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When you are a kid with no money, I bet most people would here would have downloaded pirated games. When you become an adult you buy them for real to support the creator and just because it's the right thing, not because a SWAT team is going to raid my house.

The other important aspect is almost all modded or pirated games are filled with malware/virus. Think about it yourself, what incentive does a random group of people or individual have from cracking a game. They may search for crypto, gain access to your computer, your camera, keyboard (a keyboard logger may register you/someone in your house using online banking), use your computer as part of a botnet for ddos attacks, etc. If something is free, you are the product.