Jade Falcon wrote:interesting read, but why anyone would pirate anything is mind boggling to me. I mean look at TIE fighter, if you waited one flipping week you could have bought the game. And you would have had a manual too 🤣
"So people are stealing stuff and we're optimists. We believe that 80 percent of the people stealing stuff don't want to be; there's just no legal alternative."
--Steve Jobs, Esquire, June 2003.
"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."
--Gabe Newell, The Cambridge Student, November 24, 2011.
You seem to be lacking context. Maybe you didn't grow up in the 1980-90's and/or take for granted the current instant global economy.
Back in the good old days, software distribution was a huge challenge if you didn't live in the continental U.S.A, near it's borders or some countries in western Europe. Computer retailers were few and almost exclusively carried spreadsheet, word processors, programming languages, disk utilities and antivirus programs. The 1985 crash had deep repercussions too. Maybe for you it seems ridiculous to pirate just to get it 1 week in advance, but for the rest of the world, gray and black market software distribution was the only option. Mexico, Central and South America, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Australia, New Zealand. Punk culture had some influence too, but I would blame poor distribution mostly.