Question: ![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/z3v19.jpg)

There's been a lot of talk recently about what it means to support piracy and pirated games. A very recent example is [this question](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/127918/why-cant-i-harvest-blood-for-discerning-the-transmundane), in which a user asks a question that turns out to be a valid problem for a legitimate copy of the game, but in which he admitted in the comments that he's using a pirated version.

Even after it was clear that this problem exists in non-pirated copies, the question was still closed due to the mention of piracy.

Is the simple mention of piracy enough? Does the question need to be more intrinsically tied up with piracy? Where do we draw the line?

Answer: 
We are not here to judge users (though educating them might sometimes be adequate...). While posts and comments clearly implying the necessity of piracy should be removed due to the legal implications, the mere fact that someone uses a pirated version of a game does not render an otherwise valid question suddenly invalid. Any traces relating to piracy should however be removed, and as long as the question remains valid for legally obtainable versions of a game it should remain here.

While the question mentioned here is posted by someone who admitted they pirated the game, we should not make quick conclusions - as a false positive take [this question](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/q/44403/88) where I was not the only one to first assume that one [meanwhile very established user](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/users/15095/ender) was asking us on *how* to actively pirate a specific game. And would we have been too paranoid about this back then, we'd probably have driven away one quite helpful user.
[SE's policy is to not dictate to us how to handle piracy, so studiously avoiding even the possibility of being involved in helping someone using a pirated game isn't *our* concern.](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/10889506#10889506) That means my concerns about exposure to liability aren't relevant – SE has lawyers (while I don't) and have presumably consulted them and made an informed policy about how to handle this. If they're not worried, then I'm not worried.

(I would delete this answer normally since now it doesn't address the question, but I'll leave it for those who can't see deleted posts and their comments.)

We expose the company that runs the SE network to legal liability internationally if we knowingly leave open a question about pirated content. It is not actually known if doing this *is* illegal of us, but it is not worth out time or the company's money to hash this out with a day (months) in court in potentially many jurisdictions.

If a question is about a pirated game, we must close it or risk financially ruining all of SE. Piracy-related questions, with any smidge of piratical activity in the question, are off topic for good reason. We have zero wiggle room to hash out here.

Unless we want to bring in SE's legal council, of course. I don't think that's a good idea though.