In Conclusion it’s much much harder to pirate on the consoles and therefore much more attractive to major publishers and game dev companies.

What’s your plan for when games developers stop making any games at all? Since all teh players are pirating, they’ll just do something else and all you’ll have is old games to play

As someone who does pirate games for both the PC and Nintendo Wii, here is my own take on piracy, this is just a personal viewpoint and I cannot speak for others in a different situation.

I live in North China, I am British but moved here years ago with my wife. When I lived in the UK, I always paid for my games whatever platform they were running on. I had a good job, was well paid and so paying for games was not an issue for me in any way whatsoever.
Since moving here I have run into problems. First of all China is the pirate capital of the world. Walk down any high street in any major city here and all the stores that sell games be they for the PC or console are selling pirated games. They don’t try hiding the fact, they are on display for all to see and stores that sell consoles all chip said consoles in store.
When I arrived here I brought my UK bought Wii with me. I had no choice to put a mod chip in it if I wanted to continue buying games due to the fact that the games are NTSC here and won’t normally play in a PAL Wii.
When it came to buying PC and Wii games I quickly realised that it was a big problem. 90% of the games you would buy were extremely poor copies that either would not read due to being scratched badly or just badly burned. Very often the game you thought you had bought turned out to be a different game on the disc or sometimes not even a game at all, I once bought GTA IV and found Microsoft Office on the disc!!
So here is my dilemma living here. If I buy games on the high street, first of all the money is still not going to the developers as they are pirated and secondly they are usually unplayable or not what you thought.
Buying games in the form of a digital download is out of the question as all the main places like Steam and Direct2Drive recognise the fact my IP is on the Chinese mainland and will not allow me to do so. Using an open proxy to fool their service into thinking I am in the UK or USA is also out of the question as they are not safe for the purposes of using your credit card details and/or Paypal account, unless you want them emptied.
I could buy games in a physical format online and have them shipped to China, but this is also a big issue. the reason being that to do this would mean I spent 3 to 4 times the purchase price for a title having it shipped and then paying the import taxes, plus the fact that on the odd occasion I have had things mailed to me here, they never arrive or at least very rarely. This is because of the fact that I cannot input an address in Chinese characters and have to use pinyin, something that fails miserably upon arrival in China.
So, I am faced with two simple choices. Don’t play games again ever or download a pirate copy.
I cannot speak for anyone else but from my perspective not playing games ever again is out of the question so what would you do in my position?

Then on a side note there is one other fact that has arisen recently which stops me loosing any sleep at night. More and more these days , developers shaft the PC gamer with poorly coded games and buggy ports which NEVER get fixed. Look at GTA IV, what a complete and utter F@@k up that turned out to be. Even people with the most powerful computers ran into performance issues that hampered gameplay and they have still not been fixed properly to this day. Once Rockstar had taken the profits from the sale they closed the door on GTA IV for the PC bar a handful of pointless patches that never really addressed the main issues people were having. Made feeble excuses as to the reasons for the problems, like stating the game had been design “Future Proof” and was mean to be played on PC’s that, ahm, hadn’t quite been invented yet!!
This is a growing trend with many developers and whenever I play a game that is that buggy and does not get fixed, annoyed as I may be I cannot help but smile and get a warm tingly feeling when I think that I did not line the pockets of some miserable, greedy corporate weasel.

So that is my take on game piracy. Agree or disagree with my train of thought, I really do not care much. No one will ever make me feel guilty nor will I loose any sleep over piracy, unless of course its because I am playing a pirated game till the early hours

I will openly admit I play pirated PC games, I never buy them anymore. Why do I do it you ask? Here are my reasons.

I live in China now, I moved here a few years ago with my wife as she wanted to return home.

Before this, I always paid for my games, I never pirated anything, so what changed?

The simple fact for me is this, In China it is completely impossible to find genuine PC games in any stores, or console games for that matter.

China is rife with pirated games and DVD’s which are openly sold both in store and on the streets. My only option for purchasing genuine games is to turn to the internet and order them from overseas. Steam and other direct download options are out of the question as for one, most of them are blocked in China due to the national firewall, and furthermore many do not allow you to go through the actual purchase as they recognise your IP as being in mainland China and do not let you proceed.

As for purchasing a boxed version from overseas, the cost is just far too much, not only do I have to pay for the game and tax, but I then have to pay significant shipping costs and import taxes putting the cost of a game up as much as 80 or 90 pounds!!!

Then there is the fact that the postal service in China sucks and unless the address is in Chinese characters I am likely never to see it arrive.

Going back to the pirated games in the stores, they are often poorly copied to disc and dont read in the drive, or quite often the DVD in the box has the wrong game on it.

I therefore fall back to downloading pirate games from the internet as long as I am here. Its time consuming, leaves me prone to viruses and the pirate copies are often buggy but for me its either that or no games whatsoever.

People out there can say what they want, I’m pretty sure most will still say I shouldnt do it but your not going to change my mind. I have no way to support the gaming industry whilst I live here and paying 3 times the normal price for a game is NOT an option.

Lastly, it has to be said that many of the games I have been playing have been released in a shameful state and never really had such terrible bugs fixed. Look at GTA IV, the entire thing was bodged from day one on the PC and has never been fixed.

If games companies are going to release thing in such a rubbishy state and not fix them it makes me feel a whole lot better about the fact I never parted with any cash.

So there you have it! Your entitled to your opinion and can agree or disagree but you will never change my mind and thats that.