I don't see your point. I haven't pirated a game in over 15 years (basically since I started working), and I buy some games at full price and tons of games at dollar sales or humble bundles. The thing is that the ones I don't buy at full price are the ones I would never even entertain playing at full price, and statistically I rarely even play them after getting 5 of them in a bundle.

What that means is that those games can have <$15 from me, or nothing. $60 was never on the table. And the games I buy at launch others won't bother with at full price.

The only difference between me and the pirate in your example is that the pirate hypothetically would have bought "some" games at full price if piracy wasn't available, like I do. But that's not an assumption you can naturally make. Some people just don't care about playing games when they're new.

I'm just as inclined to assume that a pirate only buying bargain games would have the same legal consumption without piracy.

Beyond convenience and honesty, my thinking about pirated software is that in a world where malware and viruses are prevalent, the last thing I would do on earth is to execute some dodgy cracking utility or game from some random torrent website, unless it is in an airtight and up to date VM.

I've downloaded and played dozen of pirated games, but I've been lucky enough to never have a problem. Or at least I never realized I had malware on my PC :-|

For my part, it was not a lack of money, but rather ease of getting the game (when I was directly given an ISO) or because I don't want to wait for a sale, but the game still seems too expensive. I ended up buying two of them (KotOR on a sale and transistor full-price). But now I have a big enough library and I have less time to play, so it's not as appealing as before (and I also have more to lose on my computer).

As opposed to dodgy proprietary games from the original source, which would never, ever, include any malware.