As an Indonesian, born & live here all my life, I really am ashamed of this fact. I used to play pirated games too when I was a kid, all the way till college. The only authentic games I bought was the ones that are not pirated (such as FF6, Secret of Mana, Shen Mue, etc). After that, I started buying official products with my own dough. I guess it all started with GTA San Andreas & Shadow Hearts 2. Back then, I thought that I love those games so much It's worth it to buy the official one, even if it's a lot more expensive. Playing online is very important to me too. Pirated console / games will never give me the complete experience. They break easily too, heck some doesn't even work at all. This realization is strengthened even more when I work as a copywriter in a multi-national advertising agency. Having our ideas stolen sucks, and it's the same for the game developers.

I kept telling my friends to stop playing pirated games. But even with my own logical train of thoughts,

they just won't listen. For them, game is a small, insignificant industry. They think it's not worth buying the official products if they can get it cheap. It's pathetic, really. Considering they can buy a $300-$400 product but not $40-$50 games. Fortunately more and more Indonesian gamers have changed their minds. In Kaskus (Indonesians' largest forum) there is a community of gamers who trade used PS3 / Xbox games. Some even sell / buy new ones. There's also a Steam community there. AFAIK there are 1400 registered Indonesian Steam users. An insanely small number, but a great start nonetheless