Inside Pakistan’s Video Game Grey Market 🏴‍☠️

This is the gateway to heaven. No, the stairway to heaven. Look at that.

Video games as far as the eye can see, my friends. This market behind me was once the heart of Pakistan's movie and music piracy scene.

Now it's time for something else. Video games. So we are going to explore this market. I've made videos about video game markets across India and Pakistan.

And now in this video, we are going to head into one of the most infamous. Karachi's Rainbow Center. Man, it already started so just on this side of the road, people shooting up.

Had a lady already come and ask me for money, which is, you know, women don't approach men in this country.

So that was strange as well. Man, there's a lot going on here. There's a lot going on in Karachi. This place is, you know, a little crazy.

So let's see if that piracy culture is still here in the Rainbow Center. I'm sure we'll find some hacking, some Kraken and some jailbreaking inside.

And yeah, let's just see what other kind of like video game stuff we find in such an old market like this.

Okay, so first off, the market sees two floors here and then there's like apartment complex above it.

So let's go inside and explore and look for video games. I'm sure we'll find some retro stuff and let's see what the scene is here in Pakistan for video games.

So these guys are just throwing like dry fruit.

This used to just be all CD shops and DVD shops. Okay.

Oh, we can still see some remnants of that here, actually. Look at this. Assalamualaikum, Jijli Kaga.

This is Karachi's Rainbow Center. And most people walking past today have no idea what this place used to be.

Before Netflix and the Internet, this building was Pakistan's entertainment industry for decades. The Rainbow center was the country's biggest piracy hub.

Movies, music, software, games. This market supplied all of Pakistan. But how did this market fall and become all about video games while this man was there?

90s, 400, 580 or 90s?

I can't believe this. The light's been off since like 8 in the morning. So how are these guys going to do business, you know,

how are they going to do business in the dark here? And I'm just walking out to the other side of the market and there's lanes.

Okay. You can see down the end there.

So it's like a square market down here.

Let's check upstairs.

People spitting pan everywhere.

All over India, all over Pakistan.

And yeah, the light is off up here as well. But it's, it's two stories so a lot of the shops are just closed their shutters because too hard to do business.

So I think the guy at Sardar Games is correct. He told me, karl, come back tomorrow when the power's on or else your video is not going to be any good.

So yeah, he's right. He's right. I'll come back Kalia Parso and we'll be able to see something. Okay.

I love this.

So that driver tried to give me a ride for free but no way I could take that. He's doing hard work, man.

So day two and I'm back at Rainbow Center.

Let's go and check out the gaming shops. Hopefully the power is back. Let's check that first. Markets here in Pakistan can be pretty intense so I need my phone working so I can travel confidently here.

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And we're back. Sadar

Games up here.

So this is Sadar Games and it looks like a very nice store what they've got going on here. So we've got PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5.

Yeah Asli copies now. Genuine authentic copies. Yes, original. Original, that's the word it and then we've even got PlayStation 3 down here as well.

More games

up consoles

repair upgrade

and you sell consoles up consoles.

So in here this is the repair station

conse consoles based

we have all varieties PS5s box 1s box series PS3, PS4, 360 PlayStation 3 up 360.

Video games.

With games

20, 25, 25 games.

This console is China console. This game game stick is name and 20000 games which arcade Sega Atari is all the.

All of them is games in one stick. So this is retro gaming. Retro gaming. Wow. Justin which one is stick in all of these games is.

And this goes into the TV is it?

Wow. It looks just like a PlayStation controller three

only four thousand. You have a king of fighter, street fighter, Mario Tekken three all of the game Xbox 360 or PlayStation 2.

Yeah. Modified Hana modified Jailbreak which is game is installed have a 50 and 60 games up is hard drive and 2025 games in USB.

Okay. Or down on no hazar. No hazar. 24,250 rupees per game installation on the PS4. Cheap man. Because brand new it might be around 10,000 rupees for one game minimum 2000 maximum 16,000.

Yeah, but you have a jailbreak 250 and 200 game installation. That means one original game can cost about a week's salary here.

So for most people piracy isn't a choice. It's the only option. These games are priced for American incomes.

Would you work five days just to buy one game? This stuff is a copy controllers of PS4 colorful edition.

3000 each

per handle. But you maybe buy original controller. Original brand new sixteen thousand. One controller, sixteen thousand rupees.

So the cool thing is you can come to these stores and actually like, you know, play the game, test stuff out.

They'll show it to you before you buy it so you know that it works. Remember when we used to have that back in the west when you could go into a video game store and actually play the consoles and play the games.

I just made a subscriber here.

The Red Ring of Death. The three red lights. No, it was an old version. This is the newer version. Xbox One S.

Oh one S. It has power supply issues. Yeah. And what's your favorite game? My favorite game is campaign is Red Dead Redemption or multiplayer is Warzone.

He's got good choices. Ain't no you guys. I want to hear your favorite games in the comments as well.

And this is what the market looks like with the lights on. A videos convert car.

You guys are doing that?

Yes, I can speak English. And you,

this is your uncle.

-80s or-90s.

Bollywood films.

Gaming has taken over here and we'll see a lot more of that upstairs. But parts of the old piracy market are still alive, especially movies.

So surprisingly there is still quite a lot of

pirate movie sales happening here. And this is a new film from India

Film Hindustan Se.

Yeah. Ranveer Singh. Ranveer Singh. And I can tell you a thing or two about Ranveer Singh. He's a Sindhi.

His parents are from this. All his grandparents are from this city, I think. And they came across to India during partition.

Yeah. Very famous Sindhi guy in India. Yeah. Film kit nehrupe.

300 dvd so sub films.

Kiski site say

movie box. Movie box, movie box.

Cheaper than that guy. You gotta shop around, man. Good talk. Thank you. Thank you. There's a lot of clothing being sold down here, but apparently all the video games are up on the next floor now.

But just imagine this entire market just used to be selling pirate movies and music back in the day. Look how many this guy has.

Video

usb, dvd,

usba.

I just keep finding amazing things along here. Let's go check out the video games upstairs.

This is the gateway

to heaven. No, the stairway to heaven.

Look at that.

Video games as far as the eye can see, my friends.

Oh my God.

Wonderful, Aina.

All these lanes are filled with video game shops and video game repair stores and kite shops as well.

And it just keeps going all the way down here too. The feeling I get from this place is just like

nostalgia. And it reminds me of something. It jogged your memory up here. When I was six or seven, my dad, he took me to the Commodore Amiga meetup at the Pakaranga Plaza at the library.

And it just blew my mind. It was dudes with tables and they had on their tables their computers and all their games and they were swapping games, they were selling games, they were giving away sheer wear.

And I just walked around just like this, just amazed. Just like these kids, you know, just like the. Just amazed.

Assalamualaikum.

And yeah, just like them. I was just walking around amazed, looking at

the computers and the video game consoles and yeah, that really got me interested in computers and video games because I was already gaming.

I started gaming on my grandfather's Commodore 64 in the early 90s. And then after some years, my dad, he brought us an Amiga 600.

And I was playing like cannon fodder lemmings California games. And I was just a computer addict from then.

And eventually it led me to like, obviously I'm a console gamer now.

I was a hardcore Xbox gamer for so long, but I've kind of lost. Xbox has lost its way. Right now I'm more on the PlayStation team.

But it led me to even studying computer science. You know those early years when my dad would take me to that computer market at the library?

Yeah. Incredible. So that's how I feel. I just feel nostalgic to be back here. And it reminds me of the early days back in New Zealand when we had markets and we had computer meetups.

Like this. We don't got this anymore. There's barely any video game shops left. So online now. And I'd love to hear from you guys in the comments.

Where did your video game journey start? What was your first game? Let me know in the comments, I'll reply.

Upload game Kal tehe

Manpasant game

GTA 5. You guys are too young to play GTA.

Very nice.

The kids are having fun.

Bye. Bye. So this is kind of the heart

of the video game stores here. We've got like must be about 10 or 12 video game shops in this market, man.

It's just bringing me back to the old days in New Zealand when we had multiple video game shops in a mall.

But here.

Yeah,

it's still happening, man. Video game markets are still happening here. Oh, this guy's got God of War on the screen here.

Assalamualaikum Ji

karaye.

Okay. So in this market I've realized there's like the fancy stores, you know, the nice bright fancy stores, wall to wall of games.

But if you come down these lanes, you're going to find, you know, the far less modern, the more traditional stores and in them you're going to find really old stuff, really old games.

You know, you might find a gym in there, you might find something rare if you take the time to look for these.

Because there's just like a wall of games here, Old retro games. Okay. Third floor is parking and then you've got apartments up the top here.

And oh, this guy's selling like cold drinks. I'm gonna have to change the numbers here because there's like must be 30 or 40 shops here now.

And five or six of them are repair stores, like this one, MK Repairing Center.

Yeah. Pokemon card.

Not original.

Oh, okay, that's first copy. Yeah, first copy. Okay, first copy. Pokemon card. So you can buy like the whole set.

Yeah. Wow. Whole set. 4,000 Charizard. Okay. Nice, man, nice. Cool. And what

price. And books. Wow. PlayStation 2 games. So many PlayStation 2 games. There's hundreds here. Holy moly.

And the Wii games. Yeah. Oh, there you are. Wii Xbox 363, PS2. It's like a gold mine in here.

And then here there's. Oh my God, a whole wall of Xbox360 games. Indiana Jones, Lego, Mass Effect. Mass Effect is incredible.

Gears of war, Dragon Age 2. Everything's here you could want.

Oh my God, it keeps going. PlayStation 3 games. So FIFA,

UFC Dance Star. Infamous.

We've got Modern Warfare, Tom Clancy, Assassin's Creed series.

Oh, the PlayStation 3. He has the most of that. Keeps going DVDs, Blu Ray.

Wow. Amazing

resistance of man. Great game. PlayStation 3

DVD. Nice place if you want to get some original games, man. Come here. It's amazing what you might find.

You know, you might find some real gems. And amongst here if you spend the time looking or. How much are these PlayStation 3 games?

Different price. Game of depend on game. Acha. Like the range. 500 rupees to 5 to 2000. 5 to 2000 rupees for this one is 500 GTA 5.

2000.

Kidney chips replace cutting.

Isn't it great? Just how many engineers are out here repairing

consoles? You know how hard that would be in my country in New Zealand to get something repaired? First off, it would be just too expensive for someone's time for their labor to repair something.

But here you can come and get anything, any console repaired. This guy down here, he's.

He's sorting almonds probably for this fruit and nut shop.

Okay. There's actually way more than 20

video game stores here. It just keeps going like. There's another guy here, the game store,

he's just opening. You know, it's like 2 or 3pm and people are still, still opening. You can see this used to be a music store.

And up here you can see CD and VCD center, video cd. This was called Unique CD center.

And then we have up here. This is all closed, by the way. It's all closed now. It's all gone. Music. Mustang Music Fun, basically.

Cd, dvd, video, Master cd,

DVD center. A name of quality. You get a VCD or DVD here. Royal Records. Oh my God. As a movie lover, as a music lover, as a video games lover, this is where I would have been every week.

And getting my cg.

That sound of people shutting the shutters, all that stuff's gone now, man.

Now it's just video games left.

And the one, the one video store here. And so now inside of these old closed stores, it's a Godan. They just.

How do you translate that? Just storage space inside these old stores now. So sad, man. Oh, I would have loved to see these, you know, operating.

I gotta show you one more movie store because this is. I know. This might be the best movie store in all of Pakistan.

Thank you very much. Like floor to roof movies just, just everywhere, man. DVDs, Blu Rays.

Be careful. Yeah,

yeah. They scratch.

4K. Oh my God. There's walls. There's walls of movies. Oh my God, man.

Is this one of the last remaining movie shops? Yeah.

Oh, wow.

So this is A specialty store for movie collectors. The movie collectors of Pakistan will be coming to this store and getting whatever they want.

Just amazing, man. Just amazing. There's even a Westlife plaque up there from a record label.

Wow. This is a blurry collection. 3D,

roughly.

DVDs just appealing. Just like 500 each.

House of card.

500 each, sir. I think you must have gone and brought everybody's stock while they were closing their stores.

Yeah, yeah, smart guy.

I'll show you the. Huh?

Sunny Leone. No, no. This market is just amazing. I thought it would be, like, see, look at the, like, empty halls.

You know,

I thought this would mostly just be about, like, video games, but there's like six or seven hallways, like, this long, and they've all

got all these old video shop names along them. Okay, this is how many shops they used to be selling DVDs in here.

Yeah, a lot. But it's all finished now because of the Internet now. Crazy. Oh, here's one.

Blue Bird and the film. Ziddi.

Asalaam Alaikum GK.

Marinam joker.

So there's still a couple of little video shops. They're mostly just downloading from websites.

He just invited me for lunch.

He's having chicken, potatoes, and rice. And these cats, they are busy watching Mother and daughter.

Hello. Hello. Boss.

Dude just offered me to sit down and have chicken with her. Many ace. Totally, totally serious. Like, I'd sit there and eat with them, but I already ate.

I just had Nahari.

You can see this guy is installing the Last of Us Part two. Incredible game. I know a lot of people hate it, but I love that game.

It was so depressing. I love dark and depressing games like that. Yes.

So, yeah, just a simple shop. And they're selling

game installations here. Come and get whatever you want. Software B, Adobe

Word

sub Cheese. Thank you, bro.

Raheem.

I found raheem again.

Okay. It's not just playing.

So this is just a, you know, used to be dvd, international VCD and DVD company,

but now it's Raheem repairing for all consoles. So you definitely come and check out Raheem. He's a. He's a shy.

Shy, nice fella. Oh, I'm sad to leave. I'm sad to leave, but I have a massive backlog of games that I have to finish myself at home.

My backlog is so big because I'm always traveling, but when I take a couple of months off each year, I go home and I'm back to New Zealand.

I mean, and I play video games for, like, two. One or two months straight, man.

How did that make you feel in there? Nostalgic. Tell me some stories in the comments about you guys. How you got into gaming.

What's your favorite game? I'll see you in the comments.