Right now we have consumers who steal games insulated from the consequence of their action (whether or not they think that because something is cheap to reproduce it has no value therefore they should not pay for it, it's still stealing), game
Please stop this misinformation.
Theft: you take something from somebody. You: +1. Owner: -1
Copyright infringement: you copy without permission. You: +1. Copyright holder: 0, potentially -1 but it's hard to prove. Estimates of sales lost due to copyright infringement vary wildly, and the methods used to obtain them are anything but scientific.
Stardock itself often argues that people who pirate* games most likely wouldn't buy them anyway. If you insist unaothorised copying is theft because it means lost sales, you should go after movie critics and sites which allow people to publish comments. In case of theft, the owner always loses some value because we're talking about physical property. In case of copyright infringement, it's about copying information.
I have nothing against paying for development costs, or seeing ads in a game like Quake Live. But to say that there's correlation between the price of a game and development costs is a big stretch. News flash: you can't treat information as if it was physical property, because it isn't. It's funny, because more and more musicians realise obscurity is a bigger threat than piracy.
* what a silly name. Equaling inauthorised copying with rape, murder, theft, destruction.