I'm not a fan of piracy. Quite frankly, if somebody has the means to legitimately purchase something, be it a physical good or some sort of media, said person should do so. Pirating something you can buy, in my eyes, constitutes theft.

So why isn't the game industry doing anything to stop it? I'm not saying to shut down torrents, The Pirate Bay, or a ton of other file-sharing sites; there's still plenty of legitimate uses going on there. No, what I'm wondering is why the industry seems bent on punishing legitimate users and driving them towards piracy. Can I cite an example? Indeed, I can, and you can too. Just walk into your local Gamestop (or equivalent) and look around. Try and figure out the average price of a new video game, and if it's about, oh, $60.00 USD, congratulations. You now understand (partially) why piracy is such a problem in 2011- games are simply far too expensive, and for this, a variety of reasons are given. Games, nowadays, can cost countless millions to produce, promote, etc., and this is often presented as an excuse for passing costs on to the consumer. The trouble is, it's possible to go see a few blockbuster movies in the course of a paycheck- but only a couple blockbuster games. I can understand how films keep their prices down: promotion, promotion, promotion. That's not to say that movies aren't pirated either, or that people who do pirate aren't going to pay anything- the evidence proves otherwise. Rather, most people tend to pay for things, but pirate a few, which I presume is either do to:

A. Budgetary constraints. They wouldn't have purchased it anyway, it's thus not really a lost sale, but it could also be...

B. Obscurity. Some people won't go see a movie they don't know about or fear that they'll dislike. This does represent a lost sale, since after the person pirates, plays or watches or listens, said person is highly unlikely to pay, even if s/he enjoyed whatever was pirated. This is also true for A.

These are just a couple of the reasons people pirate things, but don't they make a couple of solutions really obvious? Reduce prices.

Wait, is that too hard? No. No it's not. Do you know why? Because if the price of video games was cut in half, publishers would still be swimming in money, consumers might be more inclined to buy, and piracy might shrink. Can piracy be stopped? Not without destroying free speech in the process. Can piracy be discouraged into obscurity? Ah, that's a lot more likely. You know, publishers don't seem to give people much incentive to buy games, either. For example, why not include cool stuff for customers?

Seriously, I see a ton of awesome stuff coming in the collector's editions of so many games, but, aside from the obvious (the game) there's really no special incentive to take the ordinary game over whatever's available on The Pirate Bay.

Personally, I prefer to own a physical copy than digital, but I will buy digital content. Still, when I buy a physical copy, it's so much nicer to have something, even a little keychain that I'll gladly put on my ever-growing ring of keys and doo-dads than just the game and several flyers for upcoming shovelware.