While observing the conversation about the second hand game market coming to an end (with online codes becoming the new normal), I came to the realization that those that pirate, on the whole, would never have bought the games they steal in the first place.  I looked at the massive amount of games I had purchased second hand over the years and wondered what number of them I would have paid full price for -- likely less than 15% of them.  The publishers received no further benefit from me buying their games on the grey market than had I pirated them.  But nor were they harmed.  In fact, some benefit came to them.  Those I liked acted as demos for the sequels for which I later paid full price.

Morally, I still think that piracy is stealing (actually see comment below). It's taking content for free that someone created with the sole purpose of selling comercially. But in terms of fiscal impact on the industry, I think the impact is vastly overstated.

From what I can tell pirating a game is still more hassle than working for the time it would take to buy the game. Particularly when you factor in paying for bandwidth, risking your console being bricked and removing the online components of the games.  Basically, from what I can tell, the only people likely to pirate games are children and teens who have no capability of paying for these game in the first place.

Frankly, I went through the same thing, but in my day it involved taping songs off the radio to a cassette rather than buying it from a store. It took a hell of a lot of time, the DJ's spoke over the beginning and ends of songs and it sounded like shit.  But hey, it was free. Later, when I got a job I would buy albums of the recording artists I earlier stole from, so it worked out for them in the end, and pretty much, I think that is how it's going to shake out for game publishers as well.