Problem here in Brazil, unfortunately, isn't only for games.

Import taxes for electronics can reach up to 70% of the original price PLUS SHIPPING.

Yes, you read right. I know from first hand experience.

In fact, aside from books, almost everything else has high import taxes.

For instance: Figures - [xspblog.com]

Government claims this is to "protect the internal market", which is utter BS because we don't really have equivalent quality electronic products in Brazil. We do have some brands, but they are all inferior to foreign counterparts and they all just assemble stuff in Brazil... most parts are still imported.

But they receive tons of tax reduction from the government to operate this way, and they became big companies due to that.

The end result is that companies in Brazil, specially the small starting ones, have a hard time investing in technology.

Government keeps filling their pockets with the people's hard earned money (not to mention corruption schemes), and the development of technology on companies, education and all areas advances at turtle steps.

But that's an old song here in Brazil. As most politicians are only interested in their own wages, well being and gives a flying fuck to the people.

Another example is how almost every money invested in culture and technology is completely controled by the government.

Years ago, we had this boom in the game development industry, with some games reaching international status and serving as example to more people go after this market.

But as soon as a new president took place, all government fund for games were shut down. Couple of years ago, when I started on my post-graduate course on Game Development, what we had as teachers where all people from those companies who went bankrupt or decided to close their companies due to that.

Also, in the movies industry, we end up with stuff like a movie about the life of our president (no, I'm not joking unfortunately - [en.wikipedia.org]) and other crap that was produced in the best interest of the government using it's funds.

So you can imagine how hard it is to create cultural content to criticize the government. We still do, it's true, far more than other latin american countries... and Brazil still enjoys plenty of democracy when compared to some neighbors. But it's not as good as our government makes it to be.