Hello. and yeah, my first post. Ive been using eBay a lot as of late, but mostly for acquiring PC hardware that’d cost me a lot if bought locally, and just happened across sellers selling quite a few titles. I was wondering if they also count as buying original games (assuming they sold genuine copies, not bootlegged) from the translation companies or something like that.
Havent checked if ordering from official sites like Jast USA also support Paypal. (doubt it…?)
Do you actualy live in EU ?
If so, just buy you games on http://www.archonia.com. You can pay by bank deposit.
No, i’m stuck on this island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where America’s Day Begins. (Guam)
And shipping here takes like 2-5 weeks (puke)
I think they have advertised it as new in box. Maybe resellers who got their stock from http://www.pcrdist.com and got one too many.
Agh… no wonder there are no Paypal payment methods in the Mature Audiences category. Pain :S
I need staff people to clarify ~_^
Let me directly say, as a game developer, that this is not true. This line is fed by certain big companies who want to maximise profits and can’t stand the idea of anyone paying less than top-dollar for their games - and also really don’t want someone ELSE making a huge profit off their games.
If you buy a used copy of the game, then the original company selling the game made only one sale, but two people got to play the game. This is less good, for them, than if both people had bought the game at full price. However, many people buy games /knowing that they can resell them/ and therefore can afford to spend a little more on buying the game new, because they’ll get some of that money back. If I buy a game for $30 and sell it to you for $15, we each paid $15 for the game. You could consider that we joined forces to buy the game for a price that we could afford. If each of us could only afford to pay $15 for a game, then without the ability to buy and sell used, neither of us could get the game.
Now, yes, if that same used copy is passed from player to player and is resold three hundred times with none of that money going back to the seller, that’s sort of bad. It’s also sort of unlikely. If you want to be sure you’re not contributing to that, buy games that have only been used once, and don’t resell them again.
Obviously, if you CAN afford to buy a new copy, it’s better for the company if you do so.
Now, there is another way that used copies get sold, and this is the one that really pisses off content developers. Say you buy a new game from a store for $50. You play it and then you try to sell it back to the store when you’re done with it. They pay you a piddly $10 in store credit, then turn around and resell your used copy for $45 - just barely less than the cost of the new game. So not only are they reselling used copies, but they’re making a pile of PROFIT off it, and none of that money goes to the company that made the game.
Don’t buy used copies from stores. Buy them direct from players.
As for games that are advertised as new-in-box, be really careful. There are legitimate new-game sellers on ebay, and there are a bunch of thieving pirate scum who burn things to disc and sell those. (I seriously hate these people.) Investigate the seller before you spend your money.
IIRC jlist does have an official ebay account and sometimes sells games at a discount there. So yes, there are legitimately new games on sale on ebay sometimes.
Trouble is, how to find out if that is so or not (genuine or ripped) as i dont really look at detailed feedback profiles as proof that they do legitimate business (when it comes to games); so unlike buying used computer hardware, since you can leave feedback if you find it’s Dead On Arrival, thus my policy of not leavig feedback until i receive it and find it is working/legitimate. (and yeah, i rreally have to wait for flat rate shipping to get here >(
O.o O RLY? J-List doing business on eBay??? Me wonders if they accept Paypal and ship worldwide, then… (to consider that Eroge are NOT in the Mature Audiences Category, hehehe…)
That also depends…if the game is out-of-print there is no harm to the company at all and it actually boosts the economy as a whole and if it’s a reselling company, it helps produce jobs as well, though it usually isn’t.
The other problem is “Would you have bought this game for [X amount of money]?”
If the answer is a definite “no” but you can buy it lower used, then it is also not hurting the company. They have already sold the game and made money off of it. However at the same time, if the game recently came out, waiting a bit can often lower the price to the point you’d buy it retail, in which case the company still gets some benefit from it, not as much as they would at full price, but since we are assuming there was a definite “no” to the higher price then there is no loss (assuming the company isn’t selling below cost to produce it, but even then if it is cutting costs just to clear inventory it is still getting more money that it would by not selling).
If you can. Economics still plays a factor here. I bought Tactics Ogre PS1 for $35 at one of those stores and even at the time it was selling on ebay for no less than $50 (and has gone up since). And knowing a friend who will part with their valuable games like that is rare.
The answer to this is a bit complicated. Basically, no matter what any product maker says, it is long standing policy they don’t get to fully control every aspect of how their product is used. The cost to society at large would be too great. That said, they are allowed very broad control.
If nobody could ever sell used product, then out of print titles would be lost to everyone – for little to no gain by the company (generally it went out of print because they aren’t interested in selling it anymore) and there’s no sense in that. Neither is there sense in the kind of “sharing” going on via BitTorrent, so it’s clear that some kind of compromise is needed. It’s just not clear where. In general no, forbidding used game sales has never been permitted by law.
Now, 1) there are a lot of filthy rip-off artists on eBay pretending to sell legitimate software that is actually bootlegged. I have no respect for such scum; if you’re going to pirate something, there’s no point in paying for it since there’s no difference between a) a bootleg you pay for, and b) a bootleg you get for free – except you’re out money.
This brings me to point 2): The point of buying something legitimately is to know that the original creators were compensated. Even if you’re buying 4th-generation-used, the original company got its due from somebody. This is basically the only reason to ever pay for games, movies, etc: the bootleg copies are basically the same in terms of content (unless there are a lot of feelies in the packaging, but that only goes so far), so the point of paying is to give the creators money.
And in the case of b-games, the legit sales are very low. So is it right to purchase used? Well, that’s a very hard question to answer; but you CAN say that if you can buy new, then you should. If for no other reason than higher sales figures means the company does better, and can release more games. If a game sells two million, then one sale isn’t even a blip; if it sells two thousand, well, that’s different.
It is tough, yes. My husband’s been burned (paid for something that turned out to be fake - they refunded his money immediately when he complained, but still).
Are they selling more than one game on a disc? That’s an obvious pirate.
Do they have lots of screenshots from within the game, but no pictures of the actual disc or box? That’s a warning sign.
Are they selling multiple copies of the same game within one auction, promising a copy to everyone who pays? That’s a warning sign.
What else do they sell? If they have EVERY h-game on sale but no info indicating that they’re a store or buying wholesale, that’s a bad sign. If they sell other clearly dodgy products - bootleg anime “whole series in one box, region-free!” collections, “100 top MP3s!” collections, that’s a very bad sign.
If nothing else, you can always ask - when I was hunting for a copy of Divi-Dead sellers would admit to me that they were selling CD-Rs. :x
Price is also a good indicator. The old saying still rings true…
“If it sounds to good to be true, it probably is.”
There are always deals to be made on ebay, naturally, but if you see a copy of Yume Muri Kusuri even with a stock box art photo and it’s selling for $5 it probably is a fake…or just the CD (in which case they usually show an image or indicate it somehow).
The other thing is to check S&H vs. starting bid. If the starting bid is 0.01 or 0.99 and the S&H is like 10 or 15 (not modified for currency exchange) it’s likely not from a legit source. There are a few execptions to this (SD memory cards) but those are exceptions, not the rule.
I ordered few h-games on Ebay. I checked every picture and information. I could realize some h-games were pirates by the sellers.
I am telling you that GBA games were still sold counterfeit more than pirated h-games in Ebay. I did check every location but some sellers in USA sold counterfeit GBAs and pirated PC games. If you may receive pirated h-games, then you may report it to Ebay or Jast USA including Peter Payne/Lamuness.
I am considering either of these two sellers.
http://myworld.ebay.com/zarakiaku
Only 1 neg feedback, but noted was due to buyer not paying for item, resulting in nuclear exchange.
Game pricing varied from 26.95 to 32.95, S&H $3.00 (??) (For my location, 96929)
Two listings from seller: (search by copy-pasting item# on the eBay search tab)
Kana - Little Sister - 330201702908
Yume Miru Kusuri - 330212079556
http://myworld.ebay.com/jp-animegames
No neg feedback, but could not view finished transactions due to being listed as Private.
Game pricing varied from 28.95 to 32.95, S&H $4.00 (??)
Lisitngs from seller:
Kana - 220198191832
YMK - 220198191959
Has more titles available, but some of them are in Back-Order status (?)
Both have average pricing, and S&H seems OK(?) for their B-games, But i don’t really know since i have no prior knowledge with shipping package size prices for anything.
Opinions?
If I were you, look at how much they charge for S&H, what kinda packaging they use for shipping and where they’re located and what they carry. Some buyers offer some discounts if you buy like 4 to 6 items, you get 10% discount or another item at a reduced price while others don’t. Though if you can’t afford blowing that kinda money like a few hundred in 1 month, then you’re better off not taking the discount and ordering a few at a time. 
Also, consider very carefully the conditions of said items. Sometimes, they’re new but packaging is a little damaged, hence the reduced pricing that certain sellers offer. Some buyers are generally content with creased boxes and even boxes with slightly faded/blotched printing(when printers run out of ink or are in the start of printing process), while others prefer a mint or near-mint package. So ask and make sure, first since some sellers are also greenhorns and forget to include specific details. If you’ve got queries, you can always contact the sellers for more information.
And there’s one thing: I know it likely doesn’t apply to H-games but some publishers have been known to reprint games with very poor quality printing on the cds. Therefore, there sometimes is almost no way of telling apart an original from a pirated cd. The only way you can do is trust the seller.