Video Gaming Behind The Iron Curtain

[InCreator]

To be honest, I am not sure what decreased amount of pirated production here: was that the law, or the cheaper internet & torrent trackers?

In Estonia, at least few years ago, you could buy new games sometimes more than 60% off the price if they were in Russian (russian localized & re-boxed), often published by 1C or some similar company. Since we have large russian gamer community here, they were sold in most game-related stores.
I always wondered how â,¬60 Call of Duty can be â,¬25 only because it's in Russian. While sold in respectable stores and those days when it's basically impossible to find pirate copies anywhere but perhaps flea market, I'm still not convinced those versions of the game were 100% legit. Price drop was just too unbelievable. But getting games so cheap might have played part.

For me personally, it was Steam. It's just so much more convenient than pirating nowadays. Except torrents don't make me regret all those shitty early alphas.

[Crimson Wizard]

I always wondered how â,¬60 Call of Duty can be â,¬25 only because it's in Russian.

I am not expert in this, but something I know is that profit = price x potential number of buyers; when you increase price, number of buyers decreases, and vice versa.
For game producers only the maximal possible total profit is important, not the cost of single item, so it might be a question of finding the optimal price for the region.

E.g. when Starcraft 2 was out, there was that "special" edition for Russia, which costed about 3 or 4 times less (if I remember correctly). Although, since the game was supposed to be played on Blizzard's servers, they limited match-making to its own region for that edition. Later person could upgrade to standart edition by paying the price difference.

[Ark]

Surprisingly I remember we used to have Atari too (don't remember which one, but it was Atari and we had a tonne of games for it (may be 10, may be 20...)). We were living in Lithuania - seems it was more or less the same for all soviet countries. I had 2 or 3 "Elektronicas" and my favorite arcade machine was "Submarine". I will probably start crying if I'll see that thing again .

[Crimson Wizard]

BTW, I randomly found a web remake of one of the arcade machines: http://www.15kop.ru/en/

[Mandle]

BTW, I randomly found something: http://www.15kop.ru/en/

OMG...It's totally playable...

I thought it was just a link to a nostalgic graphic...And then I clicked the "Play" button and I was back in an arcade in the '70's...

Thank god for the people that resurrect old culture for the next generations to come...

(For example: AGS!!!)

[Danvzare]

Wow, that's actually quite interesting (and somewhat fun to play).
Now if only they also did recreations of other old non-digital arcade games.

[Ark]

BTW, I randomly found a web remake of one of the arcade machines: http://www.15kop.ru/en/

Oh, that's the one I was talking about ! Thanks for the link - it's great to play it again.