In the early '90, right after the breaking of the eastern block, you could actually BUY cracked versions of games on street corners, nicely displayed on a small table or something, for the equivalent of roughly 1 or 2 euros. Actually, at the time, those were the only games versions available. I even used to joke about it, with my brother, that if a software company wants to really make some money they could release both the official version and the cracked one, for different prices of course. Later on, this of course dissapeared, we proceeded to pirating games the old-fashion way of internet download, and the reason was mainly a financial one - at the time I couldn't afford the games. Now that I can afford, I buy the games that I like (so this is the try-before-you-buy it reason). I know that this is somehow a particular situation, but my point is that without the first (historically speaking) pirated copies of the computer games I probably wouldn't even started to play, not to mention to consider buying games now. But then again, this is just an exception from the rule.