There's a gritty side to Mexico's booming game industry, shown today as the ESA celebrated the efforts of Mexican law enforcement. 500 officers from the Procuraduría General de la República (PGR) and the Agencia Federal de Investigacion (AFI) teamed up to knock on a few doors down in Mexico City's 'notorious' Tepito district. By the end of the day, four pirate hideouts and three booty stashes were raided, netting roughly 290 DVD/CD burners, 28,800 illegal copies of games and more than 900,000 game cover inserts.
"Mexico is an important market for ESA members due to the enormous popularity of entertainment software," said Ric Hirsch, senior vice president for Intellectual Property Enforcement at the ESA. "Unfortunately, Mexico also has an alarmingly high rate of game software piracy that by our estimates reaches 88%." Sounds like those federales have a few more doors to knock on.
Raids in Mexico seize 28,800 pirated games
53 Comments by James Ransom-Wiley Mar 17th 2008 10:00PM
Filed under: Hacks, Business
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(Page 1) Reader Comments
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You end up buying pirated games from fake retailers for a dollar each because there aren't any other viable options left.
It's funny how those countries are incredibly fond of videogames, yet for some reason, publishers don't want to service them with reasonable options.
But it's their loss: people wonder why free microtransaction-based MMOs are popular in Asia.
At the end of the day, they are luxury items - not necessities. If you can't afford them, then you either need to save up or go without. This instant gratification mindset is why this planet is becoming such a cesspit; and piracy at large is why video game publishers are so risk-adverse, causing release schedules to become so bland and predictable.
I do think the industry as a whole needs to address pricing as a means to expand the audience and combat piracy, and you're right - microtransactions are one way to do that. But nothing justifies theft.
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Does anyone there buy games legally? I guess one guy has to and then everyone else gets a copy. It's like only one kid in class studied for the history quiz.
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I'm sure that the piracy % gets lower as you get closer to the frontier with the US, since it's easier just to cross to the US and buy the original game, which is what I do. Fuck Mexican gaming stores, I'm not paying 80 dlls for a 40 dlls game!
My daily job is take down pirates and if you think México is bad check Perú, at least in México they do something.
Well on topic I hope Sony realizes México is a good market since we don’t get a lot of support from Sony here and the price of the PS3 here is very high (USD 800$) I would also like to mention that getting Pc games in México is almost impossible and getting hardware pieces is even harder (weird considering that Carlos Slim owns CompUSA)
That was the reason I returned to console gaming.
You know that's bad right?
I don't bring that up too much because that's a good way to get into a fight with a troll, is the internets after all and even if I won I get B&.
That was what happened in kotaku, I won but I got B&, same in GS forums, SW forums etc etc. That doesn’t means I won’t be back. I had 15 different Gs accounts, too bad they did B& the one I used for the serious stuff. Man I was in 20 groups and had 30 friends, stupid GS mods.
Si hablas de los componentes que tienen en el bazar o en la plaza son pura fayuca yo se de donde los obtienen.
No puedo obtener una buena Nvidia aqui más que importando que es una molestia.
Gamplanet lo vende a 8999$ el PS3 pero claro es la version más cara,si en el liverpool esta más barato pero es la versión sin juegos.
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nah, mine are original, though I buy them in gringo place to save cash.
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And all my games are original I never buy illegal copies. So far I have 40 PS2 Games, 6 PS3 Games, 6 PSP Games, 10 PS1 games.
So yes a lot of people here buys legal stuff. The thing is a game here can cost 780 pesos which is 70 ~ 72 Dollars.
A lot of people can't afford that of course piracy is not the solution, the ideally solution is to lower the prices.
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Speaking globally there are people that can buy videogames and music and they rather use limeware and torrents, WTF with them?
Jack Thompson didn't move there, did he?
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But not everything is lost, there are people who goes to the US, buys games, and sell em only for 5 dlls more than what they cost original, sad thing, this guy hasn't been able to get a hold of a Brawl, other way i'd be playing Brawl right now instead of posting a comment, xD
I can't say "I have never done piracy", cuz i have, i mean, I have played a lot of emulator games, i have emulated lots of burned psx, also original, lot's of downloaded or burned pc games, but it's because of the same thing, some times, games don't reach this side till one year later or so, and I want em to play em now, so my only option is to download em, and when I get go visit my sis on phoenix, i buy the ones that I liked a lot. Also, know with the recent consoles, come, PS2 and GameCube perfect emulation is not coming for a while so I bougth my Wii and 2 years ago my sis won a PS2 and gave it to me, so I spend lot's of times on web-selling pages looking for people selling their games cheap, also I go to Bookmans, I always find some good games to buy
I'm not against piracy, it's something that hardcore latinoamerican people need to satisfy our needs, but we do know thats we are hurting the game industry by doing it. It's a shame that GAMELA, the representant of Nintendo in Mexico is not functioning anymore, or hasn't done much if it's still on business.
Also, a little off-topic as a general knowledge, La Procuraduría General de la República (PGR), would be the Mexican version of SWAT and the Agencia Federal de Investigaciones (AFI) something like FBI, we still don't have any kind of CIA or Interpol though, xD
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And mexico with games is alot like Pacific mall.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Mall
. Raids occur, but its useless, as the next day they are back selling. I have seen dvd stores raided by the police at PM before and the next day theres some dude setting up in the exact same shop location with thousands of pirated dvds. Mexico losses 28 800 pirated games today, 30 000 new ones are produced for tomorrow.
PD = )
PD2 = l
PD3 = (
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Well you do that I take use Continental and American airlines to get to the U.S mostly NY and Orlando (Wee Universal) ;)
Damn what the hell.
You know before 2000 I used to love the U.S since I mostly visit for either Business or Vacation and in a date almost near my birthday so it was awesome just go there and get new games, I still remember when I first went to a circuit city and bought Diablo and Hexen 2.Then after 2000 the security measures (you know for the um 9 11) were really an annoyance but it was okay I mean it didn’t stop me from going to Disneyworld 2 times in a year or New york but after 2006 it really was a pain in the ass and this attitude some Americans (I’m tempted to say Gringos here)have about Mexicans really pissed me off, I mean have paid taxes in the U.S for over what 10 years now.
Really notice the difference between the Illegal aliens and the paying tourist/business men for Christ sake, you are losing money in tourism for that attitude but okay if you don’t want my money I guess Canada will be happy to accept it.
Buying it in a store will only double you the price for it in USA. (Don't know why the big difference).
The only way to get it at the acctual price is to import which is very common, but since our mail service sucks, there's no way it will get to you unless you use a private company (DHL, FeDex) or travel to USA yourself.
People who can't go through all this crap are almost forced to pirate games OR pay double or triple.
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See I can be even more racist, don’t even try fighting me back you‘ll lose.
Your sad. Its important to embrace the Mexican people. You DO know that by 2030-2040 Mexicans are going to be the majority right? Unless your like 80 then you dont care but thats doubtful. Dont be surprised if little Candice or Kimberly get with an "ESE" LMAO!!!!!
Good times...
Banter, arguments, console wars yes. Racism is too much.
Seriously, when games are MORE EXPENSIVE in places like Mexico and China than in countries where people have 10 times the income its not a surprise. The surprising thing to me is that anyone can afford the PCs/Consoles to run the pirated games on in the first place.
Publishers should just think of it as free marketing giveaways that they can use to build up a huge userbase for the future, when everyone CAN afford to pay.
(you know, like microsoft did with windows)
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Well here (in Panama) we have also overpriced crap, but we have the advantage that the currency used here is US dolars. So, yes, there are many who just pirate games 'cause they either can't afford the games or they just don't want to pay for them.
I got a job so I buy whatever I need for my gaming addiction (which it ain't much since I got cod4 on pc and ssbb).
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Oh boy tell me about it. Part of my job is watch for sites that sell pirate stuff in Latin America and sometimes the U.S and Canada so I have to be constantly watching (it was one of my first jobs, the pay was decent) and without entering in details I was blown by the amount of pirate software they had and I’m not talking about videogames. The thing is that you can’t do much about it because you can’t contact with those sites since is restricted to citizens of Peru only, I mean they had pirate stuff in a legal site(Rematazo), is the Latin version of Ebay and the competence of Mercado Libre.
The good thing is that is limited to certain areas within Perú.
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:D
Of every 10 guys, there are 3 girls gamers
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I currently own 15 360 games. All bought last year. All original. I choose to support the industry because it is my favorite hobby and I want to see grow. This way we will get better games with high production values.
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y no nadamas en mexico hay pirateria tambien en otros paises hay asi que no digan que nadamas en mexico existe. Lo que pasa es que aca si somos descarados...
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