illegal downloading of games is there some wiggle room?

Games are not a necessity.

That said, I have no qualms about pirating a game I've paid for before. For instance, using a ripped version of the original Rome: Total War when my Steam version doesn't work with mods.

Edit: Also, at this point the "I wanted to see how it plays" argument doesn't really work anymore. You can try the demo, view let's plays, and get a refund if there are technical issues.

Kind of weird that there are two "No" answers...

Doing something illegal is wrong. That being said I do not always do the right thing.

Pointless exercise since there will always be some sort of justification that will excuse a person's behaviour in their own eyes. (e.g. At least I didn't do X so I'm not a bad person, etc etc). You will always find someone who will condone your behaviour as well as those who will not depending on how willing you are to listen to others and to whom.

At the end of the day, you do you and if you sleep at night, good on you. Morality and legality are not the same thing, and while piracy may be legally wrong in most of the world, many peeps do not feel the same when it comes to the moral aspect. If you are fine with it, cool but don't expect to come up with some convoluted reason where everyone/majority of peeps will excuse your illegal behaviour.

The only time I see "pirating" (in quotes since I'm not even sure that counts) as okay is when the game simply does not exist anymore for a reason or another (AKA: Abandonware). But honestly, any form of pirating is wrong, simple as that. As Ceebers said - it's not really about whether or not is wrong, but more about are you willing to do something immoral?

From a legal standpoint, obviously it's wrong.

And I don't personally pirate, but the way I view it is if you like what a company is doing and want to support them, you should be buying their stuff. And if you want to play a certain game by a developer, but don't want to support the way they run their business (ex: Sims is a great series if you're into that kinda simulation game, but a lot of people dislike their expansion pack system), I can understand that POV.

I agree with what doctorofjournalism said though about the "I wanted to see how it plays." On Steam, you can get refunds up to two hours of gameplay, so that should be plenty of time to decide if you're interested in the game/if you can run it. So I don't personally find that to be much of a valid reason to pirate.

If you close your eyes and ignore the bad things you can cause with this... keep going... :)

Why are you coming to a community that is essentially biased towards legally owning a game-- even if it is via a lottery-based key exchange-- searching for absolution for pirating?

Depends on where you live. If, for example, in Germany, then no, zero wiggle room. In many EU countries, you can download anything freely, but installing a pirated software and accepting the original EULA is again technically a reason to get you to court (nobody is looking at that at home consumers though). In Russia, it is illegal on paper, in reality their official state-controlled facebook knock-off's second most common usage is sharing pirated software directly or through torrent/magnet files. In SEA, even multinational companies can use pirated stuff without caring about anything.

I don't mean to be rude, but I had a very hard time reading what you had written. I think part of it was the second paragraph - I think you meant you picked vote 3, not both 3. I don't even look at polls until after I read an article, so that made no sense, and the rest of what you wrote wasn't much of a help in figuring it out. Treat an article like a story, giving the reader context and structure, and you'll get folks back on track even when a mistake threatens to derail them.

For trials, Origin gives you ten hours of game time as a trial for many of their games, and they are much safer than a download off some pirate site. I am a slow player myself, but ten hours is longer than the amount of time I've put into many games I've bought and completed.

Even with all these videos there is a lot that do not even show real game play on steam/store pages which is not useful for me.

Honest question: Have you never tried YouTube and Twitch to see gameplay? Some games have thousands of hours of gameplay available and even many indie games have whole series or channels dedicated to them. You can '100%' many adventure games in playthroughs, even having the player narrate subtitles for you to save you the effort of reading. Never have you had this much access to - heck, people begging you subscribe to - folks playing video games for you to watch.

I might get shit on by other people because my opinion, but i dont find pirating to be that oh so awful thing everyone seems to claim it to be and I don't see a problem with what you are doing. Devs get their money and you get to play the game.
Even if people are not buy it later I don't really see a problem. I mean who said that the people who did that would even buy the game if pirating was not an option, so it is not like devs can say they are losing money because of pirates.

I could write a huge wall of text about it but I have to go to work >.> Oh and for the record I haven't pirated a game in over 5 years.

There is actually research that shows that piracy has a positive effect on the (national, I suppose) economy, though – as I saw it some years ago – I wouldn’t know the veracity of this study. I am also aware of (game) studios that have experimented with piracy, which often didn’t turn out to be a success – but on the other hand, how many people who buy games haven’t complained about needlessly restricting and intrusive DRM, even citing it as a reason to pirate things?

It stands to reason, however, that if people are not going to buy a company's product anyway (because they don’t have enough money, for example), then piracy is a net profit for this company. After all, the company loses nothing – there is no potential sale to be made, and no disks or such are being stolen – and the company gains publicity.

And what if you already have a copy of the game - in that case, a company does lose out on sales, but is it fairer that they do so, or that you need to buy the same thing twice? Or what if you can't get a copy where you live (and what if you can, but can use different currencies to pay a far cheaper price than intended for your location?)?

I think a case can be made that Steam (especially its sales) or GOG.com or such are similar to iTunes and all. Steam offers platform-specific rewards (community, achievements, a whole social sphere, so to say) and both offer a lot of convenience (access anywhere, latest patches, special fixes…). Just as iTunes decreased pirated music, so too do I expect Steam and GOG.com to have had such an impact on pirated games. Not on all games – see my second paragraph – but some.

If you're really only using it to demo the game, I don't personally have a problem with it. However, I wouldn't run any pirated games on my pc because of the risk of viruses / malware.

Strictly speaking, Piracy is only ok if the game is not available to purchase through legal means in your country because of either censorship or the publisher being a dick and not releasing it there.
It's also ok to use pirated copy methods for legal owners if the pirated version offers a superior experience. (Like those No-Disc cracks for older DRM protected games before Steam was mainstream)

downloaded as a student, now i pay (still trying to buy the games i once played (unless they were "broke or awful" :D)

The wiggle room, in my opinion, is if you've bought the game somewhere (mainly physically) and then lost the (physical) copy.
Then there's the matter of games that aren't distributed any longer, which I also think is kinda OK.
Other than those two cases above, I'd imagine it's just standard illegal piracy.

IMO It's okay if you don't have any money. I downloaded a ton of games back when I was a student. Now that I work I try to buy all the games that I enjoyed when I was younger, I don't even have to play them per se.

Totally legit to download aka "pirate" if you cannot purchase a game legally in a country or if it is too much censored. So yes, there is a wiggle room.

I used to emulate the shit out of GBA and GB games when in middle school. But now, now I support developers (and publishers, as even if a few are run by scumbags, they actually support projects that otherwise couldn't get enough budget).

Also, you may have read this.

Steam's 2-hour refund window is sometimes not enough for me....sheesh...it took me 12 hours to get Alien: Isolation to even start up to the main menu and I couldn't even refund that as I got it in a bundle. I have been stuck with a few games that I have never been able to play and some that I was having a few issues with, but was able to fix, but not soon enough for me to see if I actually liked the game(I sometimes didn't) and could not justify a refund due to not knowing if I did or not during the very short window. So, using pirated software is kinda okay imho to "demo" the game as long as it's just to make sure that it runs okay on your hardware and/or to see if you like it.

Personally, I've only pirated a game once due to not finding much info about it anywhere online, meaning no reviews anywhere and the few videos I did find were Let's Plays which I tend to avoid for games I might buy due to spoilers. A few people even mentioned that they couldn't get to the game to run on their discussion forum of 1 thread. :P I wound up buying that game, plus it's DLC that same day.

In Turkey all Bethesda and Ubisoft games are more expensive than in EU and USA because of a shitty retail seller, Steam has to price match. Most games have regional pricing though. So I would understand if people pirate these.

Also Denuvo games, they're wrong in a customer approach. I don't want triple DRM in my game when pirates get a "better" version themselves and they can play offline. That's just screwing the customers. I'm not even talking about the performance hit controversy and them collecting personal data. Personally I never paid for a Denuvo game and I never will.

About the emulators, I don't see a problem emulating old stuff like PSX and PS2 games on your PC. It's not like you can even buy those and support the developers anymore.

EDIT: Please keep blacklisting me for not paying $80 (320 lira = 1/4 of minimum wage) for a $60 game and not giving a dime to Denuvo games with loot packs.

There's no wiggle room. Pirated games are always illegal. Thats the fact.
I do however understand why people do it. I did it myself a lot until about 15 years ago.

Just a note:
The main reason for piracy is that prices are not adjusted to countries.
For example: a person in Eastern Europe works for 2$/hour pays the same price as a person in England who works for 8$/hour.
Steamgifts is not the best place to talk about piracy anyway, try reddit.

do whatever you want. i find it more honest when someone says they pirate than when they are against it, then they buy all their games for 99% off to "support the devs".
pirates and non-pirates will always try to come up with excuses about their superior morality and/or reasons. some will be valid to some people and others will find them stupid.

so if you want to pirate, just do it. it is illegal, though.

It's your choice in the end. No point in justifying anything with "wiggle room". You either choose to pirate or you don't.
(That might be an unpopular opinion but it is my stance on it.)