Well I think it's hard to claim that getting a free copy of a game, helps the overall sales of the game. How much it hurts is debateable, but that is one copy of the game the company shall not be recieving funds for.
As much as people like to claim they get a rom to "try before they buy" there is a vast difference between recieving a demo, and receiving the entire product. For example, if I had a thirty second clip of a song I created and distrubuted that, people who liked it, may buy the song. If I give out the entire song to people, few would be inclined to go ahead and pay for it afterwards. Now some may argue that they support the companies they like, and give them money on principle, but you'll find there's not too many people like that. Piracy is going through other than legitimate channels to come by a product without paying for it.
Case in point, SRK, a large group devoted to fighting video games holds the biggest fighting game tournament in the US, called "Evolution". This previous year, they decided to try something else to distribute the DVDs covering the action. They released torrents, asking people who enjoyed the DVDs to please pay for them. (They were essentially using the entire product as a sample, much like what people claim to do with roms.) Fact is, some gave money, most just grabbed it for free. You'll be surprised how much people don't like giving away money they don't have to. Sure the DVDs sold well, but the numbers were not like they were when they just teased with a few videos instead of giving away the whole thing.
But people will cite, well [Insert Game Here] sold a million copies! As if to say, well it still sold very well, so it's entirely okay that I didn't buy a copy (read: stole), the amount I hurt the company is negligible. While that may be a valid arguement, to assert that because the game sold well, in spite of piracy, that piracy did not hurt the sales of the game at all is just flawed.
The only exploit in which I ever found such a practice defensible, is concerning games that cannot be gotten in a reasonable fashion. Games never released here, or games that are no longer in production, you aren't hurting these games nearly in the same way since they were never introduced into your markets to begin with.
People also like the cite the music industry, saying that MP3
downloads have actually improved sales of music. Which is true (though really only in small number, 1-2%), but it's because most people don't download entire albums. You download a song or two you like, and then purchase the whole cd for convenience sake. Or, you're using something like Itunes and buying the songs one at a time, prior to channels to do this, the growth of music sales was slipping.
As to not to sound wholier than thou, I would not claim to be above said behavior myself, but I also do not kid myself to think that taking something, regardless of how it's presented to me, without going through the proper channels is noble. It's a practice that people like because you get what you want now, and for nothing. You do few people favors by pirating, and I tend to find people have much larger libraries of roms than they do actual games they own.
If someone wants to argue there should be a method to play games prior to buying, I'm all for it, but taking the game and then claiming it's a suitable replacement, and that, that practice actually helps sell games is just ridiculous.
It's the type of things you only see as a prevailing attitude in communities that have a lot to do with roms, most other ones, about genres of games, will urge people not to pirate. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people type "Support the scene! Buy the game!"
