The bear is walking and talking like a duck...

Jim Sterling calls Pirates thieves and points out that piracy might bring an end to an already shrinking market and the Pirates... well, the Pirates shit themselves. Verbally, mostly.

I've said it in the comment section of the aforementioned article, but I'm going to restate it and elaborate- no-one likes to be called a thief.
It's a label and not a good one at that- not like "well-endowed" or "lady-killer". Well, I admit that second one is pretty context-sensitive.

But it cuts the heart of the issue- the perception of said activity as morally unacceptable or frowned-upon. Some people honestly couldn't give a crap on how they're perceived and many more of the comments on the original article seem more pre-occupied with the idea of PC gaming being maligned as a whole, that the PC has been selected as the choice system of Pirates.

Which it has been. For decades.

Que the angry rebuttals. "I only Pirate games because the publisher hasn't released a demo". "Well, if they didn't have DRM on them". "I can only support Piracy of DRM-enabled games..." etc.... Excuse after excuse. Anything to avoid being called a thief, right? Because then it becomes something else. It's deligitimized.

And that seemed like the main point of the article- calling it what it is. Buzzed Driving is Drunk Driving. A Sanitation Worker is a Garbage Man. Piracy of video games is Theft. Whatever you have to tell yourself to justify something doesn't mean the action in question changes.