> The professional tools are licensed at 100k-200k/year per seat each, there is no way around them if you want to actually tape out the chip.

Unless you talk about countries where people simply don't pay for software no matter what.

Some companies are just fine with 10 years old pirated Virtuosos in places like China.

It was a big surprise to me that even software which probably has less than 100 licensees globally is still getting warezed.