There have been veiled admissions to piracy in this very thread.So are the people on techja are pirates?
They have 73 billion dollars in the bank, and a Triple A rating if they feel like issuing some bonds. Never mind that 30 percent profit margin, and the fact that they have exceeded revenue estimates, doing 20 billion compared to 17 billion same quarter last year. And that's with a three quarter billion dollar fine from the EU 's Trade Commission. So I'd say that they're pretty nice.Microsoft need some other means of revenue in order to match google and facebook.
If anything, this is the reason for MS current suckage:
The story of Microsoft’s lost decade could serve as a business-school case study on the pitfalls of success. For what began as a lean competition machine led by young visionaries of unparalleled talent has mutated into something bloated and bureaucracy-laden, with an internal culture that unintentionally rewards managers who strangle innovative ideas that might threaten the established order of things.
This is a bit of a false equivalence. Trading is a one - to -one transfer of a game that is usually already beaten, thus does not affect the companies balance sheets due to the fact that they have already accounted for used games in their estimates, and like the movie industry, depend on first week sales for initial profits.Yes, as far as money is concerned, "Stealing it" and trading it with a friend are the same things. You (not you you) don't get to cry about how your imagine piracy hurts the developers and gaming, then up and trade games.
Piracy is a whole other beast. Games can get pirated BEFORE they are officially released, with transfers being one-to-as-any-seeds-as -you-can-upload-to. This is encouraged by websites that require thousands of servers and gigs of bandwidth. Thus piracy is a business, it depends on money paid directly for faster downloads, and advertisement revenue. All of this based on providing games that they did not spend a penny to make or buy. There is no comparison between the two.