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Mexican raid uncovers 28,800 pirated games

Published on 18th March 2008 by Joe Martin

A recent raid on Mexican game pirates turned up more than 28,000 illegal games.

Mexico is undergoing a bit of a revolution at the moment as far as games development is concerned, with reports indicating that the Mexican games industry alone will be worth $1 billion by 2010.

However, there are certainly some down sides to that success and Mexico has just found out that where there are developers there are pirates too - a PGR raid just uncovered 28,800 pirated games in a single bust.

500 officers of Procuraduría General de la República (PGR) and the Agencia Federal de Investigacion (AFI) reportedly teamed up recently to tackle a single piracy ring in Mexico City's Tepito district.

By the end of the day the police had moved in on four pirate bases and raided three stashes of illegally copied games. The raid turned up nearly 300 DVD burners, 28,800 illegally pirated games and more than 900,000 game cover inserts. A number of pirates have been arrested, but to be honest we feel more sorry for the guy who had to count all that evidence.

"Mexico is an important market for ESA members due to the enormous popularity of entertainment software," said Ric Hirsch, senior vice president for Intellectual Property Enforcement at the ESA. "Unfortunately, Mexico also has an alarmingly high rate of game software piracy that by our estimates reaches 88%."

Still think piracy isn't a problem for game developers? Let us know in the forums.

12 Comments

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DXR_13KE 18th March 2008, 13:04

those guys i don't like, making a profit selling what other people make.....

Jordan Wise 18th March 2008, 13:11

for a minute there i thought someone had pirated 28,000 copies of Project Gotham Racing, and was thinking- why?

mmorgue 18th March 2008, 13:42

28k pirated games in today's age doesn't sound like that much of a "bust" to me.

back when the PS1 came out and all it took was the "spring-trick" to enjoy your backed up games/multi region, I remember finding a guy in thailand who was selling his backed up games. About 20 of us pooled monies and managed to order about 800 discs -- many dupes for our own shadey dealings. But that was back in.. 1997? And I am sure I was "1" person of hundreds who used this guy.

28k copies really doesn't sound like a huge bust to me but then, I don't know the population of gamers in Mexico off the top of my head.

For the record, the illicit dealings I did back then were in another country and in no way represent the upstanding, moral lifestyle I lead now.

War-Rasta 18th March 2008, 14:42

I agree with mmorgue, 28,000 copies is not a big bust under my standards either.

Mexico is a pretty big country (I thought it was the biggest spanish speaking country and Wikipedia just confirmed it) with a population of 103,263,388 in 2005. I know that not every one in Mexico is into gaming or into buying pirated games for that matter, but I still think it's not big enough considering the population.

lewchenko 18th March 2008, 15:03

28,000 games is about 1 to 1.5 Million US $ of retail sales.

But if those 28,000 games were one weeks supply that just got busted, then its a whole different story !

mmorgue 18th March 2008, 15:20

I guess nowadays, any bust of pirated material is a "win" and is bound to be publicised ad nauseum, so as to justify the enormous amounts of money various agencies have spent (i.e., wasted) in combatting it.

EDIT: when I say 'wasting', I'm not agreeing with piracy, but that I disagree with how it's being fought from a legit standpoint. I think better customer models that are inline with the changing tech age and what consumers actually want will help fight piracy.

Whalemeister 18th March 2008, 17:00

Forget the 28k games they busted, look at the 900k inserts to get an idea of the scale these guys were opperating at.

As much as I don't agree with people torrenting games for their personal use I really think that people and organised groups that are making money out of pirating are 100 times worse.

The_Beast 18th March 2008, 18:45

28,000 doesn't seam like that many in my book

LordPyrinc 18th March 2008, 23:16

28,000 in this bust alone. I imagine this is just a small fraction of the total pirating being done in the country. Authorities have just caught some of the more sloppier pirates that didn't do such a good job at covering their tracks. Additionally, this is a bust in a single country.... last time I checked, the Earth was full of countries both large and small. That should put the overall pirating problem into perspective.

This affects all of us gamers in the long run, both by causing higher game prices and by driving the smaller game developers out of the market.

leexgx 18th March 2008, 23:22

900,000 game covers seems thay may have been doing more then 28K as that may have been what thay all ready had + 300 dvd burners 28k would seem it was an on going thing

sotu1 19th March 2008, 08:21

28000 this week, not that much fair enough, BUT, think about the number of POTENTIAL copies prevented from being sold. a helluva lot more less

sotu1 19th March 2008, 08:27

ok, put this way:

say 300 burners, each burning two discs every hour. (2x300=600) that's 600 copies per hour. say 9 hour working day, that's 5400 a day. working every day that's 37,800 per week. in a year it's just under 2million discs.

that's one piracy ring.

totally hypothetical of course.