-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Amazon is selling pirated digital copies of games
- Thread starter SteveWinwood
- Start date
Did it really say sold by Amazon? Damn, then Amazon really does need to have checks in place.
No. It's not that Amazon is providing the marketplace for the third party to sell pirated games. It's basically as the title suggest, Amazon is the one who is selling them.
The funny thing is that customers didn't think anything strange of it, they would give positive feedback and all. I only caught this guy because some dude bought AutoCAD for 800$ and then started complaining when he didn't get a physical copy. The seller ended up sending him a file called "instructions.exe" so that he could get the program working, this was an obvious key logger and the customer lost control of his account... which the seller used to send insults to himself and then play the victim... it was weird.
When they banned his account I checked the emails he sent to support and he was using the classic "I didn't know I couldn't do that" excuse.
GOG should hold Amazon's ass to the fire on this since this could really impact their own business, particularly if publishers become more reluctant to support DRM free games.
It would be great if they did. It sucks that people are taking advantage of GOG's DRM free policy. This is why we can't have nice things.
No, it looks like OP (and everyone else itt aside from ming ) mistook the third party seller "Amazon.com Services, Inc." for being Amazon actual, when they are not. "Amazon Digital Services LLC" is the correct name.
edit: I could be wrong too, it's hard to research now it seems that all the dodgy items are now "currently unavailable".
Interesting. The plot thickens if true. Seems like we need to dig deeper.
Actually when i was growing up (aka era before internet in every house), we considered bootlegs as piracy and those who sold them as pirates (we didnt have many games on license in my country back then, especially localisations), so it was weird where everyone started calling illegal downloads as piracy too, like "wtf you call it like that, its not what we used to call what"
OP
OP
I think I only quoted other people saying that so im absolved lol
Not that I think it makes it any better because they're still selling it on their platform which certainly doesn't absolve them from wrong doing. And I think it makes them look particularly dumb because they apparently allow companies to blatantly imitate them on their own site.
Got a "Games & Software Downloads ordered on Amazon.com are non-returnable and non-refundable after purchase" response at first.
Got my refund soon thereafter. Such bullshit. I already owned a legit copy of Battle Chasers, so I'm only really out a copy of Frostpunk. No big deal.
Got my refund soon thereafter. Such bullshit. I already owned a legit copy of Battle Chasers, so I'm only really out a copy of Frostpunk. No big deal.
I think GOG and the Companies that use it should find a way to protect themselves against these kind of acts, I don't know much how these things work, but they could do things like putting unique serials and signing the executable? that way any copy sold would be unique, while remaining free of other obtrusive DRMs and trying to pirating a copy would traceable at least. What do you think?
As long as there's an exploit in Amazon and no one fix this (they were warned in November 2017), it's still way better to get the game on GoG / Steam.
No shithead is gonna impersonate the devs without serious checking.
open chat with a rep
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/contact-us/ref=hp_gt_comp_cu?ie=UTF8&nodeId=508510
use something close to
I got my refund for both Battle Chasers and Frostpunk with 0 issues at all. Rep was super nice the one I message with.
GOG was caught in the past selling games with no cd crack and fan made patch to make them work :) . Their multiplayer games often have a unique serial to make them work online in the first place.
This is entirely on Amazon letting people selling counterfeit goods. It's more or less ebay mixed with legit product sold by amazon and it's hard to distinguish the too unless you read the "sold and shipped by" line. It's even trickier now since third party items are shipped by amazon. Chinese Ali express items are starting to show up on there now. Amazon will need to police their digital items better.
They do this to the Twitch Prime games too.. GOG games that clearly have GOG Galaxy messaging in the game for any online functionality. Which doesn't work. (Even with GOG Galaxy running in the background)
I understand being optimistic, but....this is the US.
• Because it is illegal. < Hahahahaha, this is among the least illegal thing Amazon has done and gotten away with. In the US, individuals can't even be actually liable for this or punished. Amazon will have to, at best, pay a fine that is .0001% of .00001% of their profits.
• Because amazon is making cents out of it. - Yep.
• Because there will be a ton of negative PR. - Is the negative value of this more money than the profit? Probably not.
• Government fines for piracy. See point 1.
• Potential for lawsuits from publishers/customers. - It is much too costly for indie devs and gamers to sue Amazon, their legal budget alone is probably 1000 times the amount of money they could lose from this even if they lost in court, which they wouldn't, as they would just continually appeal and waste all your money.
The most chilling thing about this is that the game files could contain anything. Amazon's clearly not vetting anything about these games if they're ignoring the GOG-related files and false publisher listings.
It's embarassing that Amazon can't--or doesn't care to--tell the difference between legitimate and pirated games. What's going on isn't even on the level of a shady key site (with stolen keys or whatever)--but actual, literal piracy. Just... how many failures have to occur for something like this to not only happen, but be so widespread?
I'm just... at a loss.
Also, SteveWinwood thanks for making the thread.
It's embarassing that Amazon can't--or doesn't care to--tell the difference between legitimate and pirated games. What's going on isn't even on the level of a shady key site (with stolen keys or whatever)--but actual, literal piracy. Just... how many failures have to occur for something like this to not only happen, but be so widespread?
I'm just... at a loss.
Also, SteveWinwood thanks for making the thread.
OP
OP
someone was asking about this earlier. what game was that?
Just chiming in, got off the phone with Amazon support. I just had to mention it was pirated software and the rep on the other end got extreme interested. He followed through checking everything and refunded what I paid (which was mostly digital credits). All in all took 10min.
The ultimate goal of DRM would be to have executables that could be uniquely identified, like real objects are, so that they can't be duplicated.
DRM are just the classification of every technology and technique that people tried to get that working.
(Well, expiration and remote control is also part of the ideas managed in DRM. It's a bout Digital Right Management = Control after all.)
The ID you are talking about would be part of a DRM if it's checked. If it's never checked, then it's useless to have such ID. GOG doesn't want to use DRM that might restrict your access to the game, so they trust the users to be reasonnable (since there is nothing stopping them from copying the executable ad infinitum).
I believe their only "practical" protection against piracy is faith in their users and giving good services to have a good reputation as a store and thus get clients.
I noticed it in the SNK collection, namely the high score upload feature in the excellent Twinkle Star Sprites.
It would be really great if jschreier or someone at Kotaku/another gaming news site could shine some light on this whole fiasco. The fact that there's a dev who reported pirated digital copies of their game being sold on amazon SEVEN months ago, and amazon has done nothing, shows that this is a serious issue that needs to have the spotlight on it.
I thought GOG still sold games with fan patches and that no one really made a fuss about it. Hell I wish Steam did this.
Really? Damn.
I'm not sure it's a good idea, they might don't want the spotlight because a lot of people don't seem to realize that DRM-free = can make copies without repercussion. (Beside moral ones.)
GOG works on trust and good reputation. Discussing it in public would put pressure on Amazon who is breaking the trust chain, but it would also highlight to potential copycats that anyone could do this with any GOG game.
Maybe I'm worrying for nothing but I feel like there's a tipping scale factor to take in account.
People are too used to DRM protecting the copying of games that they seem to forget that an executable normally is infinitely copyable data, even if you paid to have access to it.
Edit: actually the faster Amazon reacts the best, so I'm probably worrying about the wrong thing.
It's a fair point, but at the end of the day, pirates are stealing from developers and amazon is allowing it to happen. It doesn't even need to be a GOG copy. It could just be a cracked copy that someone is selling. The spotlight needs to be on amazon if any change is ever going to happen.
GOG has always been DRM free, it's never been some kind of secret. Humble Bundle and Twitch (I think) also sell DRM free games--GOG just takes special care to ensure their entire library is DRM-free.
This isn't an issue for anyone but Amazon and the pirates they're working with. (And of course, the customers and developers victimised because of this.)
You do know games are just bits of data whether "physical" (disc) or "digital" (hard disk), right? Piracy is copying those bits in a way that infringes coyright, which this most certainly does.
This is what I was thinking. Didn't have time to check it myself. It makes more sense if this is true. Will probably lead to policy changes. Curious to see if Amazon is going to issue a response to this.
Last edited:
Amazon took games off from US but other sites still have them:
Pirate game https://www.amazon.co.uk/Haemimont-Games-Surviving-Mars-Download/dp/B07FKFQDCD/
Real game: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Surviving-Mars-PC-Mac-Code/dp/B07BFFNDS9/
Both say "Sold by Amazon Media EU S.à.r.l."
Not third party marketplace seller.
Pirate game https://www.amazon.co.uk/Haemimont-Games-Surviving-Mars-Download/dp/B07FKFQDCD/
Real game: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Surviving-Mars-PC-Mac-Code/dp/B07BFFNDS9/
Both say "Sold by Amazon Media EU S.à.r.l."
Not third party marketplace seller.
The DRM measure I'm thinking of would be checked, but just one time, at the time of the sale. It would be registered that a specific serial has already been sold.
The system I'm thinking of would still based on trust, it would not obstacle a simple copy of a game made for a friend. But it would allow to verify if anyone is trying to re-selling a game without permission, using an already burned serial. I just don't know if this would be a practical thing to do.
The worst part here I think is the Xulima story. It's somewhat understandable if something like this happens once, and it's forgivable if everyone is quickly issued a refund and the seller is taken down ASAP.
But having it continue for months, while ignoring the actual developers? That's unacceptable.
But having it continue for months, while ignoring the actual developers? That's unacceptable.
Where did you go to law school, and in which state or states are you barred?
For what it's worth, I got my reply from their CS supervisor:
Dunno why everyone else just got refunds. I used the same kind of language others are saying they used.
Dunno why everyone else just got refunds. I used the same kind of language others are saying they used.
That sucks. Maybe it's gotten big enough that they noticed there was a problem and preventing too many issues.
That is weird, I didn't even have to say an additional word. I thought this had been widespread enough that they were just doing refunds as soon as asked now.
Anyone who sells their games in GOG is fully aware that it will be more easy to pirate them. GOG isn't at fault here. Amazon is since they are allowing those pirates to sell them.