It's not just the education. It's our economy as well. Games in US cost about $60 bucks. They probably earn 4-5000 USD a month on average (rough estimation). We earn the same amount in MYR, approximately only 1000+ USD yet the games we buy cost RM100 and above.

I don't support piracy but let's be rational here, most people who want to play games can't afford it, thus leading them to buy pirated software.

The mindset towards piracy here will not change until our economy improves. Even then, it will still be hard to push for all software to be piracy-free.

i'll say this in malay.

"kalau bapak pun tak diajar, masa kan anak nak ikut?"

remember, the young ones will always look up to us the elders for example. if the current elders are resorting to piracy, then no point teaching the kids rite?

teach everyone, anyone. regardless age and level of education.

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Added on September 5, 2008, 5:20 pmi agree. but with their 5000USD, you gotta remember, the cost is still about the same for them. they still pay a lot for fuels, food, etc. because everything is adjusted to their currency.

earning 4000 and paying 60 for a game is like us earning RM4000 and paying RM60 for original DVD. but how many of us have actually bought an original movie for RM60 and not resort to piracy?

we can't complain about the game's cost because of the exchange rate. this is what we need to teach ppl about too.

yes in U.S USD60 is very cheap but here thanks to the exchange rate it became expensive.

again to argue about exchange rates is pointless in my book. coz there's no way you can lower a game's price to RM60 to complement it's US counterparts.

so it's back to education and knowledge.

This post has been edited by technophile: Sep 5 2008, 05:20 PM

u know...if genuine audio cd also rm40.00 , people still supporting piracy..even rm21.00 also they search for pirated.......for me there is no such thing as RM3k salary compare to US what so ever and yet ori games for 360 & PS3 at RM100++...Even lets say 10K salary also still complaint games too expensive...yet blaming goverment...gizzz..come on guys..

no matter what our salary , we can well plan our budget each month to buy a genuine games...its all in our own mind...not because other people , goverment or political issues..

If doing it the legal way, customs impose 20% custom duties on all disc based medias. In worse scenario, additional 10% sales tax.

And gaming has nothing to do with the economy. Sure you may put up the argument how much an average US worker earn against those here. But remember, development costs are all overhead costs based on their standard as well. If games are locally made (from development to marketing) then your presumptions hold true.

but if you declare it as "Softwares" and you are a company dealing with softwares. you will get exempted from paying any duties. as far as i know there's no tax and duties for softwares and electronic components.

it's a matter of how you do it. if not how do you explain we get games for cheap now? the distributors get it for cheap, didn't got taxed for it, just marked up a bit and pass it to us.

i don't see what's the big deal. xbox360 is launched in some countries with very high piracy rate too.

if they calculated MY is not a feasible market, then it is not feasible. or they hoping enthusiasts will import from SGP.

What about importing games ourselves? Not everyone has accessed to those reasonably priced games throughout the nation, nor every seller has the game that we want.

Seriously... do american buy all the games? nope... even I know some they only have few games less then 5.... they play it over and over again.... BTW if you work hard and I pay u RM5 for your afford? will you accept? no?...

We can't change everybody into ori straight away.. just need time slowly.. for those 100% buying pirated kindly please contribute a bit maybe 1 or 2 games a year?..



This post has been edited by DarkSaviour: Sep 5 2008, 05:37 PM

Microsoft isn't only just concerned about piracy in the country. They're also concerned about our current network infrastructure.

Xbox Live is an integral part of the Xbox game consoles, and with our half-baked network system (1MB "Best Effort" connectivity, lol), it's unlikely that Microsoft will launch the console in Malaysia anytime soon.

This post has been edited by Ruff Bark: Sep 5 2008, 05:38 PM

make friends with ppl who sell games. that's my best advice if you can't find games you want. but so far, unless you want to play japanese games, i dun see any problems since we can practically find any game we want here.

as for no access to reasonably priced games, well, you can deal with one of many shops in here. they will be happily send it to you no matter where you are.

if you dun trust pos laju, there's always DHL, FedEx, UPS. you just have to get ready with your money.

Exactly why I said that even if our economy improves, the mindset will still be there.
The point I'm trying to make is that this whole piracy thing is so rampant here because our economy is quite far behind other developed nations. The exchange rate is so high that every time we import something, we end up paying double, even triple what it originally costs.

And yes, the exchange rate is important because games are still items for purchase. Hopefully one day our exchange rate will improve, and we'll be able to buy games at below the current prices.

Yes I do agree that we can plan our budget, heck I basically starve myself every month in Uni just to buy new games but not everyone has that luxury. There are many in the country who have to scrape so much that their wage is only enough to cover the necessities yet their kids want to play video games. Yes, maybe they shouldn't even think about video games at all but kids are kids.

My last words regarding this piracy issue is "gaming is not a right, it's a luxury". If you can't afford to drive imported sports car, drive a locally assembled car. But I know this won't be accepted for most Malaysians as there are still many people modifying their locally assembled cars to look and performed like their expensive counterparts illegally.

hahahah seriously i dun think MS will launch here... look at those per centage of Windows pirated... tell me how many of you guys using ori windows?... hahahahah

no offense to all, I'm a Malaysian as well.. "We pay high price for shit product/services" .... e.g. streamyx...

Theres a stereotype in the Arab world, they get their music 40 years behind everyone else, so right now they are enjoying the disco era in their countries....

When it comes to us we will get the 360 official launch in the year 2030...

We can educate the kids not to buy pirated goods by...

another thing to remember is that you don't have to buy every single game that comes out! which is the mistake a lot of people do. Just buy stuff you want to play, and use 2nd hand thread to sell off stuff you don't want, or buy stuff at a cheaper price.

Lol, you've been watching too much Zohan.

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Added on September 5, 2008, 5:52 pmthis is very true. the thing with piracy was, since it was so cheap, ppl just buy everything. so that became a habit that they carry forward now when they got a PS3. then they realised that PS3 got no pirated games, they sell the PS3 and buy xbox.

LOL!

anyway i stand by my suggestion to use education as a way to reduce piracy.

This post has been edited by technophile: Sep 5 2008, 05:56 PM

hypervisor is the way to reduce piracy (PS3,PSN,XBL - still secure)

they just need to work on the optical drive security features.

I do remember years ago SG also sells pirated games right then the government took action and SG basically sells ori games everywhere now..Am I right bout this fact?

what do you mean secure? do you think no one has cracked the PS3 yet?
reason being it's not widely available is the amount of data in a BD (50GB) is not feasible yet to be put on the net for ppl to download.
then there's the recording medium, BD-R is still expensive. it's not cost effective for ppl to do it.

like i say, there's no certain way of ensuring that piracy didn't occur. that's too utopian. too unbelievable.

just reduce it. that's the only way we can do it.

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Added on September 5, 2008, 6:08 pmtrue. but SG is very small and they have the man power to monitor the shops. hence they can do it. but downloadables still occur from the net. so technically, there's still piracy.


This post has been edited by technophile: Sep 5 2008, 06:08 PM