Imported Games for PC? Legal?

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I just played BG1 and BG2 so I was looking for what to play next. I posted "Which game Comes Next?" for suggestions. I decided to go ahead and buy NWN, IWD and PS:T since they are all pretty cheap now.

So I looked on eBay to see if I can score some extra-cheap used ones. I see a lot of people selling new copies of NWN and IWD for about the same as the used ones. But - But - these people are just an 'agent' or whatever you should call them. The disks you will get from them will be mailed from Tiwan or maybe it was Hong Kong. They will have a manual but no box. Hmmmmmmm .. I know that asia is very big on pirated software. You can buy Win XP or Adobe Photoshop from a street vendor for like $1 each. So my first guess is that these are totally illegal. But eBay does try to police out the obvious illegal stuff. So maybe these are actually OEM copies? Someone does have a right to produce these disks but they are only supposed to come packaged with something like a Soundblaster card. The selling on eBay is not completely illegal? Anyone have any idea about this?

I ended up ordering them from Amazon, using the click-through here so Sorcerers should get a few pennies commission. I did nor want to support the eBay 'quasi-legal' sellers. I did get two of them used but they should be from a real US release. Amazon allows people to sell used stuff, like eBay does, but no auctions. PS:T you cannot buy new anyway. And the prices on Amazon were near the eBay prices.

 

Always order everything through SP

If it has a manual with it, I really doubt it's pirated. I should know, piracy was reaaaal commonplace in Lebanon in the early 90's (almost vanished around 1997)

 

My southern chinese friend told me, taiwan version is chinese language version. There is no english taiwan version. A game has to be localized into chinese if the publisher wants it to sell. Games in english language occupy just a small portion of gaming population, thus english games are always imported, or imported in the sense that "imported oversea, assembled locally".

It may be illegal, it may be legal as well. There are ways to get legal games at ridiculously low price, not only in Asia. The only problem is are you in the business. i have a few friends in such business, which is, snooping around to see which business/shop is falling a salvage whatever they can in ridiculous low price and re-sell them in just low price. In U.S. alone, i think 60~70% of first time business ends up to be a failure, a stat i read in a boring economy magazine some years ago. Business failure is very common. And people who takes advantage of others' failure, well, live well. As a not working student in a foreign country, there is no way i can keep up with my current game playing habit had i not known these friends.

 

SP spans over most of the globe, so perhaps you could start a thread and ask people to see how much a game or program costs where they live. Then someone could buy and send the game for you and you would reimburse him. Only worth it when the difference in prices is much higher than shipment costs, of course. Also a good way of getting English versions if your local distributor only sells translated copies.