I'm definitely excited for this, considering I couldn't fork out the thousand of dollars needed for using IDA. I can't really justify that on a small hobby project (reverse engineering games).
I guess unless you've got a CV which says "presented at Defcon and Blackhat, five times" or "currently work at {big infosec company}", even if you can afford it the answer will be "nope".
The end result for me was that I bought a Mac Mini and a copy of Hopper and Synalyze It. My entire reverse-engineering of the Polaroid film recorder driver (and the resulting Linux port) was done by reversing the driver DLL in Hopper and shimming the driver and ASPI calls with PyDbg.
I keep looking away for a month or so and finding a new version of Hopper with shiny new features to play with...
it's probably the one app I missed most switching to windows.
x64dbg eventually grew on me and I like it nearly as much.
Power user software, like Photoshop, IDA Pro, VMWare, etc. are a different story. They provide tremendous value to both companies and individuals and yet I have no doubt an enormous amount of their poweruser userbase simply have never paid for them. As a young adult or child with no practical way to get a license, this is pretty innocuous since frankly it's hard to argue any sale was lost. But there's plenty of cases where large companies and of course hobbyist users end up pirating the tools they use. I believe Windows XP shipped with some audio files that were produced with a pirated version of Sony Soundforge, for example. That's just silly, but.. it happened.
IDA Pro is an excellent piece of software. They provide a freeware version, which is a pretty nice thing to do. And while the licenses are expensive I have no doubt it is worth it to the companies that purchase it, many times over.
Sadly, I can't afford IDA (as I've discussed eerily recently in HN comments, actually) so I've been mostly avoiding it for now, but I do buy other software, including Windows licenses, Adobe Creative Suite, VMWare, etc. If they're useful enough for me to use, then as an adult with decent income, I pay for them.
I'd say, by learning to use IDA through a pirated version you create a possibility that one day you will use it for something more serious and you or your employers will pay for it.
One possible argument against that is that by learning how to use all IDA features through a pirated version, you erase the competitive advantage of people who can afford to pay right from the start and remove their incentive to pay.
To that I'd say you would be just levelling the playing field :)
Do keep in mind that many of these companies expect users to pirate their software. Indeed, piracy is ironically part of what has made Adobe such a big player - teenagers pirating software in highschool, and using it up until their first job, make it their go-to tool when they actually do enter a company. Often leaving the company with no choice but Photoshop!
A hobby project is for your enjoyment. Pay for your shit. Simple.
I can understand a 14-year-old teenager doing that after his parents refused to purchase the game.