pirated games....that's an interesting topic. i suppose the good thing about them is that they're cheap, which emphasizes the fact that producers are really exploiting consumers in slapping a price tag that is 10X the manufacturing cost...it doesn't cost much to produce the CDs and the case, and it takes little money to print the manuals and boxes. at most, we're looking at $5 per game. in other words, if the game companies didn't charge an astronomical price on the games they release, piracy will not thrive. but on the bad side, by buying pirated games, we're not really giving the game developers much credit for their hard work. i mean, a game takes around 2-3 years in development before it is even given life. meaning, even after 2 years of prelim development, it can still be killed off. these game designers work hard, day and night, and perhaps, the price tag justifies the amount of work put into the software.
me, i used to buy pirates, so i hope i don't sound like a hypocrite. these days, i'm "forced"

to buy original Dreamcast games simply because pirated GDs are hard to find where i live, and besides, the pirated DC games are mostly available on the internet for you to download, but you need to burn it onto a normal CD-R. i don't know about PS 2, i heard there's heaps of pirated games for it flying around because it still uses CDs as the media in which they store the games. only a few titles utilizes the DVD.
[This message has been edited by ezza (edited 06 July 2000).]
[This message has been edited by ezza (edited 06 July 2000).]