Mod chips and retro consoles, the moral choice?

I think there are two parts to this argument. Current gen and older gen games. When it comes to current gen games, the attitude i have for the most part is to support the developers. I'll buy the majority of my games new, keep the ones i love and that i know I'll play again, and trade the rest if they're not worth keeping for replay value or whatever. I don't rip off people who are developing for the current hardware. That way the best developers make money, and the standard of development for the current platforms is kept high. I WILL look for good value, but i WON'T break copyright to do it.

But here's the thing. Games are expensive and buying all new for every system that's ever been out there just isn't an option, so once something is past-gen or retro, and the revenue stream has by and large dried up for the developer i have absolutely no problem with people keeping a game alive by using backed up or downloaded copies of it. In fact, the argument could even be made that the rise of emulation and modding has actually helped developers to make new money off of otherwise long dead IPs and fund their newer, more expensive projects, thus strengthening the industry as a whole.

Look at Capcom as an example. Capcom , for anyone who doesn't know, is a past master at selling the same IP multiple times to the same customers (the street fighter series is a prime example). Their arcade 8 and 16 bit fighting and platforming titles have had a huge re-interest level of late, and they have a whole bunch of compilation, re-issue, anniversary, re-jig, HD-remix, and so on titles out.

These games are turning a profit for them off the back of arcade titles from 20 odd years ago, for a minimal cost, and many people argue that game-buying punters in general would never have had enough interest in them even justify them being re-released if it wasn't for projects like MAME, etc. sparking people's interest in retro games over the last few years.

I couldn't tell you how many different versions (and i mean LEGIT versions, not rip-offs) of the different street fighter games I've bought for multiple platforms down the years. I still up to recently bought re-issues of the exact same games to take advantage of HD, or Xbox live or whatever, despite there being a slew of emulators, backups, and freely available roms online. That's because I'm paying for access to the community to play them with, not just the games themselves, and the community is usually found on the newest releases.

I'm a good example of a Capcom fan, and Capcom have made an absolute bag of money off me over the last 20 years. My sad financial compulsions aside though, the key point here in relation to emulation and backups, is this:

The street fighter community's interest in their series was kept alive for a good ten years plus (the hiatus between 1999 and 2009 when the fighting game craze had been regarded as dead) by emulation, illegal downloads, backups, mame cabs, modded consoles, and many other things that break licensing laws before street fighter 4 came along and made capcom an absolute fortune in 2009 and rejuvinated the genre totally. Capcom made loads more street fighter money off of the same crowd of buyers again, as well as getting a whole load of new ones into their net.

I bought Street fighter 4. For 2 consoles, so i could play against EVERYBODY. And i bought it's sequel. And the DLC costumes, and the next sequel, and the DLC costumes for that, and so on and so on, and it's very likely that had i not been still playing street fighter on roms and backups for the last ten years i would have completely forgotten about the series and gone and spent my money on something sensible, like a holiday, or a new bathroom suite or something...

I think companies like capcom are well aware of this phenomenon, and are quite happy with the status quo of losing small amounts of revenue on the emulation and backup of their old games to keep their intellectual properties active and kicking and keep people interested in what they do, and basically "on their hook".

So i say go for it. If the industry only stands to gain from it, and they don't see a moral dilemma with backups and emulation, then why should anyone else?