamers that think games shouldn't cost more then €50 but are caught up in the hype so they can't wait.
• Social pressure from irl friends (unknown to most here I bet).

I moved from pirating most of my games to Steam not because I didn't afford games (I could barely afford them, but that wasn't the main reason), but because Steam was very convenient and offered features which I couldn't otherwise benefit from.
If I had the same for, let's say, movies, I'd probably stack up a library of movies as well. Meanwhile, when the time comes and I want to watch a movie, which isn't often, I usually ask at the docks, with the rare exception of going to see it at the cinema.
So, maybe one reason is convenience (or the lack of something more convenient).

I do it as a demo for a game as I could play its full version (which is what I did on Starbound, and I now have it bought)

Also, this (because it's kinda related.)

Simple some poeple don't have money ,some people don't use mastercard or somthing like that

Some Chinese people play pirate games for Chinese language.They cannot understand English very well.

I pirated games when I was a teen and didn't have the funds to spend on them. Now as an adult I regret pirating games/movies/anime/music because of the amount of energy the people working on them put forth for us to enjoy them. My interests have also narrowed enough that I can afford to fund them all.

I admit though, avoiding the DRM for uplay or EA Acess is tempting.

Parrots and peg legsare the number one cause of piracy.

Well... that and badly drawn maps to the booty!

i never pirate so i can tell others how awesome i am and make them feel bad ^^