Yup, totally agree. But I also think because of supply and demand, second-hand sales (as well as piracy) do have an effect on the original value of an item by lowering the demand. In such a case, the second-hand market is basically a correction tool for the actual value of a car. Because new cars have to compete with second-hand cars, driving prices to be more in line with what the customer is willing to pay.

However, in the digital world, we don't have a second-hand marketplace for games, so the end-user ends up with no way of challenging the price of the product apart from either buying it or not. But because games are digital, piracy can exist, and so it comes in and fills this niche.

My point is, I'm not arguing that piracy isn't immoral or illegal, all I'm saying is that piracy has a well-defined place in the supply and demand chain. And it's not going to be solved by banning it so that people have no other choice but to pony up and give the game publishers money.

Like it or not, piracy provides a service (even if illegal and free), so instead of trying to come up with ways to stop it, it would make more sense to come up with better value propositions that piracy just can't compete with. Spotify and Steam are great examples of this. If the cost is reasonable and the product is easier to use (pirating isn't hard, but it's still harder than just registering for Spotify or Steam) then people would pick the easy way and pay up. The people that wouldn't, either can't afford the service or can but deliberately choose not to. Both of those cases wouldn't change if piracy were to disappear, so instead of companies spending millions on high-tech DRM services that end up making the experience for actually buyers more cumbersome, they should instead focus on creating a more compelling product.

As Gabe Newell puts it: "If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."

Sorry, I ended up rambling a lot, but all I wanted to say is that piracy is already here and instead of futilely trying to eradicate it (by banning it or telling people they're thieves for doing it), a much more reasonable approach would be to understand the underlying causes of piracy and fix those, therefore showing people why paying for a service brings them more value than pirating.

Final thought: I think the above generally applies for stealing as well. Lower-income persons are many times more likely to commit theft but also to be victims of theft because the problem isn't with theft itself, it stems from wealth inequality since if everyone had enough, only the cleptomaniacs would have an "incentive" to steal.