I’m writing an article that involves piracy right now. And boy, do gaming companies not like piracy.

After all, games are the magic dust that powers this billion dollar gaming machine; it’s not that hardware that makes money, but the software and accesories. So naturally, it’s in the best interests of developers to protect that investment. Which brings me back to my original point…

Gaming companies do not like piracy. And by extension, they sure as hell don’t like talking about it either.

Things get fuzzy when you try to account for homebrew development. For the uninitiated, it’s generally the sort of console development that relies on hacks and exploits to get unsigned or third-party code on to a console. Most gaming companies are wary to issue any sort of official stance on this activity — welcoming homebrew is out of the question, and condemning it is an unspoken rule of the industry. The reasoning behind this is that most companies seem to equate homebrew with piracy. And if you haven’t gotten it already, the gaming industry certainly isn’t a fan of those who pirate their magic smoke.

The gaming industry’s attitude toward piracy ultimately puts those who attempt to hack and exploit and reverse engineer a console or portable in an awkward situation. Exploits aren’t always intended to encourage piracy or the illegal copying of games, but they can certainly be used to do so. In some cases, like the custom firmware for the PSP, it’s hard not to inadvertently support piracy when the mechanism for loading custom software happens to be the same mechanism for loading illegal games.

To be clear, I’m not looking for some grand sanction on homebrew activities. The point of all this is, it seems like it’s become increasingly hard for companies to take the idea of homebrew seriously when it is so deeply entangled with pirate culture. People are doing some amazing things with consoles — XBMC for the original Xbox — comes to mind; and yet, I get the impression some companies can’t be bothered to separate the pirates from the programmers.