I saw an article (TV type) about music pirating. You would think that hard-copy would be out of style, but I digress. They burned identical CD/DVD (movies too) of the disk, made identical labels (either painted on or stick on) packaged them in similar crystals and sent them off via valid distributors who thought they were buying the real thing at an exceptionally good price (to give them credit) Since one couldn't tell the difference between products and since they played the same for the most part, by the time they wore out given to inferior materials the crime was long done.
This is one of the reasons the entertainment industry is pushing for anti-pirate laws. I know they hit one place in China pretty hard (after all, the Chinese need to placate the Yanks occasionally) It is also among to reasons that they are hitting the internet hard as well. Look at the push a few months back to intercept the law going through Congress. What did we call that? Blackout Tuesday or something? Same thing.
Just because games don't have the muscle that music and movies do doesn't mean they are not as affected. Several of the big companies, Turbine, Blizzard, SOE, have gone to free games with much reduced features followed by allowing the players to buy - with real money - what they want to have. They still can pay the monthly fee and get a good bit of it for free, but still have to pay for the expansions and "good stuff". Of course, those are MMORPG. Single computer games don't have that work-around.
