User Profile

Joewoof

Joewoof

Thailand

Joined:
Wed 27th May, 2009

Recent Comments

Joewoof

#2

Joewoof commented on Miyamoto: Have Confidence in Us:

I'm skeptical, but hopeful. Who knows? Maybe they'll tack it onto an action game where you have to calm your heart to survive - and that can be a mean fit to pull off. :D

Joewoof

#6

Joewoof commented on Hackers Expand Wii Storage, Door Now Open To F...:

@60. Thanks. It's quite lonely out here you know. The majority of people in Thailand actually cannot literally comprehend the rationale to not pirate. What's funny is that people can and do afford legitimate PS3 games, simply because the BlueRay copy protection has not been cracked yet. I'm not personally in favor of copy protection that will eventually, inevitably be broken anyway, but it goes to show that money is not necessarily a factor for piracy in third-world countries.

Joewoof

#7

Joewoof commented on Hackers Expand Wii Storage, Door Now Open To F...:

Wow, I love this crowd. :) I'm from Thailand and game piracy is so rampant here it makes me sick. I'm studying to become a software developer myself, and it's really difficult to get by when 100% of your salary comes from 10% of people who don't pirate, and who knows how few of those actually pay for your software.

I know several Thai game developers in person, and they work extremely hard every single day for horrible salaries. It breaks my heart to see folks that spend so much time and effort working on a game only to have it pirated by the very people - Thai consumers who say that they pirate games because companies are ripping them off - who they market towards. It does not matter how cheap games are; if you choose to pirate, you will pirate regardless. It's not about expense; it's about greed on the side of the consumers. We want more for less, and if we don't give a damn about developers (and the economy) and morals, we'd seek out methods to get stuff for free, regardless.

It is the small developers - the very artists that we all should support - that get hurt way more than the big companies that many of us blame. It is the small guys that sink from piracy and often collapse before they can ever lift off (in the case of many Thai developers).

I work part time and buying legitimate Wii games costs me more than 30% of my salary. I expect that to drop to 15% when I go full time. Yes, Azgaroth, I still throw BS against piracy because it takes money out of the economic flow that funds my part time salary to begin with. I don't disagree that some of us may seem self-righteous, but don't assume that everyone will share your moral standpoint when placed in similar financial circumstances.

Besides, I don't "lose" money when I pay for a game. I "fund" developers by doing so. Although publishers get a large chunk of that money, it "encourages" them to support creative, innovative and fun games that smaller and leading developers like to make. Game developers get such a small slice of the profit anyway; we really should understand that. In any case, pirating makes everything worse.