Your weird psychoses are showing. I'm not aware that anyone here is really qualified to treat them.
The fundamental reason you even see this quandary is that you've already prematurely rejected all the middle grounds that have both been suggested and proven to work in at least some instances.

In fact, at the end of the day, doing absolutely nothing and concentrating on your core business and fans seems to work fabulously for many companies. Your problem seems to be that you fundamentally feel some sort of horrible wrong is being committed and you want, well, I don't even know what to call it besides vengeance. It's not even a rational vengeance as it seems to be of the variety that hurts the alleged victim, in fact probably as much or more as the alleged crime ever did.

You don't like any of the answers that seem to work, so you pretend that they don't exist. Yet they do and people are successfully making games, movies, music, books, paintings, etc. Not only that but many of those industries are growing by leaps and bounds every, single year. I have yet to be convinced that there's any great social ill that requires any solution whatsoever at this point. The evidence (real evidence, not cherry picked anecdotes) just doesn't seem to support it.

You're assuming this is any kind of victory. I very much suspect that if we could pull back the curtains we'd just see it all shuffled around to a new spot. When the US voted for prohibition, sure tons of liquor stores shut down. I'm sure this was seen as some sort of success, but we know how it turned out, don't we? The production and consumption just moved somewhere less conspicuous and it's the same here. In the last few weeks loads of people have learned what seed boxes, pirate boxes, usenet, etc. are and have simply switched to that. Someone came to me this week and asked how she could watch movies from her computer on her TV. It turns out her brother downloads them, she doesn't even need to know how to do what he does.

The tactics to which you're referring simply give the illusion of working. That's not the same as actually working.
You can buy one time use items for the Android version too. They turned down a billion dollar buyout offer from Zynga, that's how much they make (or don't like Zynga, I guess, depends on your point of view).

So I rejected the middle ground by.... asking you what it was. Um... OK? That depends what you mean. If you make it and make it well, that doesn't mean you weren't wronged.

So doing nothing is indeed your middle ground? Reimbursement is not vengeance. It's called doing what you were supposed to do in the first place.

Even $5 or $10 titles are often pirated. Isn't it sad to you how greedy some people are that they benefit from someone else's work and they can't be bothered to support that artist at such a reasonable price? Software is a cheap luxury good. If they can't afford it, then why are they spending hours using it?

This doesn't necessarily apply to people who have no access to obtain it, though. I never said I support these specific sizes of fines or these specific measures over and above better alternatives. However you have not provided any alternative. Which are? "They"? That's plural my friend. Do nothing is singular. I don't see the issue as doing well vs. not doing well. You can be harmed even if you are doing well. Surely you would not dispute that?
Where is the goodwill on the other side, pray tell? It's kinda tough to have goodwill about people that are ripping you off.

I like the fact that GOG offers DRM-free titles, great support and lots of good will themselves. So I support them. But even if they didn't, that doesn't mean I should go out and torrent their games, right?

(OK, obviously GOG is not a developer, but same point holds.) That's working really well for your 65 year old mother and her circle of friends, huh?

The goodwill is expressed in all the people who actually do buy one's product, despite it being absolutely trivial to pirate it. Ignoring all that goodwill and instead only focusing on those who are still pirating just shows what a bitter, toxic mode of thinking you've locked yourself into.

You have no idea how well it's working. My mother and her friends are heavily involved in the local bluegrass and folk music scene. They share a ton of music with each other because they are so into it. They also buy a ton of music as well, attend lots of concerts, organize jams, bring bands into town to perform (arrange venues and lodging for them), and spread a massive amount of publicity to try to get others as excited about these bands and music as they are. Most of them are also amateur musicians themselves. Ready to alienate these people by coming down hard on them over the bit of piracy they engage in?

The point why people are often so offended with piracy has nothing to do with them feeling the author/designer/maker not getting what is due for him. Or even the point that they are breaking laws. It simply boils down to one very human, very basic feeling: Envy.

If somebody gets something for free, that I paid for, he is evil. "I paid for it, dammit!. And why can this jerk just have it. He should be punished!" And now it gets tricky, often this "anger" is a result of our inability to do the same. We are afraid of punishment, therefore we act within the law. But somebody else is more brave/reckless/stupid and he gets rewarded?!! That can't be! "Punish that repungant piece of shit".

This isn't only relevant with piracy, but basically with every white collar crime like tax evasion, etc. A faced is often when discussion social security benefits. "Why should somebody who doesn't work get nearly as much money as I do? I work dammit!".

I studied all of this during my criminology exams, maybe I look the proper name up if I'm lazy.

Oh, and this isn't directed against anybody in this (or any other thread), just a basic remark on the topic.

I can enumerate one or hundreds of alternatives and you'll say the same thing. You simply don't like them because you think some great harm needs to be stopped. I disagree. I do think it's great that you don't support the ridiculous fines that are currently used to bully and threaten people, they're the biggest abuse the whole situation has seen.

You're right you can be "wronged" even if you're doing well, but the mistake you're making is thinking that the wrongs need to be righted, if the wronged parties are healthy, happy, and able to pursue further opportunity it's likely detrimental to society as a whole to expend resources righting wrongs that aren't significantly impacting them.

Others have written ad naseum about alternatives to suing infringers. GOG themselves uses ads and diplomacy to get people off abandonware sites and onto GOG. There's as many alternatives as you feel clever enough to invent. What you really need is a framework for evaluating the alternatives.

What should that framework be?

That's the question you should be asking.

Envy? Dude youre kidding right? So everyone against piracy just envy pirates? What the f*** are you talking about? Thats a terrible generalization nonsense BS. Why would someone who BUYS the games envy a pirate? Well, at least, i dont. And i think most dont. I get my original games in an original box, with case, manual, without losing any content like online multiplayer and running no risks of getting banned from online services (like on Xbox 360) or getting a virus searching for cd keys and cracks. I think "envy" feeling occurs when the other guy gets more benefits than you. That doesnt happen with piracy, in most cases (there are those cases where the pirated copy is actually better than the original, like Ubisoft always-on DRM titles).

I dont think this is true. Theres almost no punishment at all for those who pirate. Theres the very rare occasion of some people that get sued for downloading something, and it only happens in a few countries. In some countries they dont even enforce copyright laws at all. Here in Brazil, theres absolutely no punishment at all for those who get pirated copies. Those who sell it, on the other hand, can get sued and have their copying machines and illegal goods taken by the cops, but they hardly go to jail. A few yeas ago even legal well known stores used to sell a lot of pirated copies. They even had pirated copies exposed on shelves, like if they were original.

I dont buy original games because im afraid of being punished. If i did pirate, there would be no punishment at all. I buy games because i feel thats the right thing to do. And i do hate piracy not because of "envy", but because i think im being indirectly hit by piracy. Its because of piracy that they keep filling everything they sell with draconian DRM schemes, for example.

It's not like I made it up (or that you are the first one to react in such a fashion.) The original concept stems back from the ancient israelite tribes and the "scapegoat". All the "negative feelings" are projected onto a certain group and that gets punished and we get "releaved".

This is only the tip of the iceberg and it goes down a lot further the rabbit whole.

The modern theorie is called something like "psychology of the punitive society". It was all the rave in the seventies and sixties when it was used (along with the theories like labelling )to facilitate the idea of a fundamental change of criminal justice (told you that rabbit hole is getting deeper). Quite interesting when you look into it.

The funny thing is that many of those theories fit like a glove on the discussion about piracy. Remember this comes from a time when things like adultery and homosexuality were still crimes.

And this isn't a theory about why we adhere to laws or do the right thing, but why some are so vocal and aggressive in their pursuit or judgement of pirate. If you have a morally sound upbringing and no psychological issues you simply don't need the law do "to the right thing" but people who do "the right thing" because they think it's the right thing to do usually aren't very aggressive when it comes to punishment as they know that the merit in good behaviour is not the lack of punishement.

Just my two cents

What if the perception of "rampant piracy" is not a problem of lost sales, but a case of lost perceptive? It's now pretty much common knowledge that gaming is a growing hobby everywhere and more and more people are starting to find video gaming socially acceptable. Games are no more a childish thing for childish people, it's a legitimate form of entertainment that we all have an equal right to enjoy. The gaming industry is aware of this and are smiling contently with a glass of cognac in hand, looking at their growing sales and profits.

But then there came a time when growth started to slow down. Maybe people ran out of money, maybe there weren't enough good games released...

...or maybe we're slowly starting to run out of people who will potentially be interested in gaming.

Whenever you read about the economy on the news or elsewhere, there seems to be this misconception everywhere (especially in the States) that growth is limitless. That somehow you can keep growing and growing and get money even faster than the week before, and there just seems to be no limit to how much more faster you can gain money in a day. Until the bubble bursts.

I'm sure piracy is a legitimate problem, but I wonder if a very large number of quoted "lost sales" is actually a number representing the expectation of people behind the gaming industry, rather than an actual number of games that would be brought if it weren't for piracy. The industry will keep growing, but it will be at a rate that is sustainable, something I think most big shots have a trouble understanding.

P.S. I own 134 games on Steam, and 96 games on GOG. I love gaming and I think developers should be rewarded for their hard work. However, if a game is crap or has DRM that you think you shouldn't have to deal with, then don't touch that game. Let it be forgotten and disappear into computer heaven where it belongs, DON'T PIRATE IT. Show them you won't have ANYTHING to do with a developer that punishes paying customers.

A very real possibility. I remember a few years ago when (heard and twisted through a bunch of middlemen, so might be taken with a grain of salt, or a few spoons) American companies were raging that people didn't purchase anything and the world of retail would collapse completely - when in reality the growth was increasing rapidly, just slightly less rapidly than they had predicted. Yes, their income wasn't just steady, or even growing at a steady rate, the rate of income was growing. Rapidly. And they were complaining as if they'd just lost their complete life savings and the companies had gone complete bust.