At my first corporate sell-out job, there was a guy running a PC piracy club. You paid him $20 to be a member, which qualified you for a bottomless list of games and apps burned to CD on request. This was in the days of 28.8k modems, so it was a big deal - he was downloading cracked software 24x7.

There was no way he, nor any members, could have bought or even played more than a few of the games available. People would go nuts requesting every last download, despite there being no chance they would get through them. It was more about the kudos of having the game than actually playing it. Which also means they would never have paid for it even if it wasn’t available via the ‘club'.

Which makes this article ring very true.