Raid Crushes Multi-Million Dollar Taiwanese Piracy Ring

[Tom Goldman]

Raid Crushes Multi-Million Dollar Taiwanese Piracy Ring

One of the largest videogame piracy raids in history has taken millions of dollars of illegal goods off the streets.

Videogame piracy is a massive issue in Asia, but the black market in Taiwan recently took a huge hit. Late last month, Taiwanese police raided a warehouse filled with thousands of pirated videogames worth millions of dollars in one of the region's biggest busts ever.

Officers working with Taiwan's Intellectual Property Rights Police Team found 140,000 copies of PlayStation 2, Wii, and Xbox games in the raid. The pirated goods were worth approximately $8.4 million on the street, which is reportedly the largest blow to videogame piracy in Taiwan's history. The raid was the result of a 7 month investigation that began thanks to tips from game developers.

Of the raid, an IPRPT spokesman said: "Nearly all of the pirated disc inventory in Taiwan was busted in that operation. There must be a shortage on the market now." It's not confirmed whether or not this was wishful thinking on his part, but $8 million worth of pirated games is certainly a lot.

Four suspects were also arrested as part of the raid, whom had been traveling between Taiwanese capital city Taipei and Chinese mainland city Guangzhou where the pirates' factory was located. Part of the ring's attempt to conceal its operations included some members pretending to be customers on a website. When the suspects would receive goods, these fake orders made things look more legitimate.

Ultimately, the IPRPT says that the factories in China are the real problem, and piracy won't stop until they can be taken out. Considering how big piracy is in China, I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon.

Source: Focus Taiwan [http://focustaiwan.tw/ShowNews/WebNews_Detail.aspx?ID=201010210028&Type=aSOC]

Permalink

 

[twaddle]

That is amazing. So were all the titles in Chinese or some other asian languages, or was this a score for game companies on the international scale? I kinda wonder why they can't strike down the factories. I know there is a lot of legal mumbo jumbo for the reasons, but i would still like to what's going on. Also i can't help but wonder when there is going to be a strike at the digital format piracy industry.
.....did i just get first post?

 

[Pingieking]

Looks like someone had a falling out with the cops. Missed a payment, perhaps?

 

[Therumancer]

That is amazing. So were all the titles in Chinese or some other asian languages, or was this a score for game companies on the international scale?

I'm wondering the same thing, but it sounds like it was for local distribution.

I personally suspect that the "street sales" there aren't anything compared to the sale of games over services like Ebay.

I'm interested in seeing if there will be any kind of follow up reporting on this article. What is going to be done with the seized "goods"? How do the trials for those who werre arrested go? If convicted (I'm not sure how the system there works) what kind of sentences
do they pull down?

I mean the bust is interesting and all, but a lot depends on whether it can be made to stick, and what kind of deterrant the resolution is going to provide.

With no offense to Taiwan, if these guys walk in and out of the courtroom with little more than a slap on the wrist, or that seized material gets sent to some warehouse where it disappears 2 weeks later so some other criminals (or corrupt cops themselves) simply put it right back out for sale... well, that says a lot too. Things like that happen in the US from time to time, especially if law enforcement is actually being half hearted about their efforts to begin with (which may or may not be the case here, was this done by the police totally on their own, or was this in part pushed by politicians?).

I'll be very interested to see if anything more is said on the subject, and how the story ends.

 

[Something Amyss]

How do they track the rest of the stock? I mean, is it just PR to say they got most of it?

 

[thethain]

Until a country develops enough IP (in the form of movies, or video games, music barely counts as most musicians make much more money from concerts vs sales) to make piracy hurt its own industries, there just isn't enough public support to enforce piracy crackdowns. Hell there is hardly enough public support in the US.

No self respecting Police man, politician, or other federal agent is going to say "I am going to really crack down and spent a lot of taxpayer money to stop 10 year old kids from downloading a game instead of paying money to a multi-billion dollar company."

Investigations, enforcement, raids, all that costs money, and when the end result is "We made EAs stock rise $0.0001" as opposed to "We stopped 500 lbs of Cocaine from reaching the street" or "We caught the serial killer" then the money can be hard to justify.

 

[duchaked]

ohhh well I mean PlayStation 2, Wii, and Xbox games...that's last generation's consoles anyway so it's whatever xP

 

[Canid117]

So unless the Video games industry hires arsonists to destroy this factory piracy will march on? Oh well sucks for them.

 

[antipunt]

Ahaha. Piracy in Taiwan... Buying pirated material there (and China) was like going grocery shopping.

 

[The Rockerfly]

okay lets see

8.4 million
say $52 for a game (based on new game prices that's what the average is across all consoles]

8,400,000/52

= 161,539 rounded up from decimal places

That's quite a lot of games.

 

[mjc0961]

ohhh well I mean PlayStation 2, Wii, and Xbox games...that's last generation's consoles anyway so it's whatever xP

Wii is a current generation console. Also, PS2s are still doing quite well in many parts of the world.

I have no idea about the Xbox though.

 

[xyrafhoan]

It is virtually impossible to buy a legitimate game in China. Even though they cracked down hard on a single warehouse, there will always be more pirates filling in the gaps. Sadly, it's the Chinese way of life, and people from all financial backgrounds in China buy fake goods on a regular basis, especially when it comes to entertainment media. I wish that this crackdown really meant something, but China isn't really a respected international consumer for the game industry unless you're running an MMO.

 

[thiosk]

The merch may have been WORTH 8 million-- sold at pirate disk prices-- but it was surely far less pricey to produce.




Note to above poster: Taiwan is not exactly China.

 

[thiosk]

snip

This is common with all law enforcement. For example, lets say you are a marijuana grower. The state comes in and busts you. They then weigh your marijuana, including stem, leaf, dirt, flowerpots, and the water in the drip trays. "oh my god it was worth 30,000 dollars" is what the paper prints, but the actual usable product represents far less.

Remember: the bigger the bust, the bigger the bump.
Sergent Stadanko

 

[Jamash]

Holy crap. That is a hugeee bust. 8.4 million dollars....

What interests me though is, what sort of tips could video game developers have given the authorities that allowed them to build up an investigation and such? Maybe theft reports on shipments or something?

I'd imagine it would be tips like: "Our servers are tracking lots of achievements, progress and patches being downloaded for that game, but we haven't released that game in your country, so there's no legitimate way so many people could be playing it".

It also wouldn't surprise me if some naive and clueless gamers in Taiwan also contacted the developers and customer support for help with their games that haven't been released there.

 

[Sneaklemming]

This is a very different kind of piracy - the kind of people who get caught with 8mil in pirated games, store cocaine and other crap in the next room.

I hear you get a free 9mm handgun with every Wii Sports from these guys. Thats business.