"Yaaaar, mateys! I be downloadin ye games and stealin' ye profit! Yohoho an' a torrent o' rum!"

That's what I assume game publishers think pirates actually sound like. In reality, software pirates don't have cool frilly shirts, eye patches, or shoulder parrots … or if they do it's totally unrelated to their piracy. They are just regular guys, like you and me, who have found a cheap, easy, and unfortunately illegal way to obtain video games.

A few months back Kotaku posted an article that said, "while the first motivation for piracy will always be cost, many pirates are motivated by the simple ease of obtaining pirated games." Similarly, the Extra Creditz crew at The Escapist said the biggest problem with piracy is that pirates offer better service than actual game companies. We have been fighting the good fight against piracy for some time now, but unfortunately the pirates always win. So, instead of trying to find new ways to prevent them from making modifications to our consoles, why not just give pirates everything they want except for free games?

These are the top ten things that pirates want that game companies aren't giving us. Maybe if they did, we would see piracy drop a peg or two.

Have you tried to play a fighting game on an Xbox d-pad? It doesn't work! So while we are busting our wallets getting special edition Madcatz fight sticks, Johnny Hack-N-Pirate next door is just connecting his PS3 controller to his Xbox … or his PS2 controller … or his Super Nintendo controller! Yeah, I get that companies are trying to make a buck out of making their controllers exclusive, but if consoles simply recognized any Bluetooth or USB controller the way a PC does, hackers would spend far less time trying to compromise console security just so they can throw a hadouken.

As recently as last generation I was able to bring my memory card over to my friend's house and play any game I wanted with my own data. I had all the guns in every FPS, all the fighters in every fighting game, and all the athletes in every sports game. Now save data has become console specific, and I have to unlock everything all over again each time I take my disk somewhere else. Meanwhile, pirates simply open up their save data and make it universal by changing around a few bits of hexadecimal code. Even better, they can simply hack their consoles to accept any save data file. Some game companies are getting wise to this and making their data universal again, but far too few in my opinion.

It's time for a story. Like it or not, hardcore fighting game players came to love Super Smash Bros. Melee. Then Super Smash Bros. Brawl came out, and its creator, Masahrio Sakurai, openly admitted that the game was supposed to be nothing more than an extremely unbalanced casual party game. As a result, there are now five different modifications to SSBB that make the game more balanced and tournament playable. However, you can't get these mods unless you also modify your Wii, which then opens up the gates to piracy. However, if Nintendo just supported these mods, not only would fewer Wii's be hacked, but they would make more money on the deal! The PC is no stranger to mod support, but consoles have been locked down tighter than Fort Knox. It's time for that to change.

Here's another story. Sony didn't have anywhere near as many problems with compromised console security when they let people run Linux on their box. In fact, the gigantic lawsuit Sony is currently involved in with hacker Geohot actually came about because Geohot and other hackers were looking for a way to put Linux back on the box! Not only that, but Sony blatantly lied to us when they said ditching Linux support would keep hardware and software costs down. Hackers put this open source OS on their PS3 for free! Even Wiis can run certain versions of Mac OS. It appears as if hackers really like to put computer OSes on their consoles as one of the first things they do when hacking them. So just give it to them, and then maybe they won't go snooping into the code that runs your games.

Can your DS act as a GPS? Can your Wii play internet radio? Can your PS3 hook up to other PS3s and use their processing power as a missile guidance system? (No really, the air force has done this, look it up.) Well, then you don't have a hacked console. Independent coders have been making new software for the PC since Q-BASIC, but without a hacked device open source software just doesn't run on a console. It's a shame, because these homebrew programs just make the console better. One homebrew program for the Wii allows you to run a system restore just in case your data gets screwed up somehow. If you wanted to do this legitimately, you would have to pay shipping to send your console to Nintendo, and then you would probably lose your data to boot!