Mexican raid uncovers 28,800 pirated games

Author: Joe Martin
Published: 18th March 2008

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%."

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