I have to agree with you about Piracy Beaver. I remember the days (early 1998ish) when there were a lot of shit titles on the store shelves and gamers, generally, were getting ripped but by 1999 most titles were quality and the industry was maturing in the way they treated gamers. Unfortunately, this era brought about rampant piracy and small time developers certainly got cheated. Selling 140,000 copies would have saved a lot of smaller units but piracy just kept the sales too low.
Its almost ironic, I have always paid for my games but full grown adults I know bootleg all the time. I am a full time college student and work at a pizza parlor as well and the assistant manager there always asks me "hey can you burn me a copy of this and that game", etc, etc. Plus I think a lot of parents turned a blind eye to piracy in the late 1990's before the digital recession because that 50 bucks would have been out of their pockets so why did they care if lil' Billy downloaded some warez?
As far as Fallout going down the tubes, its a shame. The game sure was great, and we all dreamed of a MMORPG/FPS in the universe, which will alas never come to be. Its too bad some of the great titles never saw the full implementation of 3d technology. When I played KOTOR for the first time the other day, I couldn't help but get the sense of shallowness in it and wonder what it would be like in 3d if it was Fallout. Oh well :(.