Some idiot selling games they don't own on an auction site

[Kinoko]

Hey guys

Someone recently let me know Cirque de Zale was being sold on some Australian auction site.

http://www.oztion.com.au/vshops/item.aspx?itemid=8264931id=

How ridiculous. Honestly.

I can only assume they are some kid, but at the same time, they've got a LOT of other things for sale and seem to have a history on the site. The fuck? I really can't make sense of it and Oztion (jesus, what a stupid name) is not making it easy for me to get it taken down.

Right now I'm writing to the seller, but if they don't do anything, I'm going to have to sign something or other and physically send it in. What a ludicrous pain in the arse! Just so I can stop some idiot from charging money for an old, shitty game which is freely available over the web.

Anyway - they seem to be selling a great number of games. I see Yahtzee's stuff among others. Might be something some of you should look into as well.

This is small fry but it really bugs me. This is just the wrong attitude and I hate being made to go to all this effort just to stop something so ridiculous. As if anyone would buy this stuff. Would they?? People are clearly surprising me.

[Arboris]

Eh, apparently putting disclaimers in games like:"This is a free game created with the AGS engine. Not for sale or rent. Visit http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk for more information." when a game starts isn't a bad idea.

[Calin Leafshade]

Yea I also suggest the disclaimer.. programs like uTorrent do that alot.

When McCarthy is being sold I'll feel like i've really 'made it'

[blueskirt]

Whatever you did it seems to have worked, I search this guy's store and I can't find Cirque de Zale or Yahtzee's games.

Also Cirque de Zale is not shitty.

[Darth Mandarb]

I had this same thing happen a few years back with my first [only] game.

However I got lucky 'cause the guy/gal was a total idiot and was selling the game, but using my site/link as the download.  So I changed the file that was downloaded to a small exe that said, "You have paid for a freeware game.  I suggest you get your money back and download the game for free as it was intended!"

A few days later it was removed from the site.

In the end there's not much that can be done about this ... it's inevitable I think.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

The in-game disclaimer isn't going to help much when you buy something over ebay.  You won't even know until you receive it, at which point the seller (who was a dick anyway) isn't going to respond to you.  Theft happens, and this is just a variant of piracy except, instead of stealing a game you sold, they're selling a game you released for free.  As far as I'm concerned, if someone buys a free game it's their fault; google takes little to no effort.

[Dualnames]

I suggest we fuck them up! Seriously some message or something in the exe, should be for every AGS game, so that people don't fall for it. The guy sold 100 Cirques De Kinoko.

[Ryan Timothy B]

You could probably argue it over Paypal... doubtful, but maybe.  But the idiot who purchases these games has to know it's freeware when they receive it.  Also the person might not try to sell it if the title screen says "freeware game".

[Igor Hardy]

How much did single copies go for?

[m0ds]

It didn't appear any copies sold. Well, I say that. It says "100 copies left". Plus the sale time has "ended".

[buddha]

That quantity of a '100' is just silly as it's a digital download... there's always a 100 left... even if he sells a 1000 copies...

I glanced over the selling history log for a couple of pages. It doesn't look like he sold any copies of this game lately. Looking at his history it also looks like he farmed several user-ids to leave himself positive comments, I'm not 100% sure, though.

[LimpingFish]

Looking through his stuff, it just looks like he's selling a bunch of random shit. And a whole slew of Ebooks. How do you sell a second-hand Ebook?

I guess you would read the "Complete Newbies Guide to Buying to Selling Ebooks" Ebook, which is on sale for two bucks! Or you could just download thousands of Ebooks from BitTorrent and open your own eBay store.

Seems like he's chancing his arm to me. Or is just incredibly stupid.

[Ponch]

Looking through his stuff, it just looks like he's selling a bunch of random shit. And a whole slew of Ebooks. How do you sell a second-hand Ebook?

I could never sell my old Ebooks. I write in the margins on almost every page. (It's hell to clean off the monitor, let me tell you.)

- Ponch

[Tuomas]

I suggest you put a trojan in your game. That way noone would go selling it, or, at least the y wouldn't buy!

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

A Spartan would be more deadly.

[TerranRich]

A Spartan would be more deadly.

THIS! IS! PIRACY!!!!

[Kinoko]

I have no idea if it was my email that made them take it down or perhaps some freak occurance of concience, but I'm happy I didn't have to take it further.

Selling freeware games and eBooks... ugh.