If you're already pirating games with game emulators, what's stopping you from pirating AAA titles as well? I'm not making any value judgement here, it just feels like you compare apples to oranges.
Buying a retro game no longer gives money to the developers. It doesn’t support the development of further games, it mostly just puts money in the pockets of collectors and scalpers.
Except you don't have to hunt down the descendants of the grocery store or who acquired the company that acquired them that sold it for parts, decades later. With old games the rights holders are scattered and even unknown until they assert a claim they believe they have.
It's not, though. I'm not buying a 30 year old tomato, like I would a 30 year old game. I'm going to keep buying a tomato every week to make my BLT, enabling the grocery store to continually give money to the farmer for more tomatoes. I'm not going to be continually rebuy the same old game on a regular basis. Me buying tomatoes encourages the farmer to grow tomatoes next year, the same is not true for retro games.
One of these is a continual economic...pipeline of the tomatoes being exchanged for money, and being consumed. The other is speculation and collection. Please don't get hung up on the terminology, I'm not an economist.
