Fun Fact: I started "archiving" games off of BBS back in the intel 386. By the early 2000's I had hundreds of games and apps going back to Zork and other very early PC, backed up in hard drives, CDs, and Zip Drives. I have no doubt that I might have had one of very few copies in existence of some games.
Sad Fact: They all went missing after one of our moves. All I have left are a small stack of zip drives and no zip drive to read them with.
The point is that, had it not been for a moving mishap, I would have copies of long lost games to share with the world, all thanks to piracy.
Mostly same here, save for legit indie companies. I'm still going to buy haunted chocolater, silksong, and arcane (by randy) when they come out. Maybe hades 2 as well but I'll have to look into the question of "are they indie?" beforehand. Alot of people claimed that helldivers was indie when I'd argue it really isn't
At least for games,
I check how big is the dev team, anything bigger than 30 then pirate
Then I check if owner of the development studio is public company, if yes then pirate
Then I check if owner owns more than one development studio, if yes then pirate
Then I check how many games studio has released, if more than 10, pirate
Then I check how many copies have been sold on steam, more than 1m, pirate
If a game dev team fails all above checks, I will still pirate first, but if i enjoy pirated copy, I'll buy the game to support the dev.
