Pirates of Khadda Market

There is a very different type of Silicon Valley in Pakistan. One of the many places that symbolize the city's charm is known as Khadda Market. From noon to midnight, it is alive with the noise of crowded restaurants and people begging. There are many people who come to Khadda to eat paratha rolls and biryani on their cars.

For most of the 2000s, the market made me and my brother feel like we were in a video game store.

In the early 2000s, I played a video game. I returned from the hospital with a cut on my forehead. During our play, I was steel-chaired with a teddy bear and thrown into a door. I took advantage of my brother's doting back home. The game we played was on our old console.

My brother was more aware of the broader gaming world. He convinced our parents to buy a PS2. I was happy to play with my army men, but I didn't know where the black console came from. Sometimes, wide-eyed, I heard the whispers of a gaming cornucopia. I was also able to make the pilgrimage soon after.

I had never been to Game Ocean before. The store was dark. The smell of paan and floor cleaner was strong in the air. I could see the discs that were on the wall. The games were printed on copy paper and packaged in plastic film. I would love to experience these new worlds.

I heard a loud noise from the shopkeeper. I tipped the counter to get a better look at him as he played Metal Slug. He handed me the controller. I felt the flutter of my love for games after taking it. My brother came back with paratha rolls. He beckoned from the door. I would return before the end of the day.

Maybe it was the fact that most of the games cost a small amount of money. Maybe it was how Shadow of Rome glitched right at the moment we subdued a certain Senate guard, or maybe the times we would be left scratching our heads as we were kicked into a shadowy landscape. It became apparent to us that there was something wrong with our games. I realized at the age of 10 that they were illegal.

The benefits of having an affordable, unlimited library at our fingertips were worth the small annoyances. If we could just live out another story, did we really need to resolve it? My brother and I used to browse the rack at Game Ocean, figuring out what to play next. The young shopkeeper would encourage me to buy whatever title I wanted. My brother would lift me up if I barely brushed the top shelf. I peered at the locked display case as I grabbed my game. There, in gleaming hard-plastic cases, there were a few legitimate games that the shop didn't want to sell.

A second copy is better described as a roll of the dice than a first copy. From clothes to watches and games to computer software, crowds of Karachiites gather at merchants that can provide them with the trappings of Western life at a cheaper price. The items don't match expectations sometimes. As a touchy preteen eager to fit in among my friends, I once huffed out of a busy clothing store when presented with an ill-fitting pair ofLevees. Master Sahab wanted to show me more and spread one pair of jeans after another on his counter.

I dragged my mother out of the store.

I didn't think that a world where people would drop $30-50 for a movie or game was real. I thought of my city as the center of commerce. I didn't think that our cousins would bring a carton of cream rolls and a suitcase full of cheap movies with them. They would tell us which of the works of Tom Hanks were supposed to be the first copies, but were actually filled with shadowy figures in front of a video camera.

I couldn't think of anything else to think about.

I was sitting at the desk my brother used to sit at when I was starting middle school. After pulling my mom to Game Ocean, I looked through the window and saw that she was still there. She said " absolutely not".

It was up to me to start the negotiations since my brother was too busy with high school. I said that we deserved to experience the next generation of consoles because of improved hand eye coordination, resource management, and general knowledge. Where else would we learn how to make a delicious brew? The link between gaming and straight A's was obvious. Mom wasn't completely sure. Why don't you play the games on your PS3? I didn't have a master chief.

We returned home one day and found the console in the living room. My brother and I waited to power it on so we could see it. The PS2 was thrown from the TV stand. There were two originals bundled with the Xbox. The smooth green plastic cases were very comfortable to hold. For all their graphical awe, we soon tired of racing the same tracks and shepherding the same animals. We went to Game Ocean to look for our next campaign.

My brother wiped the disc clean with his shirt and told me to try it again. The item was purchased from the store. We were confused because we couldn't get it to run. We said we were anxious and disappointed. We were told to pack up the console and go back to Khadda. My brother and I hid behind her at Game Ocean. He reassured us that he hadn't sold us a dud.

He explained that we would need to have our consoles shipped to us. Old Town Saddar was rumored to have an electronics wizard chip consoles for a living.

After many searches, we found him. In a narrow alley filled with stalls selling everything from dried fruits to bathroomware, there are shadowy steps leading up to the second floor. We didn't want to step on the paan. He came back from prayer and was a hard worker. I was reminded of a wizard when he stroked his beard and blew away smoke from his soldering iron. I wasn't happy when he disassembled our white Xbox, but it was necessary. My brother and I fantasized about the moment we could finally slink across rooftops and take our leap of faith as Altar.

A chip on the console wouldn't always be enough. The piracy of video games was threatening the industry. We were given the legendary "magic CDs," discs that unlocked our consoles with software tricks before we started playing. Our collection grew even bigger. I finally agreed with my mom that we had too many games, more than our school friends, and from what we gathered from our cousins, more than our Western counterparts.

It was rare for me to pick out a new game every month. I did not want to part with a single game.

Dad would sometimes go up to the market for fun. I was determined to fix his PDF reader before he had to go back to school.

You would almost be certain to see a Windows activation pop-up during a televised government press conference if you ran unlicensed software. Without adequate institutional funding, my father and others like him were on their own to get the apps they needed. He'd take his tower to Compu Station a few times a month to be fixed.

You can't trust a pirate, that's what we learned. Despite assurances that he was buying an original license, activation dialogs would reappear within days. Parts would disappear and be replaced with inferior parts. He returned to the store after his computer broke down frequently.

I had been spellbound ever since we met Gandalf. I thought I would join the ranks of the pirates and tinkerers who were able to change the laws of software to their will. I studied from Usenet to the demo scene. I thought I was ready that day.

My brother said that he was a hacker. My mom warned me that he was goofing off. She didn't say who they might be, but they'll know what you're doing. My brother told me not toinfecting Pa's computer with Viruses. I had a limited amount of time to see Dad.

I entered a few folders. The crack was not visible to the naked eye. I began the dance using the instructions. The internet is off The file needs to be dragged over. You need to launch the app once. It's time to close it. The internet is on again Don't register, launch but not register. If you want to use the key, open it. The license must be entered. And you are in, right?

He was impressed when he returned.

The pirates did what they were paid to do. It's not hacking that's hacks. Clicking is not code. I continued to tinker with software even though I wanted to be ahacker. I used to use cracked software with my own installation screen to build credibility, as well as a prompt for users to use my referral link to get more free storage space. I helped build a basic learning management system for my high school, as well as teaching myself how to code for Age of Empires.

I realized there was more to computing than uploading work to a tracker. Sometimes I wish we could just bite the bullet and pay for what my brother wanted but we couldn't.

When I entered high school, the gaming world began to shift. The new focus on online gaming requires original games, otherwise your console would be caught when talking to a server. While playing World at War with strangers, I was hit with Microsoft's banhammer and had to uninstall the game. I was kicked out of the game and our console was not connected to the internet.

There was a message on the screen. I was banned from doing anything for a long time.

I lost one of my players in the Army of Two. I couldn't bring myself to play alone after the years of joy and laughter that we had with couch co-op. I waited for him to come back.

My classmates, who were sucked into the popularity of the new PS4 and XBOX One, coughed up the money to buy a few originals that they would play online. When they got home from school, they dreamed about playing Call of Duty. I couldn't join them without a console. My brother and I found our own connection to the world of mobile games in college. I would get two bubbles on my phone. "wanna play?" After that, we would eat our chicken dinners and fire up the mobile game.

I would go to college in the US a few years later. For the first time in my life, I was able to spend my disposable income. I was ready to pay the sums that had come due even if it was something from the App Store or a subscription for my dad. I had wrestled with the ethics of piracy for a long time. It was all about access.

We pulled the plug on the next generation of consoles because we were done waiting. We are thousands of miles apart, but online gaming brings us together like it did a decade ago. I laugh as he gets hit repeatedly by a windmill in Fall Guys, or I sigh as I follow him into a camp in Battlefield with nothing but a pistol and a panic as we try to escape griefers inGTA.

Even as piracy and cracked games become harder to find, many people still choose to play with Khadda. I prefer that cheat code left behind.

A software engineer at a startup in the Bay Area, Abbas graduated from Yale University. He just finished his first run-through of The Office and has been looking at vacuums.