The next day, Alex decided to take the high road and purchased a legitimate copy of PES 2013 from a reputable online store. This time, he made sure to download the game from an official source, and the installation process was smooth and hassle-free.

At first, the game seemed to be working fine. The graphics were a bit dodgy, but the gameplay felt familiar. Alex created a new team and started a match against the computer. However, things quickly took a turn for the worse.

Alex realized that he had made a rookie mistake. He had downloaded a pirated and heavily modified version of PES 2013, which was likely to be riddled with malware and bugs. He quickly uninstalled the game and deleted the files.

As he booted up the game, he was greeted with a much larger file size - over 4 GB - but the graphics and gameplay were top-notch. The experience was leagues apart from the dodgy 6 MB download.

As Alex tried to troubleshoot the issues, he began to suspect that something was amiss. He checked the game's properties and found that the file size was indeed 6 MB, but the game had been patched to work with a dodgy emulator.

The game started to lag, and the controls felt unresponsive. The AI was also ridiculously easy, and Alex found himself scoring goal after goal. He tried to play a match against a friend online, but the game crashed mid-match, citing a "connection error".

The moral of the story? If it seems too good (or small) to be true, it probably is!