First Blog: Piracy

Piracy in gaming is a crime that is abused and fought against. Many G1s here are against piracy till the very end(got that from the comments of Kazekawa's submission and Kaekawa has good views). However, sometimes I believe piracy is the right thing to do. Don't get me wrong I am against piracy and although I have done it I am trying to stop since i believe it will bring me bad karma when I make games.

If anyone remembers a few weeks ago a G1s letter was the subject of SideSrollers and it was about piracy. He asked a question "If games were sold for 200$ and you couldn't afford it and had to buy pirated copies, would you quit gaming? My answer here is I would buy pirated copies. Because isn't asking us to pay 200$ for something sold for 50$ a crime?

I live in Turkey and piracy is huge and gaming is fucking expensive. Consoles and games are double the price they should be. One store I went into has 60 GB, 80 GB 30 GB and 20 GB PS3s. And i ask how much they are, all for 1000YTL and that's no less than 780 US$. And a copy of MGS4 is 180 YTL and that's 140 US$. That is a scam. I ask them why its so expensive and their answer is the tax laws.

They say that government taxes 100% on these imports. Government is doing something so wrong. Do they think that they are making money for the country out of this? HELL NO. In countries like Turkey and Argentina retailers make most of the jobs and there are just 2 dozen game shops in a whole 5mil population city. They should make money but they don't because their products are more expensive than the rent they pay to have their shop. So they copy those games and sell those copies for 9 US$ making a profit of more than 6 US$ for each sale. But there is a problem they can only pirate PS2, PSP, DS, PC games and no one knows what a 360 is in these ares. Laws also prevent the sales for next gen consoles. This ultimately makes pirating do good for some people.

Pirating is definitely something wrong. Paying 50$ for a game is something very good. It is better to spend 500$ a year on games than spend 1000$ on smoking like more teenagers here do, not to forget they spend money on drugs too. Governments need to realize that gaming could be an answer to those problems. After all it is teenagers to play the most games here and go for the free or cheap games(pirated ones). PC gaming will soon be extinct because of piracy. And you cannot copy Blu-ray games. Unless gaming isn't cheaper piracy will continue.

I could say a lot more about piracy but i guess my first blog is already long enough. So remember cheap games are good games.