Touhou games cost about ten bucks in Japan. That is a very good value. Importing Touhou games is considerably more expensive, about twice as much. That is not a very good value.
The idea of digital distribution to negate the cost of importing crossed my mind, but then it occured to me that this is silly because everyone always downloads the games the day they become available anyway, and the point is to support ZUN, not to have legit copies of the game.
Therefore, ZUN should get himself a Paypal box or something for donations so westerners can send a couple bucks his way, clear our consciences, and merrily torrent his games as we always have. I would gladly pay about fifty bucks for all the touhou crap I have. ZUN gets free money, western fanbase looks better, nobody has to jump through any distribution-related hoops. Everyone wins.
Discuss.
It's great that you want to support the developer and I commend you for it. However, I think you're not looking at the picture as a whole. Having legitimate copies of the game supports Zun and the distributors who buy the game from him. It also respects the fact that he's developing commercial software. I can understand wanting to cut out the middleman if possible because it makes the prices more reasonable, but it limits his selling potential to not have said distributors to buy the games in bulk. Additionally, the idea of mutual unofficial piracy support is probably a bad idea fiscally. They'll only give what they think the games are worth and feel that's enough, instead of giving Zun what he wants for them.
The first idea of making them shareware I can mostly agree with. It would probably benefit his business model by increasing his customer base exponentially, eliminating packaging and allowing him to sell year 'round. It wouldn't make much extra effort on his part either. The second idea is closer to donationware, which usually isn't a commercial viability. Either way, I think there's one nagging problem that I believe was already mentioned; the foreign exchange rate. I doubt he's equipped to handle it himself directly and thus, it wouldn't even worthwhile for him to go to the bank and receive the money after all of the fees. As things are now, this isn't a problem for him.
Also, I don't think the importers are ripping us off. 30 dollars isn't a bad price for a rare quality 2d computer game to be delivered all the way from japan. It's actually a lot cheaper than the 50 or so dollars we pay for iffy new games and comparable to the price of most used classics we see in local retail stores. Let's not be bothered about it just when we don't get the direct manufacturer's price: As I see it, we're actually getting a comparatively good deal. Middlemen exist in virtually all industries and they need to make money too, when offering their services.
A massive multimillion-dollar drink company is on no conceiveable level with a single guy hammering out code in his free time.
Another point you're missing is that there are avenues where you CAN legally acquire his games and therefore support his work. If the games really were worth more than $15 to you, then you wouldn't mind paying the extra shipping fees or whatever.
While I agree with your second point as shown above, I disagree with your first. Big bad Coca~Cola? and lil' ol' Team Shanghai Alice are comparable, because they both offer their product in return for money. The only difference is that Coke is lots more people producing much more product in an organized and efficient manner, so they end up earning more. Let's not confuse great success with low humanity now. Big companies get a lot of work done and do so to profit. The people behind said companies are important to the process, as well as a heavy amount of responsibility and big demanding choices. Just because they make more doesn't mean they're not hard working people like the rest of us and as such, they deserve proportionate compensation for their effort. I think all of us would rather be richer than poorer if we could legitimately chose, so let's not be so quick to judge. Wether entities are big or small doesn't matter as regardless, there are people with aspirations and needs making efforts behind them. To put a new perspective on the manner, if Touhou became as big a name as Coke, would you think any less of it?
Uh, by the way, I'm sorry if I'm making the wrong assumption on what you think the difference between big corporations and the little guys is. It's a subject that comes up so often I habitually think "dehumanization". I think the idea of facelessness arises because people usually only see the brand names and the final products, thusly bypassing thoughts about the people behind them.
