I originally pirated this...

[Trylobyte]

If there's one upside to piracy, it's that it seems to have given customers more of a voice in how much they should be charged. Making games more affordable is, for many people, a good compromise that keeps them from pirating.

On the topic of price, I agree there, and here's a story to illustrate.  I know quite a few friends who are fans of The Sims.  I know quite a few of them have played and enjoyed The Sims 3...  at least until EA started releasing expansion pack after expansion pack, all priced as full games.  I remember reading that if you got all the expansions and stuff packs at full price as they were released it would literally cost more than a thousand dollars (It's still $400 if you buy them on Steam today) and that's not even counting the stuff from the online store, some of which were significantly better than anything available in the base game and all of which were sold individually for a few bucks a pop.  Needless to say, many of those friends bought one or two expansions then went straight to the Pirate Bay because they felt EA was just ripping them off at that point.

For bonus irony, one of the most common issues with The Sims 3 (and the one that kept me from buying it in favor of Sims 4, talk about a frying pan or a fire) involves the game dragging even modern high-end systems to their knees after a few hours of gameplay, and this is something that is primarily caused by...  using too many expansion packs.  So yes, if those friends of mine had legitimately bought all the content they would have wound up rendering all of it borderline unusable, something that they wouldn't have known until after they bought it.

People who choose to play without paying, but then change their mind and pay for the game, do not deserve special treatment.

I feel that giving it this much attention is sending the wrong message to people who might be lurking and thinking about buying the game. We should be shutting down the train of thought that leads to the dark side, not enabling it.

A paying customer is a paying customer regardless of how they bought the game.  The point of discussion is about whether or not piracy actually hurts sales for a game like RimWorld or if it can help drive sales through spreading interest and recommendations.  None of us are telling people to go out and pirate the game, either.  It's just an academic debate.

[RemingtonRyder]

It probably knows that the end of the euro is nigh.

[RazorHed]

To those saying piracy isn't theft, you are wrong. You don't buy the software. You buy the experience the software allows you the chance to have. If you Take the experience without paying for it , you are stealing.

[Bozobub]

To those saying piracy isn't theft, you are wrong. You don't buy the software. You buy the experience the software allows you the chance to have. If you Take the experience without paying for it , you are stealing.

Oh, FFS.

The law is exactly what it is (in the US; IP laws are NOT identical, worldwide).  "Digital piracy" is an IP violation; while also illegal and almost always immoral, it's a matter of civil (tort) law.  Theft, however, is a matter of criminal law; it's not even close to the same thing.

Arguing otherwise simply weakens your argument, because it is provably untrue.  Hyperbole and misinformation is useless in rational discourse.

[Harold3456]

As an new indie games studio, piracy hurts Ludeon a lot more. They don't have multiple games on the market bringing in more revenue to compensate.

Piracy is a problem because it's commonplace. People turn a blind eye to it because they don't want to confront someone who literally pirates everything.

If someone doesn't want to pay the listed price for a game, bypassing the price gate and playing it anyway (for however long) is basically giving the finger to everyone who's bought the game already. It is understandable why the payers take a dim view of non-payers who jump the fence and try to claim that they have changed.

Lack of publicity hurts the new anything the most. New studios, new bands, new movies. Many (new) bands release their full albums for free, or simply post them on YouTube. I'm not gonna explain it in detail how they make money, but the bottom line is that publicity and being noticed is worth far more than few bucks you can get for sales to the few people that actually know that you exist.
In the end, for the piracy to exist, there must be people who are interested in the game in the first place.

Very good point. I've noticed that the savvier, trendier producers and artists these days have learned to sell their wares on their own websites for cheap, often providing links off of Youtube. This would do the double duty of conveniently pointing people to an affordable product, as well as bringing in ad revenue. You definitely won't make as much this way as you would have twenty years ago, but for indie producers at least the overhead is much lower, and a large portion of your profit isn't going to some studio that released the game for you.

The future of Internet sales isn't in an all-out crackdown on piracy (something that will never happen successfully, regardless f your personal views on the matter) but by learning to offset the desire to pirate by making purchase as simple as possible.

To add another story to your Hotline Miami one, the creator of This War of Mine (a game that was meant as an art piece portraying the struggles of war refugees) fully condoned the pirating of his game, believing that getting the message out was more important.

[mumblemumble]

I also think (and this is a bit subjective) location matters. I have very little sympathy for a cheapskate in the first world where 30$ can be obtained in a day easily, but if you live in certain countries where 30$ is a significantly higher burden, I can understand the idea of piracy better : and besides, then it does come down to a publicity vs funds argument : a person in a back world country where money is scarce might not be able to reliably provide funds, but CAN reliably provide word of mouth to promote the game.

I don't imagine to be an authority on what is right, but I figure at some point, word of mouth for that situation would be more beneficial to a game.

Course, if you have any conceivable way to save up for a week, and just buy it, by cutting your budget, you should.