Plenty of people ignore The Law and have zero repercussions. This IS a piracy board after all

But I’ve also been in situations where we needed to demand proof of a valid license from contractors. That usually is because the company was very strict about dotting every i and so forth (either government work or we wanted governments as clients) or as a “random security assessment” that was really an excuse to stiff someone on the bill because they pissed us off.

At the end of the day, any form of piracy is a risk. You can theoretically be the one person who gets made an example of because you pirated a sniper elite game or something. You probably won’t. But said risk factor goes up exponentially when you are a business (and contractors are businesses).

As for pushing people toward competitors: What competitors? In the video editing space there are arguments that tools like Resolve and the like are competitive with Premier. In terms of 2d art and touch ups? Photoshop has no competition, period. And once you look at the entire Adobe suite… yeah. That is why almost every single youtuber’s “I tried out something that wasnt’ Adobe for a month” almost invariably boils down to “And I went back to Adobe”. All of which also ignores the ease of finding staff who don’t need to learn a whole new toolset.

If OP JUST pirates the Adobe stuff? I know a lot of artists who would still say “Serves them right” because they “play fair” and license everything and, quite honestly, are “okay” with the annual fees because there are new features on the regular. But if OP also steals assets as they said they would: All sympathy goes out the window instantly.