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It is just as well that Nintendo are making a profit on their hardware, for they seem to be the most popular platform when it comes to digital piracy.
Talking to well off professionals and families, the same story emerges, the ability to get hundreds of Nintendo branded games for the DS hand-held or a chipped Wii is too easy. And digital piracy it seems is not considered a crime.
Mums, who would never dream of conducting a break and enter, happily boast about their illegal game collection at the local primary school playground.
“We have hundreds of DS games, I just went to [local shopping precinct] and now we download whatever we want” she said to me with a broad grin. Meanwhile, other mums are taking notes.
And obviously it is money that drives this, hounded by the kids for the latest games, people find it difficult to justify AU$75 for a DS game when the free or fractional cost alternative is so easy to get. And because it is digital, not a real thing, the guilt factor is not there compared with stealing your neighbours lamp, or photo-copying a Harry Potter book.
Other motivations are apparent as well, for some it is rebelling against the digital rights management (DRM) that is permeating the video game manufacturing process. Look at the top ten most pirated PC games , and you will see Spore heads the list.
Spore’s 1.7 million torrented copies and low rating on Amazon.com seem to be mostly motivated by a rage over the installation of SecuROM DRM software, that restricts installation of even a legitimate copy of the game.
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