[mobil]

Distribution is clearly very important to avoid piracy. I live in Norway, and sometimes games come to Norway several months after release in US or the rest of Europe (Birth of the Federation and Imperium Galactica II are examples of this).

When ppl await games like Master of Orion III (to be released next spring), it is very important to have a worldwide release in order to make piracy less interesting. My concience tells me not to download from the net, but I cannot buy the game either until someone decides its time for a Norwegian release.

One alternative is to order the game from the net, but that is only an option if I can download the game directly and pay with visa card. If i have to order a cd then i will have to go through a huge expensive paper mill. I have tried this once when i ordered a football kit and a football video from England. I had to pay VAT (norwegian VAT on top of the English one ofcourse), postal handling fee, import tax and finally VAT on the import tax. All in all £40 for importing £70 of goods.

I dont like piracy, and i buy all games that I think are great (from reviews, testing at friends or testing demos/illegal Versions). Still I admit that I could not stand waiting 3 months for Birth of the Federation and I played an illegal Version and discovered that it was crap. Therefore i never bough the game when it finally arrived. The same has happened bout three times with other games.

What I am trying to say here is that the game distribution is important because games have a very short life before something better comes by. "Everyone" reads the same reviews on the net, and ppl expect to find the games in the store soon after a game has gone gold. Dont expect ppl to read about the hottest new game for months before they can try it themselves.

This might not be a big issue for ppl living in US og UK, but for me its a huge annoyance.