AITAH for pirating games before buying them?

You are being intentionally obtuse. It's not that the thing itself literally does not exist at all, it's that the ownership of ideas is not real. When you steal a physical item the original owner is deprived of that item. When you copy an idea the original "owner" still has access to it.

The results of your ideas are real, the outcomes and impacts are real. The mental labor you do is valuable, but none of it is "property."

If your thoughts and ideas and concepts are property that can be stolen, then please explain how you can be deprived of them.

Thinking hard about something is labor, but it's not property, it can't possibly be property, because it lacks all of the aspects typically required to define property.

Let's word it differently then. Physical property is literally real, like, you can go to it. IPs are not a resource. The game devs do not run out of copies of a game because OP pirated them. They remain at an infinite supply. If someone breaks into your house and makes off with your microwave, you are now short a microwave; If you pirate software, the developer is not short in any stock of software

Possession of property isn't the same as property itself. Although I agree with you that I am sceptical of property in general, at least physical property makes some sense when defined. Intellectual property just makes absolutely no sense.

People should be rewarded for their mental labor, but that's not the same as saying they have created intellectual property.

A thought or concept is not an object that can be stolen. An idea cannot be a scarce resource that is used up.

If concepts or ideas can be "stolen" then that means somebody is being deprived of them. But unless you somehow erased the idea from all parts of that person's brain and transfered it into yours, nobody has been deprived of anything, and thus nothing has been stolen.

Just admit that you stole something and that you don't care, it's not that hard.

You are not wrong, but maybe just a bit of perspective:

In my city, you can go to the public library, borrow a DVD, take it home, watch it. 100% legal. 100% free. No library membership fees. And they have multiple copies of most DVDs, so it's not like it's some lottery to use the service.

It feels a lot like downloading a movie without paying anyone to watch it. The only difference is you gotta go outside. Oh, and no guilt tripping.

Anyway, what's my point? Well piracy is only illegal because some people (not everyone) decided that everyone is going to pay an equal, but not necessarily an equitable, share to fund the development of said IP (unless you have a library in your area to counter this, partially). Worse, that everyone will keep paying a very small group of people money we'll after the development of said IP has been paid off. Even worse, that small group of people will use their profits to corrupt the legal system to ensure that that protectionism continues to serve their benefit, not others... Point being, you can pirate, and care... care a lot.

Victims are created when piracy affects small production houses struggling to make ends meet. Victims are created of everyone else when the law is abused beyond it's original purpose to squeeze consumers.

So you too should be honest and not call it theft. Piracy is piracy, good or bad. To compare it to the crime of theft is to perpetuate the marketing of those to stand from a black and white view on the matter.

It's not mental gymnastics. Why is it so hard to believe that people genuinely don't believe in intellectual property? It has nothing to do with "sticking it to the man." I just do not believe in IP, full stop.

And piracy is not stealing, it is making a copy. When you steal a physical item the original owner is deprived of that item. When you copy something the original "owner" still has access to it.

Not everyone thinks the same way you do. In fact you sound like a terrible person if you genuinely believe that what you're doing is wrong but you're doing it anyway.

It's the same with FOSS. IP is just as fake as physical private property, but that doesn't mean we can't pay people for their labour.

If I find a really useful open-source licensed app developed by one or two people as a hobby, and they have a donation link in their repo, I might send them something.

If it's a really useful open-source licensed app developed by some corporation, there's no way I'm giving them money. The company has invested in developing the app as open source; they chose to (or were forced to by virtue of open source dependencies) make it public. The devs were already paid by the company. Whether the company takes in enough revenue by other means to pay for this open source project isn't my problem.

That still can't inform you properly on how a game 'feels' to play. I'm very tempted by Alan Wake 2, but having bounced off many other similar games because of how they control has me pining for a demo. I'll not be dropping 50 quid without being able to try it first

I dunno about that. Another person can describe a game however they see fit, and they may even be thorough, but what someone might define as clunky controls might feel fine to me. I can't know how a game feels to play unless I play it for myself. Most of the games I regret buying were games I bought based on what youtubers and reviewers were saying

If that works for you, great! I'm going to keep pirating games without demos though.

A bit before my manufacture date but as a kid there used to be CD ROMs in cereal boxes which had games like Tonka, Hot Wheels, Timon and Pumba, Rainbow Fish, etc. Those were hype.

Because the "default path" is different, a free trial would have way less conversion than the current system.

With a free trial you have to take an action to buy it. With a refund you have to take an action to be refunded.

Or they could do it like SaaS, where you're automatically charged at the end of the trial unless you decide to cancel before... But that's a bit convoluted and it wouldn't bring much compared to the current system.

Personally unless it's a dirt cheap game I do enough research before buying and I rarely have to refund. But I definitely refund if the game is not at the level of quality that I expected.

Try it, steam makes it so easy to refund stuff assuming you played less than couple hours and bought it fairly recently. And forcing companies to make trials isn't as easy as you think. Some indie games still have trial versions but those are pretty much impossible to find in AAA titles as they obviously want people to just buy them and play past the return window.

Edit: Also on your post, who cares? Lot of companies certainly don't have morals and do whatever they can to milk their users. If you don't wanna pay for it then don't, its better than not playing anyway. Buy something if you can afford to and wanna support the studio, especially indie studios who rely on that income to produce more games and the money actually go to the people who deserve it. I personally just grab a bunch of stuff on sale and play one when I feel like it, although a lot of them remains untouched to this date.

Tldr: don't overthink it, do whatever works for you

Don’t trust the software company to do what they have made legally sound claims to doing, and that hundreds of thousands of people have said they’ve done.

But do trust the script kiddies writing crackers not to install invisible keyloggers and ad trackers.

You've got to use reviews and video content. Get really acquainted with a few reviewers and what games they really like, what they don't, and their general mindset. Even if a reviewer doesn't like a game, if you understand their taste and preferences you can even tell when you might like it. Cross reference with general public opinion, or perhaps the development history of the studio and if you've played and enjoyed their previous games.

But basing anything off ONLY screenshots and trailers is a horrible trap and piracy isn't the exclusive way to find that out.

It's also time sensitive, and sometimes I end up wasting a couple of hours just tweaking settings, and character customization

Sometimes the neighborhood bully has the best toys. Why can't you play with their Tickle-me-Elmo and piss in their sandbox?

I don't try new games that often do it suits me.

but also the devs (even if only in scraps)

If you're buying games that are more than 3 months old, they do not. Bonuses are given for metacritic scores and launch quarter sales. They're never given royalties.

there’s not a whole lot of options outside of “only buy indie games” to both support developers and avoid filling the pockets of execs and investors.

What's wrong with telling people to buy indie games and pirate anything made at the directive of blood-sucking vampires?

Remember when games were just the program on the disk and you didn’t need keys and an online connection to activate your copy?

Remember when games were just some free software on Usenet that someone made because they thought it'd be cool, and shared because they were proud of it?