I think hacking would be good if people who liked the game would actually buy it. And many times, that is the case, but sometimes, that is not the case. The question is, these people who download these games and don't buy it... would they buy the game if they couldn't download it? I remember the whole Napster music downloading thing, which, in spite of all the negative press, was the best thing to happen to the music industry in recent history. This is all speculation, but it seems that the game industry really hasn't suffered from hacking, but rather gotten wealthier. The only danger in it exists for small companies, who market under the radar to a niche audience and suffer from bad publishers. It appears that games sell quite a bit more now than they did, say, 15 years ago.
Anywho, the most important thing for me is to support the smaller companies who make the games we like, by buying those games. The problem is, as with music, that you don't know who's making money off of your purchase. I know artists who don't bother anymore with cd's, because they don't get any money from it. Their money is in the gigs, and their big-name record company takes pretty much all the cd profits. I don't know exactly how it is in the game industry, but I doubt that the publishers go for peanuts.
