I'm against pirated version but then I'm not an avid games player. Sure I got a few ori version of COD4, TF2 and crysis and each of them is not cheap. I don;t think it is remotely possible to get rid of pirated games unless they start revising their price according to the local standard of living, same as what McD or KFC did. In US, McD costs us US$8 and in Malaysia its RM8 (except in KLIA or Genting), not US$8 X Exchange Rate. We malaysian has to earn 4 times just to be equal to the same guy in US. I worked hard and I earned a lot and I can afford to pay for the games if I'm in the working class players but what about the majority of the players, made up of students in high and higher education?

At the end of the day, prices will be the decision factor and another 20% is self conscious. And the prices are again based on demand. Do I support pirated? Definitely no but pirated or otherwise file sharing (p2p) technology has been used by makers of software (games or otherwise) to gauge the demand of pre-releases product. So if more and more people download P2P or warez version, for instance, a total of 4000 users downloaded crippled version of Assassin Creed within 24 hours, then the maker knows that they can sell at higher price when they officially release it.

Looks like you pirated users are the ones making us original users pay more, so just stop using pirated stuff and simply don;t buy them if you think the price is too high. If you can't affford a car, you don't go around stealing them, you take a cab or public transport. In this case, go to cyber cafe games centers and play all you want. And if you can afford a gfx card worth 1K just to play games, then pay for the games cause the card is useless if you don't have the games.

Technology wise, makers of games should be innovative enough in marketing and designing their games to beat the piracy issues. I mean COD4 is selling for RM25 for 100 hours of multiplayer time or something llike that la will have tons of people lining up. Or maybe I setup a new business renting my ori dvd games for RM3 for a week . Remember the olden days of renting a laser disc for RM5-8 a week just to watch Dolby version of Terminator or Star Wars before the evolution of CD/DVD beat the craps out of laser disc (LD) quality?



This post has been edited by rainbow6: Mar 6 2008, 07:47 AM