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Raf
Registered: Nov 2003
Posts: 343 |
Bomberland - illegal copy
http://allegro.pl/cartridge-bomberland-c64-i3907160321.html
here you can buy illegal copy of bomberland game, description says "Rom został zakupiony w firmie RGCD i użyty tylko w tym cartridgu ."
it means: "ROM was bought on RGCD and used only in this particular cartridge"
cartridges are sold by this guy: 11111olo
what do you think about it?
photos:
http://www.sendspace.pl/file/pic/1cae9bf5a79045b7ea7f380/view
http://www.sendspace.pl/file/pic/ca50d79db5b29c4ae5439bb/view
rest of cartridges are fake new-old-stock clones of Polish famous cartridge Black Box.
Prince of persia can also be seen - is it okay to sell it? |
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STE'86
Registered: Jul 2009
Posts: 274 |
beats me why anyone would want to spend real money on a knock off bomberland. If you don't want to pay for it, its available easily on the net for free. if you want the cart then you are probably a collector and surely would want the full monty with all the posters and box art etc.
as for PoP, he's a braver man than either Andreas or myself as neither of us fancied chancing our arm and selling that one. Being as how Disney own the copyright and they are renowned litigious bastards.
I can see that there would however be a market for a "proper" PoP cart with box and manual, and indeed would like to see that one myself. however it comes back to lawsuits and Disney again... |
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iAN CooG
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 3186 |
oh wow, someone is doing illegal copies of c64 stuff, that is some news ;)
just spread the word and make sure ppl are not buying from this guy. |
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TheRyk
Registered: Mar 2009
Posts: 2218 |
For sure, rather silly idea to make any profit, since in this scene people who shun buying originals altogether know how to get hold of a crack online without paying anyting.
Almost everyone who knows about the game and wants to buy it, will go directly to RGCD homepage, anyway, though, and even non-collectors such as myself who do not want the full package, rather spend 2 bob for an original download and thus, support the developers (with however little money), change a couple of header bytes and flash it to EF instead of paying 60 zsloty for a bootleg cartridge.
So I guess, Samar & RGCD can more or less ignore that.
However, I guess very(!) few buyers might be confused due to it's being offered in Poland which is also base country of Samar. So it seems alright to warn collectors. |
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Rough
Account closed
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 1829 |
To make cash of pirated software sucks. |
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Sounx
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2006
Posts: 30 |
I think it's a pathetic way to make money over the backs of uninformed people, with limited access and knowledge of internet, who want to play a game on their old computers.
Additionally, it's a shame that the productions from the people behind RGCD are shamelessy misused for own profit. Regardless of the fact that on our old machine illegal software is more or less the standard rather than the exception, I still think it's very wrong to make money like this from the hard work of others.
It's a disgrace and I hope they get shut down asap. |
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Conrad
Registered: Nov 2006
Posts: 847 |
Looks as though he uses black carts with a cut-out sticker, where officialy published carts are orange. So at least we can detect which ones are legal or not. |
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Mr. SID
Registered: Jan 2003
Posts: 424 |
As far as I'm concerned, the C64 version of Prince of Persia is public domain, you can download it right here. It's therefore also ok to sell it, if anyone can make a profit from that, I'm fine with it.
You can already buy EasyFlash cartridges with PoP pre-flashed, there's hardly any difference to this. |
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Stainless Steel
Registered: Mar 2003
Posts: 966 |
lol |
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Mclane
Account closed
Registered: Jan 2014
Posts: 16 |
Never made a penny from any of my hacks or cracks on the Atari 8bit, don't believe in it, swapping I have no issue with but making cash out of someone's hard work just tips my morals meter.
Ok swapping someone's work isn't exactly perfect but it happens and always had, thankfully as well as most of the gear would have been long gone instead of archived.
A sad old ex collector of 5 & 1/4 squares things, now just their digital versions. |
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wacek
Registered: Nov 2007
Posts: 513 |
Quote:Almost everyone who knows about the game and wants to buy it, will go directly to RGCD homepage, anyway
That's not entirely true, for PL at least. We see an inflood of people that are buying C64s to play games with them, and they are not related to scene (and even not interested in being related to it). They're driven purely by nostalgic reasons. On the most popular auction sites like allegro there is a lot of movement with the 64s nowadays (check: http://allegro.pl/stare-komputery-commodore-77930). Same goes for forums and retro-gaming events.
Now, our worry (I think I can speak also for Raf here) is that those people are not sufficiently informed and they will buy the illegal versions, so this guy making them will in fact steal the profit from the developers who deserve it. People will buy the copies because of lower price and lower shipping rates. Most of them will not even be aware what RGCD is. |
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Bitbreaker
Registered: Oct 2002
Posts: 504 |
Lölchen.
I'm pretty sure that noone will become a millionaire from all this. I guess selling esoteric stuff gives a higher yield. So if this is really meant for making big money, it must be due to desperate reasons. |
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wacek
Registered: Nov 2007
Posts: 513 |
Stealing is stealing, no matter if it's 20 euro or 2000 euro - that's my personal view. I guess it's easier to don't give a fuck though, as long as it concerns other people, right?
Of course it's not meant for big money, but since when does that even matter, when we're talking about someone's hard work? Is ripping code from a demo that is for free an OK thing in your book, because the demo has no net value whatsoever?
Have we really become that indifferent? That is pretty fucking sad. |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11350 |
somehow i find it amusing to complain about illegal copies of C64 games - on a site which is largely based around the subculture that defines itself largely through illegal copies of C64 games.
you should be proud. your game obviously is so good that someone bothers to make bootlegs from it.
that said, since the guy is selling the stuff openly via these auction platforms, it should be kinda easy to shoot him down - and ofcourse you should do that too :) |
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TheRyk
Registered: Mar 2009
Posts: 2218 |
I totally see the annoyed ppl's point, and even in our subculture which wouldn't exist today without yesterday's (and be quite different without today's) cracking imho, for sure bootlegging for profit was lame back then and is still so now. I made clear that warning collectors, especially from Poland, is good. What I meant with RGCD & Samar might decide to ignore is rather the question whether the damage is really worth all the law suit trouble. I'm pretty sure I would rather take Groepaz' view:
Quote:you should be proud. your game obviously is so good that someone bothers to make bootlegs from it.
than wasting too much time and energy. Of course the guy is so overly bold that he seems to beg for being snitched at that Polish ePay site admins, that shouldn't take very long and would at least give him the trouble of having to sell his bootlegs a little less openly elsewhere or even make it difficult to get rid of his stock if he already produced an amount that hurts not to be sold :) |
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STE'86
Registered: Jul 2009
Posts: 274 |
oh and this is just an FYI for Owen, the Bomberland knock off cart front is a scan of the free poster from inside the box.
It was the only artwork which I put "fire in the hole" on. none of the other bomberland art has that on.
and the black cart looks crap. BUT I do wish that the rgcd c64 cart shells weren't so retro and were more like the vcs ones with an indent panel for a real illustration :)
Bomberland and the new Phase Out art would look very nice across the whole front of the cart. |
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Bitbreaker
Registered: Oct 2002
Posts: 504 |
Quote: Stealing is stealing, no matter if it's 20 euro or 2000 euro - that's my personal view. I guess it's easier to don't give a fuck though, as long as it concerns other people, right?
Of course it's not meant for big money, but since when does that even matter, when we're talking about someone's hard work? Is ripping code from a demo that is for free an OK thing in your book, because the demo has no net value whatsoever?
Have we really become that indifferent? That is pretty fucking sad.
Wackee: sure, stealing is stealing, and that is also my view. I was not doubting that. I just wanted to underline that it is easier to pick up a normal paid job than selling those illegal copies. I wondered what drives people to do so.
As for me and code ripping, i don't mind, i chose to make most of my source public anyway and add some description to it. The wheel was reinvented too often already. |
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Kristian
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 126 |
Quoting Groepazsomehow i find it amusing to complain about illegal copies of C64 games - on a site which is largely based around the subculture that defines itself largely through illegal copies of C64 games.
My thoughts exactly... the irony of crackers complaining about game authors losing money is... funny. |
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Sounx
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2006
Posts: 30 |
Quote: Quoting Groepazsomehow i find it amusing to complain about illegal copies of C64 games - on a site which is largely based around the subculture that defines itself largely through illegal copies of C64 games.
My thoughts exactly... the irony of crackers complaining about game authors losing money is... funny.
The issue is not the illegality of the items sold and it's also not the fact that the developers are loosing money.
The game is available from CSDb as a cracked version anyway, so I fail to see why you guys seem to consider those points as 'the' issue.
Point is that somebody is making money over the backs of somebody else's hard work. I think it's strange to categorize that as 'amusing' or 'funny'. |
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hedning
Registered: Mar 2009
Posts: 4720 |
Actually it's not available as a crack on CSDb. |
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celticdesign
Registered: Oct 2005
Posts: 149 |
I might be wrong, but this dude won't make any profit at all. This is just stupid. As collector i don't mind about owning/playing cracks or buying downloads (same goes for music and books ecetera). Of course there are some exceptions like multicards, jewel cracks or rare items. I always prefer the original boxed and well designed product... |
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Sounx
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2006
Posts: 30 |
Quote: Actually it's not available as a crack on CSDb.
My bad. I had seen the cracks on RGCD but since I don't play games I didn't even check if there was an actual file.
But apparently it's not downloadable here because even crackers of this time and age, realize that it is sometimes necessary to support the few qaulity releases we see on this >30y old machine. Be it limited to a certain amount of time.
That's exactly how I feel about it. |
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Count Zero
Registered: Jan 2003
Posts: 1920 |
Yawn.. many ppl ask for obscure things on "real media" (disk, tape, cart) on forums nowadays - maybe in some eastern countries there is so much demand for this binary in a format usable on the real platform that thoughts about a real fortune arose?
Many people gave a fuck now - please: let some bit rot cover this topic. |
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bugjam
Registered: Apr 2003
Posts: 2579 |
As a collector, I have to say that owning a bootleg cart from 2014 has a certain appeal in its own right. :-) |
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Urban Space Cowboy
Registered: Nov 2004
Posts: 45 |
Quoting hedningActually it's not available as a crack on CSDb. It's "available" as several pages advertising cracks' existence on BBSes or whatever, which is close enough in my opinion. Your halos aren't shining as bright as you think they are, guys. :) "No download because it's commercial software (so ask us nicely for a copy instead)" is a silly loophole and could stand to be plugged.
Quoting STE'86BUT I do wish that the rgcd c64 cart shells weren't so retro and were more like the vcs ones with an indent panel for a real illustration Probably the major problem with custom cases is that there's not much demand for them, so none get made, so there's not much demand for them, so none get made, so there's not much demand for them...and so on. It probably doesn't help that carts are expensive and labor-intensive to manufacture anywyay, and who wants to do that when they could copy a binary onto an Easy Flash instead?
Do RGCD manufacture their own cases? It'd be neat to see Epyx-style ones with wrap-around labels. Now that would be classy!
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11350 |
Quote:It's "available" as several pages advertising cracks' existence on BBSes or whatever, which is close enough in my opinion. Your halos aren't shining as bright as you think they are, guys. :)
Am i the only one who finds it silly to discuss this when the supposed first release of this game comes from people who were involved in making it? come on ppl o_O |
