News Mexican raid uncovers 28,800 pirated games

[CardJoe]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/03...irated_games/1

Piracy is a problem for developers, and never was that more evident than when a single raid turned up 28,000 pirated games.

[DXR_13KE]

those guys i don't like, making a profit selling what other people make.....

[Jordan Wise]

for a minute there i thought someone had pirated 28,000 copies of Project Gotham Racing, and was thinking- why?

[mmorgue]

28k pirated games in today's age doesn't sound like that much of a "bust" to me.

back when the PS1 came out and all it took was the "spring-trick" to enjoy your backed up games/multi region, I remember finding a guy in thailand who was selling his backed up games. About 20 of us pooled monies and managed to order about 800 discs -- many dupes for our own shadey dealings. But that was back in.. 1997? And I am sure I was "1" person of hundreds who used this guy.

28k copies really doesn't sound like a huge bust to me but then, I don't know the population of gamers in Mexico off the top of my head.

For the record, the illicit dealings I did back then were in another country and in no way represent the upstanding, moral lifestyle I lead now.

[War-Rasta]

I agree with mmorgue, 28,000 copies is not a big bust under my standards either.

Mexico is a pretty big country (I thought it was the biggest spanish speaking country and Wikipedia just confirmed it) with a population of 103,263,388 in 2005. I know that not every one in Mexico is into gaming or into buying pirated games for that matter, but I still think it's not big enough considering the population.

[lewchenko]

28,000 games is about 1 to 1.5 Million US $ of retail sales.

But if those 28,000 games were one weeks supply that just got busted, then its a whole different story !

[mmorgue]

I guess nowadays, any bust of pirated material is a "win" and is bound to be publicised ad nauseum, so as to justify the enormous amounts of money various agencies have spent (i.e., wasted) in combatting it.

EDIT: when I say 'wasting', I'm not agreeing with piracy, but that I disagree with how it's being fought from a legit standpoint. I think better customer models that are inline with the changing tech age and what consumers actually want will help fight piracy.

[Whalemeister]

Forget the 28k games they busted, look at the 900k inserts to get an idea of the scale these guys were opperating at.

As much as I don't agree with people torrenting games for their personal use I really think that people and organised groups that are making money out of pirating are 100 times worse.

[The_Beast]

28,000 doesn't seam like that many in my book

[LordPyrinc]

28,000 in this bust alone. I imagine this is just a small fraction of the total pirating being done in the country. Authorities have just caught some of the more sloppier pirates that didn't do such a good job at covering their tracks. Additionally, this is a bust in a single country.... last time I checked, the Earth was full of countries both large and small. That should put the overall pirating problem into perspective.

This affects all of us gamers in the long run, both by causing higher game prices and by driving the smaller game developers out of the market.

[leexgx]

900,000 game covers seems thay may have been doing more then 28K as that may have been what thay all ready had + 300 dvd burners 28k would seem it was an on going thing

[sotu1]

28000 this week, not that much fair enough, BUT, think about the number of POTENTIAL copies prevented from being sold. a helluva lot more less

[sotu1]

ok, put this way:

say 300 burners, each burning two discs every hour. (2x300=600) that's 600 copies per hour. say 9 hour working day, that's 5400 a day. working every day that's 37,800 per week. in a year it's just under 2million discs.

that's one piracy ring.

totally hypothetical of course.