Pirates also get those sweet beards
I am now, officially, entirely in favour of the piracy of intangibles (i.e. movies, computer games, music and especially books).
This was a long time coming but what clinched it for me was when the local game suppliers announced that they were going to crank up the price of console games to R1000 each ($142)! Luckily there was a massive outcry so they back peddled and declared that the games will continue to be sold at the “reasonable” price of R800 (over $100) each.
And so I wondered: why is it that a top-of-the-line PC game only costs R400 ($50), and the exact same game for a console costs twice as much?
To find the answer one merely has to ask: what would happen if they started charging R800 for a PC game? The answer is of course that NO ONE WOULD BUY THEM. They would just pirate them, so the industry has to keep prices reasonable. Console games are a lot more difficult to pirate so they can charge whatever they want.
Piracy is keeping PC games cheap.
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