Privateers hold a commission from a recognized, legitimate government to raid shipping and prosecute acts of war. If you're working with the rebels, I'm pretty sure you're just pirates.

Speaking only for myself, although I think this is a view that is probably also shared with the other players — As far as we’re concerned, the Rebels are more legitimate than the Empire, so in our minds we’re Privateers.

I’m sure the Empire would call us Pirates no matter what, and I think everyone in our group is probably okay with that.

Theoretically, the Alliance to Restore the Republic already is an actual government during this period. It has all the branches of government and holds several systems as sovereign territory, whether the Empire wants to believe that or not. The Rebels contracting privateers is exactly the same scenario as Privateers during the American Revolution. Britain didn't want to believe that America was its own country when it declared independence, so they'd probably call our privateers pirates instead, but the rest of the world would probably agree that they were, by definition, privateers. So in this case, the Empire might call them pirates, but those in the rest of the galaxy who are objective about it would recognize them as being priavteers. If you're saying that all Alliance privateers are actually pirates, you'd probably have to call the entire Rebel Alliance a bunch of pirates too, if you're sticking to your strict definition of the term. In which case, I believe we have just revealed you to be an Imperial Loyalist!

Plus there's this excellent, appropriate, and specific example to plead our case: Rebel Privateers

Full disclosure, we are not playing in the SW in my current game. However I am curious how this plays out in general.

So in trying to decide what direction to take my character in in the future I have been scouring the specialty trees when I came across entrepreneur. So if I'm reading things correctly you end up bringing in 500 creds per session + the chance to make quite a bit selling loot (or crafted items now that that is in the mix). Add in a dash of quartermaster if you are allowing mixed specialties and we're up to 700 per session.

Has this played out in anyone's game yet? Has it been a problem?

Credits for the group have been a little slim in our game but I don't know what the 'average' should be in a normal EotE game. What does your group usually rake in per session/adventure?

In my last campaign, I had a player who took the Entrepreneur specialty. It only ended up a problem when he used his resources to purchase some very expensive stealth suits - and kind of sneaked them past me - that ended an adventure early. In the future, I still wouldn't have a problem with an Entrepreneur but I would need to know about purchases being made ahead of time. And I would reserve the right to end the game session early so that I can adjust.

To the OP - 500 or 700 credits really isn't much. Players will be wanting to buy upgrades and ships that cost 100 times that much.

I don't know about average credits per session - I think in general it probably works out about 1000 or 2000 per character per session perhaps, near the start. From experience it often comes in a big lump near the end of the adventure.

The thing is, as a GM you control what the PCs can buy to a large extent, so I don't think the wealth of the PCs have is that big a deal, really.