[Hyunickel]

Video Game piracy was huge, and to some extent it still is, in the Middle East. Growing up, everyone used to pirate games. It was the norm and essentially everyone just accepted it. There were several reasons as to why that happened. Prime among them were limited availability in legitimate retail copies & completely absurd pricing for the titles available.

If you were lucky enough to find a retail copy of a game you wanted to buy, then its usually ridiculously overpriced. Sometimes triple the original price it's supposed to be sold at. That discouraged most people from picking up legitimate retail copies of games.

In recent years however, especially since the launch of the Playstation 3, piracy decreased dramatically. Shops around the region started selling games at their proper prices and that slowly pushed more people away from piracy. Add to that how essential Online play has become, and you've got a move that shifted the Video Game completely within the region.

Since I was born and raised in the tiny Middle Eastern country of Bahrain, I wanted to share my own experience with Video Game Piracy.So I put up a video talking about why Piracy was so prevalent in the region, how Piracy negatively affected us, and what happened since that led to a move away from Video Game Piracy.



What's your experience like with Piracy?

[Costin Moroianu]

Piracy helped create the IT industry in Romania, so I think it's been a good thing for my country.

[gregski]

Oooh, a piracy thread...so it has to be done:

[jjavier]

There are little you can't say in these forums, but piracy is a very delicate subject here.

I just gonna say, as a south american, my experience is very similar to @OP.

[dragonbird]

jjavier said:

There are little you can't say in these forums, but piracy is a very delicate subject here.

I just gonna say, as a south american, my experience is very similar to @OP. ›››

Delicate, yes, but not forbidden. We don't welcome anyone who has pirated The Witcher games, and we don't permit anything that promotes piracy, but discussions are fine.

I've lived through the same process as Hyunickel in one SE Asian country, and am currently living in another where that process hasn't really started yet, so piracy is rife. There aren't many stores selling legal copies of games, but those that DO exist do just fine, so I think that it's like many other countries - if the publishers are prepared to make the games available at reasonable prices, then people will go legal. Game publishers are just starting to recognise that, but distributers of other commonly-pirated products haven't, so we still probably have a long way to go before there's a culture shift.

[Pangaea]

Where would Microsoft be without piracy?

["The White Wolf"]

Depends, if you like an enjoy the game, pay the price for it, especially Witcher because they are very reasonably priced like i bought my copy from steam for 19.99 and i believe the price has gone down, and i think you can get the Witcher 2 for 29.99, but i do understand some peoples situations with being away from lots of civilisation or no shops that sell games, or a bad financial situation, but there is a fix to all of these, places like steam will allow you to download games for very good prices and very fast! Game piracy shouldn't be too big anymore because there is no excuse to do it.

[dragonbird]

"The White Wolf" said:

Depends, if you like an enjoy the game, pay the price for it, especially Witcher because they are very reasonably priced like i bought my copy from steam for 19.99 and i believe the price has gone down, and i think you can get the Witcher 2 for 29.99, but i do understand some peoples situations with being away from lots of civilisation or no shops that sell games, or a bad financial situation, but there is a fix to all of these, places like steam will allow you to download games for very good prices and very fast! Game piracy shouldn't be too big anymore because there is no excuse to do it. ›››

Actually, Steam is a pretty bad solution for a lot of people. I get regional discounts from publishers like Bethesda if I buy retail but don't get the same discount from Steam, which means that for new games, Steam is often 50% more expensive than legal retail. Of course, there is the huge plus of Steam sales and there're companies like GoG that have really good prices all of the time, but unfortunately "away from lots of civilisation" can also often mean "really slow download speeds" or "data caps" in many places, including a lot of developed countries.

So there's still a fair number of things that publishers need to take into consideration if they really want to stop piracy in places like this. Game publishers are still better than most content providers though, and deserve a lot of credit for that.

[Costin Moroianu]

Quote

places like steam will allow you to download games for very good prices and very fast! Game piracy shouldn't be too big anymore because there is no excuse to do it.

Steam has the same prices world wide as they do in America and as they do in Europe, including poor countries.

So no steam does not solve everything. It does help with shit retailers, but not everyone has access to it and it is NOT available worldwide and in many countries where it is internet speeds are quite low.

You think 30 bucks for a game is great price right? What about a country where people earn just 200-300 dollars? Yeah not so much there.

[gregski]

"The White Wolf" said:

places like steam will allow you to download games for very good prices and very fast! ›››

Wait, what? Good prices? 50-60 USD for a new AAA PC game is a good price for you? Because at retail it costs me 40 $.

Also, what Costin said.

For me Steam is good for Steam sales and that's it.

[Chromie92]

gregski said:

Wait, what? Good prices? 50-60 USD for a new AAA PC game is a good price for you? Because at retail it costs me 40 $.

Also, what Costin said.

For me Steam is good for Steam sales and that's it. ›››

Well publishers pick their price I don't see how that's their fault.

[Costin Moroianu]

Of course it's not Valve picking the prices but steam is not the miracle that people proclaim it to be.

[Hyunickel]

I think Steam is pretty good, though as Costin said, their regular pricing tends to be higher than retail. What Steam does best though is offering a solid service with great sales.

[Demut]

dragonbird said:

We don't welcome anyone who has pirated The Witcher games, [...]

Speak for yourself.

[.Volsung.]

Hyunickel said:

What Steam does best though is offering a solid service with great sales. ›››

Except when their servers do not respond for whatever reason and you can't log in to play or buy games on a limited time sale. Hasn't happened to me often, but it HAS.

Considering Steam adds DRM to some games that don't have it in the first place (like most or all their indies) and adds an extra layer of DRM to others (like GfWL + Steam, ?!?) I'd say it is only good for crazy seasonal sales. I like it for that reason. Can't really complain about the service... too much. A couple of times I lost my connection recently I was left without playing Steam games, it was annoying.

[Demut]

My biggest gripe with Steam is definitely the DRM. I want to own the games I buy and not be at the mercy of some megacorportaion that could take them away from me whenever they want. Other than that (and some minor issues) it is a fantastic product with lots of benefits so I can see how certain people might be lured in by that. Kinda like Facebook is a pretty neat thing except for their horrific privacy policies. That’s why I’m hoping that we’ll get an OpenSource alternative to Steam like we did for Facebook.

@dragonbird: Didn’t like that one, eh ;D ?

[*Tommy*]

Demut said:

Speak for yourself. ›››

If they pirate without buying the game then NO...not welcome .
If they pirate the game and come here asking for help then NO...not welcome .
Why would or should they be welcomed given the above circumstances ?

[dragonbird]

Hyunickel said:

I think Steam is pretty good, though as Costin said, their regular pricing tends to be higher than retail. What Steam does best though is offering a solid service with great sales. ›››

Personally, I think that Steam do a lot to ensure that game software doesn't suffer from the regional inequalities that a lot of other software does. I've lost count of the amount of software that I've simply refused to buy because the developer priced it HIGHER in whatever country I was living in than in their home country. The only valid reasons for doing this are local taxes and, if the local market is small, shipping costs.

But trying to justify a higher price because they need to pay a local distributor is a no-no - that should come out of their own profits. And they should definitely not try to justify it with crappy reasons like "local support" when the customer lives in Singapore and the distributor is in Hong Kong, Australia, China, whatever. It's also unacceptable when download options, patches, updates are only made available in some territories, and those in others are forced to buy higher-priced alternatives with no support at all.

I doubt if Valve is the only reason why this type of thing doesn't happen so much with games, but I think they're a big part of it, and that they've helped ensure that games publishers treat all regions equally. As I mentioned earlier, I don't think this is enough (I think that poorer regions should be given preferential pricing), but it's better than nothing.

Demut said:

Speak for yourself. ›››

As far as most of this conversation is concerned, I *am* speaking for myself. Speaking for myself, I disapprove of DRM that restricts consumer property rights, of the criminalisation of certain types of piracy (it should be a matter for civil law), of Big Content trying to damage human rights so that they can further their own profits, of copyright and patent trolls.

But speaking both for myself and as a moderator of this forum, someone who hasn't paid for a product should NOT expect to be made welcome in forums run by the developer of that product. And someone who pirates DRM-free games doesn't deserve sympathy and understanding.

Demut said:

@dragonbird: Didn’t like that one, eh ;D ? ›››

Since I've absolutely no idea what point you're trying to make, I've no idea whether I like it or not.

[Demut]

dragonbird said:

And someone who pirates DRM-free games doesn't deserve sympathy and understanding.

Well, that depends on what you mean by that. They certainly don’t deserve commendation. But neither do they deserve condemnation of this kind.

dragonbird said:

As far as most of this conversation is concerned, I *am* speaking for myself.

You wrote “we”. So ... yeah. That is that.

*Tommy* said:

Why would or should they be welcomed given the above circumstances ?

Why wouldn’t they? This is a place to talk about the game and apparently they want to do so. Anything else doesn’t really interest me. Sure, I would prefer them supporting CDPR by buying the game since it’s one of only a handful of AAA titles which really deserve the money but I’m not gonna vilify and ostracize them if they didn’t.
Do you have to like them? Do you have to praise them for what they did? No and no. However, if you don’t talk to them you don’t have much of a chance to change their minds. I believe that dialog is the only course of action that has a real shot at that.

So pardon me if I think that explaining to them why they should buy “The Witcher 2” is more likely to convince them than to treat them like some kind of atrocious criminal who should be shunned and never ever be spoken to ;>

[Costin Moroianu]

Quote

So pardon me if I think that explaining to them why they should buy “The Witcher 2” is more likely to convince them than to treat them like some kind of atrocious criminal who should be shunned and never ever be spoken to ;>

Absolutely. I've said this time and time again. Branding pirates as criminals and then treating them like trash will NEVER change anyone's opinion on the subject.

Yes there will be people who never change their minds, but there are those who will if you treat them well.