189: A Nation of Pirates

[jas11262009]

ReverseEngineered
You say that piracy may or may not have increased yet the proof is in the pudding. As soon as services such as, but not limited to, limewire became widely used, piracy has skyrocketed. Take a look at the media and you'll see this. My cave has cable so I've seen most of the stories involving the loss of millions. You say that inflation will be the cause of video games rising to the 200 dollar mark but I call BS. Sure, rising costs will generate higher pricing but nothing compared to my figures without piracy bumping it along. No poor person can afford gaming? Clearly you gain your knowledge from a fictional novel. I lost my ability to work about 7 years ago due to a severe accident. I bring in a grand total of 800 dollars a month. Yet after bills and other expenses I am able to own a PC and Xbox with a decent library due to smart spending and saving. Perhaps you spoke of the poor who stupidly live beyond their means but I assure you that I am about as poor as a person can get in my economy without being homeless.

Copy protections not being more annoying? Am I the only one who thinks that not being able to sell a game I dislike as annoying? I don't know about you but back in the day I loved that I could go into my local video game store and sell my games then and there. Now, as soon as I buy a game I'm stuck with it. How exactly is this not MORE annoying? Christ, it's like I'm being bombarded with illogical logic. Piracy has created more annoyances than ever before.

Perhaps before saying someones logic is flawed, maybe you should have some experience under your belt with PROPER facts. I mean, you have supposed "facts" but they're illogical.

 

[theultimateend]

A Nation of Pirates

Piracy in the U.S. and Europe usually takes place behind closed doors. But in Brazil, it's wide out in the open for everyone to see. Pedro Franco examines the state of the gaming economy in his home country and how the situation got to be so dire.

Permalink

Ragnarok Online + Brazillians (known as BR's) is actually the combination that almost made me a fiery hateful racist.

However I stopped playing RO and have since been able to think about Brazil without wanting to waste it with napalm and nuclear warheads.

Just thought it was slightly relevant to the conversation.

 

[theultimateend]

Sorry, to say but if its to damn expensive for you, well, you shouldn't have it. I know this sounds elitist, and well, I guess it is, but I think I would enjoy very much private jet planes, but I can't afford one. Doesn't mean I should go and rob one.
Just because its easy to do it (pirate games), doesn't mean it isn't any less of a crime.
Again, I do pirate games, and will continue to do so. But I do it acknowledging its consequences and without shallow excuses.

Yeah that's a good policy. That's why millions of people starve, go without shelter, or clothing.

I imagine I'm nitpicking. But frankly I think most game companies should cease to exist, nobody would be the lesser. Since the people at the companies that actually made anything of substance could start respectable companies. (Since World of Goo was made by two guys in a coffee shop I'm sticking by that comment)

 

[Unicamper]

theultimateend: I'm talking about entertainment here, not basic survival. Video games are a luxury... independent of pricing. If you've gotta steal to live (as a last resort), I'm not against it, even though, it is a felony. A justifiable felony. Stealing from game developers is not a "I've gotta to have this to live" kinda of thing.

dandan2: the 45% I was talking about are over the total Price. In other words: if it costs $ 100, than 45$ of that is taxes. The rest is the price the shop paid for the product + importation (freight) + sales margin.

 

[darthzew]

I have broken the statistic. I play games in Brazil and I haven never once pirated. I'm very proud of that because it's so damn cheap and easy to do it.

 

[Cubilone]

That sounds like Greece. The difference is that bootleg DVDs and music CDs are commonly sold on the street by african/pakistani immigrants. Gaming piracy here is not as widespread as it is in Brazil but it certainly is closer to the poorer eastern european countries than it is to countries to the West.

 

[massuh]

Well guys I live in Argentina is a country below Brazil, and I wanted you to know that in all of south america almost every game sold is pirate copy.
Here in argentina even oficial stores i mean actually a local with tribute paying and taxes and all sells ilegal copys and nobody does anything about it.
It it seems that is legal in our country to sell pirated games, i mean the police don't care and when one dollar is equal to three pesos ( our currency ) the difference to pay to an original game is extraordinary an original game would cost me for example 160 USD that would be about 480 pesos and the pirated copy's cost 10 pesos each one... the difference in huge and with all those patches on line to play on line with a non original copy its really hard seeing anybody buying an original game.
I haven't met one person that buys original games... damn I don't even buy the copy's from the stores no more I just download the games...
I think than when the police is always busy catching burglars and people are worried about buying food they just don't care about buying a illegal copy of a game... and honestly neither do I.

PD: damn I even remember when I was little and needed money selling games to friends at school

 

[Vert]

insanelich: I`ll start on my reply as soon as I reply to some other commentaries.

Julians: there is always a valid discussion regarding people who pirate and who wouldn't buy the game in any case. This can be particularly true in a country like Brazil, though it's contestable what percentage of people in more developed countries would fall into that category. Remember, the relevant analyses in this case is to think of people who would buy the game if piracy didn't exist, and that's something that ends up generating a massive debate on how to make the comparison.
Oh, and of course, it can be the case that lower prices = larger market = more profits; but, and I have to insist on this point, piracy makes the market smaller which can make lower prices impossible.

jas11262009: I think you're oversimplifying things too much, but I can understand your anger. I agree with you that piracy has negative effects that I think far to many pirates fail to acknowledge, some of which I point out in my article, and will sometimes "hide behind justifications", but it isn't quite so "good vs evil" as your making it out. Unless, of course, you're against piracy/stealing on principle, in which case there's nothing to discuss, really.

tk1989: having laws against piracy, but not having them enforced seems pretty universal in all countries where piracy 'rules'. This can easily be inserted into a greater context of the justice systems prevalent there. Oh, and if things were that bad in tourist areas, where most governments want to "show a good face", then most likely its worst elsewhere.

kubinschu: sounds like your pretty nostalgic. Nothing wrong with that. But I don't think most people would agree with you.

 

[Vert]

ReverseEngineered: you're correct that there are quite a few parallels between selling drugs and pirated software. But in the case of pirated goods, there is an attempt to make things seem more, well, enjoyable. They try to minimize the seediness of it all, but it remains, for the most part.

retro himself: that people will admonish you for buying a legal game shows just how strong the sentiment that piracy is OK, right or even just the only way of acquiring a game can become. And that makes things even harder to stop.

dandan2: as Unicamper points out, the 45% refers to the total composition of the price, not the tax rate. And why are people insisting that I'm analysing the situation on a moralistic manner and, worst, that I believe that simply "teaching people it's wrong" would make any difference? The article doesn't do this and I've said before in the forum that this isn't the case...

theultimateend: sorry, are you a troll of some sort? I couldn't make heads or tails of your post.

darthzew: I can honestly say you really are an exception here, I've never met another gamer who hasn't bought at least one pirated piece of merchandise.

 

[trakinas]

Ragnarok Online + Brazillians (known as BR's) is actually the combination that almost made me a fiery hateful racist.

However I stopped playing RO and have since been able to think about Brazil without wanting to waste it with napalm and nuclear warheads.

Just thought it was slightly relevant to the conversation.

dont worry mate! I know what you mean. me and a lot of other people do really want to nuke these guys too, specially because they make things really hard for us - brazilians who does not go fu**ing around on servers.

cheers!

 

[Ixus Illwrath]

How ignorant of everybody. Game publishers don't want to deal with places and Brazil and most every other poor country in the world TO sell them legit products.

Know why? BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE S$%T FOR MONEY!

I spent 2 years in Iraq, everything was bought there from 2 sources (for electronics) Black market bazaars on nearly every military post in the country, completely supported by all the soldiers who inhabit them, because they, also, are pretty poor people.

Iraq itself never had much opportunity in the last 20 years to buy legit products because it's government's money was squandered. They've been living off cheap Turkish knock-offs of everything since the 80s.

Brazil isn't exactly a financial powerhouse, either.

Quit complaining about ethics when you obviously haven't been to many places in the world and let articles like this be written by more well-informed people who aren't afraid the anti-piracy lobby will prevent them from writing anymore.

GROW BALLS.

 

[Socken]

earning a profit from pirated games? eurghhh lazy free loading trash. what if you steal a pirated game from these guys? 'HOW DARE YOU STEAL I'LL CALL THE POLICE ON YOU!'

More like "You stole from me?" -budda budda budda-
If you know what I mean.

A Nation of Pirates

Piracy in the U.S. and Europe usually takes place behind closed doors. But in Brazil, it's wide out in the open for everyone to see. Pedro Franco examines the state of the gaming economy in his home country and how the situation got to be so dire.

Permalink

Ragnarok Online + Brazillians (known as BR's) is actually the combination that almost made me a fiery hateful racist.

However I stopped playing RO and have since been able to think about Brazil without wanting to waste it with napalm and nuclear warheads.

Just thought it was slightly relevant to the conversation.

Not just RO, believe me. I used to play Tibia and I'm not lying if I say 99% of Brazillians I've met in my 5 years of playing either ran up and killed me, spamming me with hysterical laughter afterwards, or started obnoxiously begging for free items.

EDIT: Just noticed this post sounds kinda anti-Brazillian. But rest assured that I have met my share of decent people from there, too.

 

[dcsobral]

I disagree with the premise that piracy eliminated the legal market. What happened as a matter of fact is that Sony never entered the Brazilian market and Nintendo ceased to be the main dog (for a while). I'm not even sure if NES was actually distributed by Nintendo. When the Atari 2600 generation came to Brazil, they came as _licensed_ products, an artifact of Brazilian law where toys are concerned. That's not how Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft -- the big dogs nowadays -- work.

 

[dcsobral]

Brazil seems a separate case, mainly because they pirate due to lack of income.

Not true. Sure, there are many people who pirate because of lack of income, but my gamer co-workers paid over US$500~US$1000 for each console (Wii, PS3 and 360), own big LCD or Plasma screens, have, coincidentally, and all recently purchased their own apartments -- for over US$50,000.00. I could go on on other purchases they did make, but let it be. They OPT not to buy games.

And legit console game prices are certainly the culprit. The US$125~US$150 price tag is insane. Now, maybe people think of Rock Band, and think of the standard US$60 price tag on console games these days -- in the US -- and think that's not so bad. But, just to make it clear: there is no used market for games and there is sale bin for games. The game might be sold on a magazine for a lower price (it pays less taxes if sold that way), but, otherwise, that's the MINIMUM price for ALL console games if you want to stay legit.

You can't love games and afford those prices at the same time. So my friends are perfectly willing to pay for absurdly overpriced game consoles, but just won't buy legit games.

Me? I'm a PC gamer. PC games can be bought for US$40~US$50 dollars. They are "software", not "toys", so the taxes are quite different for them. Which is tragically funny for multi-plataform titles.

 

[okkervil]

Very good account! And as a Brazilian, I abhor the moralist tone of rest of the text. You see, while certainly in a country where the people is not overtaxed, it makes sense to condemn piracy and all the harm it causes game publishers. Why should they pay for the problems of foreign countries? I don't think they should be the ones sustaining the burden of a corrupt foreign government. Neither should Brazilian gamers have to pay around 50-100 USD PLUS around 25%(yes, that much, still disconsidering the fact our currency is crap compared to USD) taxes for being able to play the latest title.

The pricing is completely out of context. No average young brazilian can pay that much.

I think there are two issues here that should be of concern: The game publishers should adjust the prices of their games to conform to the Brazilian economy, and the taxing here should be lowered.

If neither is done, it is expected that regular people, not regular criminals, resort to piracy if thats the only alternative.

Don't expect people to stop playing on moral grounds: That behavior is expected of idiotic Cristian faith heads living in their carefully constructed fake world of miracles and pseudo-righteousness, not to be expected of real people in the real Darwinian world of restricted resources and fierce competition - thats Brazil.

So what to do as a gamer?

IMAO, I think piracy is the most appropriate act of civil disobedience in the Brazilian gaming scenario. I would not advocate for people to buy games in the black market, but to download them in p2p networks like bittorrent. That way, drug dealers and criminals aren't financed (directly at least).

Further, it is still possible to download some games from Steam for its real price -- the Brazilian Government still ignores downloadable content. So there still is a way to reward the games you really like, and get all the advantages of buying the original games such as playing online multiplayer games, score ranking and so on.

For the low quality titles, they deserve to be pirated anyways. How's that for a righteous attitude?!

Cheers

I would disagree with you and I think your just trying to justify theft. I work in retail shop in Canada selling computers and we get a lot of tourist from Brazil. Obviously these are not the people making $12000 a year. They buy computers and other technology up like crazy. During the summer I think 1/4 of all computers I sell are to these customers.

Let me tell you every time I try to sell them software like Microsoft Office for example I always get the same reply 'oh we can get that much cheaper back home, just the computer please.' Software isn't overprice and overtaxed here and these people are not poor and can obviously afford it. It's just piracy has become so prevalent its just the way things are done.

 

[trakinas]

Let me tell you every time I try to sell them software like Microsoft Office for example I always get the same reply 'oh we can get that much cheaper back home, just the computer please.' Software isn't overprice and overtaxed here and these people are not poor and can obviously afford it. It's just piracy has become so prevalent its just the way things are done.

and that is the awful true, unfortunately.

as I said on a previous post in this topic, people laugh at me when i say Im thinking about buying a NDS game...

cheers!