Why is piracy widespread?

[freedquaker]

Nanaki said:

Onyxmeth said:

I don't usually mind when it's pirating in these conditions. Pirating is only hurting the publisher and developer if it's a lost sale. If the person's only options are pirating or not gaming, then they may as well pirate. They are neutral to loss of sales. It's people that are well enough off and use pirating as a means of not paying for games they would otherwise buy that is hurting the industry. Publishers need to find a less costly way to get games into the hands of those nations or just stop bitching about it. Charging a country that makes less money on average more for a game than a well developed nation is just asking for that population to think up their own way of getting the games.

I must agree. As any JRPG lover in Europe knows, many games aren´t published in here. So publishers themself don´t want any money. So why I shoul give them?

 

Next problem, as least for me, is quality of the game. And in this, I mean quality altogether. Not only technical aspect of the game, graphics and such, but even lenght of the game, replayability, and so on. If the game is alhough good, but very short and with no bonuses, I probably do not buy. In America, I would rent it, but here, in Czech Republic it´s not possible.

 

   Excellent two posts! I agree with both.

 @Onyxmeth

You are hinting to a very good point there. Piracy in developing countries dont hurt the developers much, at least in the short run. But also because of widespread piracy, those companies dont want to enter the market, which is a vicious circle. From people's perspective, they not only have to pay a lot more, they also dont have many other opportunities like bundled games, cheaper versions, game rentals, second hand market etc. Even if you'd like to buy a game, you often cant find it in a local store. And as you said, firms should produce some cheap versions of those games. I remember a few firms trying that, like marketing cheap-oem versions of sort of old games (like 1-2 years old) and selling them for $5-10 but because piracy had promised much newer games for free, they couldnt penetrate the market, which was too small to take big risks anyway.

@Nanaki

Ahoj there, nice to meet a Czech here :) Reminds me of a beautiful friend :)