PC Version costs $55 USD in my country. Dollar lost a lot against our currency or it would be around $40 bucks!
There are two very different situations usually being generalized and labeled "piracy".
One is the action of criminal organizations that have manufacturing falicities in many countries and actually produce copies of not only games and softwares but lots of other things that they had no right or patent to produce and they profit money by selling it all over the world. It is a very professional scheme and those are the guys that should be and probably are, hunted down by Interpol and alike.
Some streets in the city I live (18 million ppl, big metropolis) are crowded with small wooden stands that sells these goods. Cheap quality disks with games, softwares, all console games you can imagine, music CD, movies DVD, whole TV series season DVD's... I've seen it too in London and NYC when I lived in those cities over 20 years ago. Few aprehensions here tracked down the goods to China, but there are other producer countries too.
Now, it is almost like the drug business. The little fishes who are in the street selling also have a bunch of lookout guys with radio comms to warn when the police or any blitz are near. They vanish in the air and 5 minutes after the cops are gone, they're back. Very difficult to catch those guys. But this is the piracy I feel indignation for. They are the ones that cause losses to legit owners of the rights for those goods, not only because they profit from stealing but potential paying customers are deviated from legitimately purchasing the goods, only to save a few bucks. They could probably pay ffor the real thing as well.
The second situation is very different. People over the internet getting games or softwares that they will not profit from, for personal use, because they cannot afford it, in no way hurts companies. Moreover some of these downloaders will actually buy the real product if they are hooked by its quality or when they have the cash to afford it.
Why would that upset someone?
I remember when I was a ranked Starcraft player on Bnet and in a Lan house tournment here I met some ppl that could only play over Kali service because of their copied version of the game. Very soon many of them were on Battle.net meaning they actually purchased the game.
I have my Bioware games' CD-Keys registered in my Bioware account since 2002 and I can participate in forums only registered owners can post, for instance. there are many advantages for being a legit owner (or licenced user... argh) of a game, such as patches do not stop running the game until a new crack is available, if ever it becomes available. Else they're restricted to play an old outdated version of the game.
I understand and support anyone being upset with the first situation I list above. If there is anything we can do to help stop it we should, but not irrationally because it is dangerous. Those are mobs with no fear of killing someone. They are same "company" that makes forgeries out of "mineral water" , medicine pills, gasoline, milk, the list is immense. And includes our beloved games too, both PC and console version!
Sorry, english is not my primary language. And I made it his long because I copied from another post of mine somewhere else about the same topic... and the OP sucks!
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