This rising piracy thing is laughable. There has always been piracy on the PC, and that hasn't stopped Crytek from coming to life in the meantime, producing Far Cry, and with the money of those sales making Crysis and with the money of those sales making Warhead (the latter two I bought), which in turn gave them fame and recognition, and that's why they could now get the funding to build on 3 different platforms.
Back in the eighties and early nineties you just had to copy the games from one floppy to another, sometimes spanning multiple floppies, using ARJ, for example and eventually copying the access codes. Consoles were always more difficult to hack, but even then I remember you could buy special cartridges that contained 3 or more games that normally cost way more than the asking price of said cartridge. So, yes, piracy has always been there, on all platforms.
And there always will be. I even remember the original Prince of Persia game getting hacked. And guess what, the game sold so well they made a sequel, and twenty years after, we now have sequels in high definition glorious 3D, and even a movie.
Remember a guy called John Carmack ? ID Software ? Wolfenstein 3D ? Doom ? Quake ? Hell, even Duke Nukem, by Apogee/ID, was shareware, and it worked. I don't recall Carmack being a poor man living under the bridge because of piracy. Now we have Steam. And it works. I love Steam. Why can't EA just stop whining and be smart ?
Yes, piracy. It's like bacteria, it does good things and bad things.
It's very easy to make piracy a scapegoat, especially when you normally get to charge more for a game on a console, for less investment. After all, they are all fine-tuning 2005/2006 graphics libraries on the consoles. But we all know the formula1 is the PC. DX11 will get into consoles, and they will do it first on the PC, even with all the piracy. They sell, aways have. And I will buy their game if it's worth it. I support good publishers that produce good games. Not necessarily publishers that ask me to buy their games.
P.S.: Talking about Steam and good games, Portal 2 is now up for Pre-Purchase with a free copy of Portal bundled for those who haven't or to give to a friend! I'll be pre-purchasing!