Iran bans Tehran invasion first-person shooter EA's Battlefield 3 has been outlawed in Iran, with police allegedly arresting shop owners that secretly stock the game. If reports are to be believed, Iranian cops are cracking down with a vengeance, raiding shops and arresting owners found to be selling pirated or imported copies of Battlefield 3, Agence France-Presse reports …
I seem to remember a few years back the US banning a game where you played a
terrorist/freedom fighter whereby Palestinians would use everything from stones to ak47's and rocket launchers against the Israelis?
I don't really see how this is any different. Would the Americans arrest sellers of that game I wonder? What was that game called...??? And was it real?
Both are just games anyway so what's the problem. No real people get hurt in either case!
erm, not quite. Unless you've been under a rock for the last few years you'd have noticed the general state of affairs regarding the wests relationship with Iran, the threats and counter threats of attacking and generally blowing things up.
Now, if I where Iranian, I would find that a game role played a possible scenario of an invasion of my capital city then I'd be a bit miffed I'd say.
So by banning the game the Iranians are expressing themselves with those two words you've just used too.
"In that Battlefield 3 is not available for purchase in Iran, we can only hope the ban will help prevent pirated copies reaching consumers there,"
So zero sales is a good thing because it also means zero piracy? That just proves to me that certain corporate entities have completely lost thier minds when it comes to piracy. I'm not saying piracy is good, but surely having some income and a lot of piracy is better than no income and no piracy.
When I read this, all I got was "We don't really care what they do in Tehran about the game, but here's a random soundbite that may make it appear that we actually care, and even if that's not what comes across, we really don't care. As long as they spell Battlefield 3 right ever time it's mentioned in the press..."
Let's face it, they could put a "Hated by the Iranian Government" sticker on it, and you'd probably see sales increase in some parts of the US...
No, I think you misunderstood that quote. What I *think* he's saying (we could tell for sure if we had the full quote in context) is that EA don't sell BF3 in Iran. Their distributor to that region doesn't carry that particular title. Therefore any copies of the game on store shelves are highly likely to be pirated. Or privately imported I guess, but more likely pirated. If a government crackdown on the games stops those pirated copies from being sold, that's good from EA's standpoint.
Does that make more sense?
No. Because they do not lose money when games are pirated, except in so far as that displaces sales. Since the game was not for sale, they can't lose money. On the other hand, they gain money if even a single copy is sold legitimately and smuggled into Iran. Thus they have no reason to be happy about this save for pure irrational jealousy.
In Iran, there is no need to obey copyright laws. In proper shops (i.e. not temporary shacks) you can buy pirated copies of most commercial software.
Hence "In that Battlefield 3 is not available for purchase in Iran, we can only hope the ban will help prevent pirated copies reaching consumers there," the publisher said in a statement.
Not sure exactly how it works that out, though."
What that means is these shops are not going to be able to profit from piracy.
They do have bit-torrent - when the government is behind and catching up on the index sites.
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