Friday, October 18, 2013

Video game piracy issue in China


Since 2009, the revenues of PC games have dramatically increased while the revenue of console games decreased in the world. The Chinese game industry began to expand the console game in the market. Its revenue increased 20% in a half year. In 2010, many imitation game consoles with lower prices appeared in the Chinese game market. According to the research of Shanda Company, when the new console released, many small PC manufactures rushed to purchase it. Once they get it, they will use it as a sample and research on its appearance, functions, and features.
These low quality Chinesecounterfeit game consoles sometimes could fool the experts because it also has the same function as original one. Furthermore, people even could not tell which one was real or fake from the appearance of game consoles, but its lifespan is much shorter than the real console. This problem became an annoying headache of some big game companies in China. Therefore, they decided to appeal. Chinese copyright organization realized that issue would hurt the reputation and income revenue of big game companies continue to develop their game consoles. They decided to investigate the small vendors and factories.

The pirated PC games also have the same issue as the consoles in China. Players can easily find many popular pirated games to download for free in the website. So, it causes China’s image overseas to be very poor. The International Intellectual Property Alliance, a U.S. coalition of film, video game, software, music, and publishing groups estimated that American companies lost about $15 billion between 2008-2009 because of international copyright theft. More than  $14 billion of the total was due to software piracy, with an estimated $3.5 billion lost in China. Most of the video game piracy is conducted as the type of software Counterfeiting. Street gangs selling pirated video games can be easily seen in the mass-market or even grocery stores anywhere in China.

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