33 comments | showing # 1 to 33

Niero

Have you ever seen the video game section of MercadoLibre.com? It is hilariously corrupt

viralhunter

I was actually thinking about making a samba de amigo joke about this, but the related articles list beat me to the punch.

king3vbo

Not a huge surprise. You can buy movies that aren't even out in theaters yet at the flea market in Salem. I got a copy of Kill Bill 2 for 3 bucks

Altered Beets

Damn pirates.

Why I'm so mad I might have to the police auction.

Now where was that again?

Dexter345

Whoa.

Naim Master

Actually not so bad , i buy original games , but in poor places like Brazil (where i live) or Mexico , people don't have the money , here at least , a game is 150 DOLLARS!!! 270 reais (Brazil money)...And some of these illegal game sellers are really poor , and they wouldn't have a job if it wasn't cause of this market , so whatcha gonna do ? Say fuck you if you're poor , you're not worthy playing our elitist entertainemnt ?

Mxyzptlk

Any word on how many stolen iPods were recovered?

Kasmodiah

This is how market fixes itself when companies charge $60 for a single game.

"a whopping 20 tons of illegal game goods."

Bad Mexico! That shit leaves a nasty footprint in the environment. Torrent in the future.

free touch

so... anyway, they still need modded systems to run these games.
Unless they are selling pirate games from older systems like dreamcast and below. ANd if that's the case, who cares, the games aren't sold anymore anyway.

And if they are selling bootleg copies of games for the newer systems, and they run on legit systems, I must be doing something wrong.

The empty game box thing I don't understand either. I have a few myself, and go check gamestop, I'm pretty sure they have close to that many empties per store.

I really want to know what illegal games they had, and if this is just some bullshit scam. I mean, you can go to any ANY comic/toy/game convention and pick up bootleg shit.

It doesn't discourage people from selling it, it just makes the business of the people still doing it rise.

Satsumomo

Haha I live about 30 minutes from the market in the picture.

They're real asses, they actually complain to the government stating that "The police doesn't let us work"

Jesus Christ.

I usually ask them "Hey guys, do you have any cocaine?" they look perplexed and I just say "Well it's illegal to sell, just like all this junk" then they get mad and try to start a fight or something.

raasbo

OMG...I have been there (like 10 6 years ago). I don't recall there being games. I guess they weren't that popular back the. I did recall a lot of illegal cds.

Usedtabe

@Naim Master: Maybe you should be asking why games are so expensive there? Is it due to taxes or the manufacturers? If it's due to taxes, than yes, the game companies can say fuck the poor, as it is not their fault your country imposes the higher cost on you. No one is entitled to play games, no matter what their economic situation. If you cannot afford it, you don't do it.

slapme7times

Imagine if piracy and the used game trade were stomped out... consider how large the market would be for new games, and how much profit developers could make in the industry.

We'd see 100 AAA games a year if we could kill off all this crap.

el_chack

This market's located at Guadalajara, were I am from. Such market has 4 floors and the last one is a piracy hive.

Tennis shoes, clothes, DVD movies, videogames, anything you want and could be "cloned" is there.

@free touch, they sell current-gen illegal copies of games (Xbox 360, Wii, NDS) and last-gen (PS2, Game Cube, GBA) ones.

You want to know what's the worse: Right at the exit of this market there is a legal videogame store called GameXpress (I worked there 6 months) and most of the people go to the market to buy modded consoles and illegal games.

The other face of the coin is that here in Mexico, games are sold at 150% its real price at least: would you buy a US$90 copy of Soul Calibur IV? How about an US$300 DS Lite?

I'm against piracy, but I'd like that videogame companies could do something so we (mexican gamers) can buy games at a more fair price.

dmgi

Eh, the gaming companies aren't suffering much from the piracy in the countries such as Mexico where this sort of stuff is happening. I'm South American and I know countless people that have modded (Insert any console that runs on discs here) and people shamelessly sell it on the street. I currently purchase all my games at full price but I can see where the people are coming from and if you like videogames and your country charges you about twice as much for the console and games then it's not really fair, BUT the people can probably import them into the country for less if they're willing to learn English.

Satsumomo

Oh, we also call it "Taiwan de Dios" instead of San Juan de Dios. :)

Monodi

Born, raised and still living in Mexico. Its sad I say "so what?"

I have known gaming piracy since 1997 and those who buy the pirate titles are the lowest social class, is not like every single store in Mexio sells piracy, hell no its a bit hard if you ask me. I mean, games have always been designed for the mid, mid-high and high class, it being leaked by the poor people is nothing surprising.

That said, pirated games look like shit after all, they are burned in Verbatim CDs, labeled with sharpie and the cover made in an HP printer.

TrailerParkJesus

...then Mexico stole it back, right?

m_earendil

Here in Colombia, most of the population struggles to survive on the legal minimal monthly wage, which is just about 200 dollars per month, and sometimes less than that if they are independant workers, or their job isn't totally legal.

Go tell a parent that has been saving the whole friggin' year to give his children a PS2 for Christmas, that he cannot buy some pirated $1 games for them to play, and instead he must shed $50 or $60 for an original game (that's how much a 19 dollar PS2 game costs here, after taxes, shipping, and the cut from the store)

I'm fortunate enough to have a job that pays well, and I can afford originals for my PS2 and Wii library (I like to collect them, I understand their value, and modchips and pirated media eventually ruin your console), but I totally understand the position of those who can't. I only know two other people here that buy original games, and we all have to get them from Amazon, because if you ask for an original game around here, people look you as if you were asking for a metric ton of meth.

Xhumation

I live in Guadalajara and see the thing is no matter how many raids they do in San Juan...it's never gonna stop.

I heard a rumour a while ago that San Johny (or San Juan, or Taiwan de Dios) as an intel community and they know when this raids are gonna happen.what they do is they take out the defective or unsellable stock. that way whoever performs the raid (mexican authorities or the ESA)gets to dump this stock instead of them.

for a lot of people legal gaming is just unnaffortable and there's so much money circulating in places like this a lot of people's economy depends on it. You'd require a massive change in the country's heart for this to stop and..it's just not gonna happen anytime soon.

When I was younger I used to buy pirated psOne games by the pound because they were cheap and my parents said it was O.K. as I grew up and learned otherwise I started to value my console and my games, started buying only legit games in legit places which has also thought to value quality over quantity but I wonder how many other people see this and of course...how many people can afford it.

Xhumation

Terror Player

I live in Mexico City, and piracy has existed since gaming itself has existed. As has been stated on previous post, the high prices of original games is the main factor for the popularity of copied games and chipped consoles. For example, a new game, say Golden Axe: Beast Rider goes for $59.99 on the US. Here, on official stores, it can go anywhere from $95 bucks to $110. On the informal market (or black market, not pirate games but stolen nonetheless)that same game may go for around $80 bucks.

So, given the recent crisis, gaming is a really expensive hobby. Moreso here in Mexico, where even people that can affor original games, prefer pirated so they can buy even more. Only true gamers buy original games, and even we proud soldiers of the controller have to face rising prices and other necessary expenses.

The Solution? A traty between customs on high-end electronics is necessary to even out the price. It may seem hard to do, but the revenue would go to the roof, since high costs would no longer be a deterrent for purchase.

Knives

I've been there!

I bet you that by next week they could raid again and find the same ammount of stuff.

kin84

As a fellow mexican gamer it pains me to see the sorry state of our gaming market, high prices, piracy, and also, lack of official support, this last one is rarely mentioned but is a big part of the issue, from the big three, microsoft is the only one to have an official presence in the market, regulating console and first party game prices (it goes the extra mile of making localized versions of these), it's a big difference from what we get from nintendo and sony (300 USD for a ds? 500 USD for a wii? no mexican psn when there's a mexican xbox live?) and third parties are no better, I understand that there are more factors that make it hard for international companies to stablish in Mexico (there's a lot of crap that the goverment impose on most bussineses) but without them, there's little that can be changed in the current state of things

m_earendil

Exactly... The film industry makes arrangements in many conutries, and adjusts the price of DVDs based on the income per capita, so you can actually go to China and buy $5 original movies that cost $15 to $20 in the US. Thats the reason zone restriction exists on DVD players.

On the other hand, zone restriction on consoles exists just to [fornicate] non-japanese and non-US players on the [fornicating] [buttocks], nothing more, because the pricing is the same or even more, and a simple text translation doesn't take more than a couple of months, so �why can't they release the game on europe at the same time?

If they don't have legal presence and distribution on our third-world countries, �are they really losing on sales with pirated media here? We don`t even appear on the charts for the quarterly sales reports. At least piracy promotes the console sales if nothing more, and those are some units Nintendo and Sony didn't make the effort to distribute here, so they account as US consoles sales.

LMAO

I live in Mexico too, and piracy is way to normal in our lives, although I do not buy pirate games I can only agree to Xhumation, this shit will never stop.

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ESA raid on a Mexican market nets 91,200 illegal video games

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