Purchasing vs piracy in my routine
If I really like a single player game after completing it and I have the money for this, I will buy it. But those are not the only rules: the game studio that developed them must still be in business, it can't have sold out to another company, and it can't be a mainstream release where profit comes before gaming. If this criteria is not meet, I will be content in piracy.
Proud to have Primordia on my Steam library
When a game is not good enough, which lately has usually been the case, I will quit playing it halfway through. If it is, like Primordia proved itself to be, I will get it on Steam as soon as I have enough funds in my Steam wallet. Alternatively, I might instead trade for a key on the second hand market, which is also original so I'm cool with it, because activation key scarcity increases second-hand prices which leads to retail purchases.
Sometimes I will have some gaming funds on Steam, but if I haven't recently finished a game meeting the requirements I've laid out, that money will only be spent on persistent multiplayer games. That means games that cannot be pirated.
Thanks to this method, I only pay for what I enjoy playing. Because I get to try a lot more games, I buy more games than I usually would if I never pirated them. And yes, I do stick to the buying-good-games-after-I'm-done rule.
Buying GTFO did not make me feel like I was taking a risk
Reasoning
Most of us, non-casual gamers, have limited time and money to invest into our beloved hobby. We cannot afford either resource just to go through every single game in our backlogs because there are just too many games we want to play. Spending on something we regret is simply not an acceptable.
A lot of games are pushed out with hyped lies or missing features. While playing a plethora of them, we also eventually come to the sorrowful understanding that some do not suit our taste. Not to mention the increasing number of public beta / early access titles which lack too much or might get abandoned by its developer too soon. But these realizations will often come too late after our purchase, denying us the opportunity of a refund.
Gaming budget: under control! [image source]
What do you think?
Considering how limited our lives are as we grow old, do you think this line of thought is acceptable? Would you prefer strictly obeying the law if you can afford it? How important actually owning the games you play is to you?