WC4 DVD offers on eBay Germany - who is this?

criticalmass

criticalmass

Vice Admiral
Every other week, there is an offer for a WC4 DVD version on eBay, packaged together with a homemade DVD containing the WC3&4 Making-of videos, plus soundtracks, trailers and TV-spots. The offer looks like this:

http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=21935&item=5195001638&rd=1

The items are sold every time. I'm starting to wonder who this guy is - he must have quite a cache of WC4 DVDs... He runs under the name gsvapi, and lists a town called Rehna as his location.

The most interesting part is this: He's offering two clips from the DVD in English and German for download, then says:
Seltsam, soll es doch etwa eine deutsche DVD version von Wing Commander 4 geben? Nein, gibt es natürlich nicht. Derzeit arbeite ich an einer Übersetzung des Spiels bzw. der Videosequenzen. Falls es leute gibt die sowas interessiert, bitte melden. Das ermutigt ernorm bei der Umsetzung

Translation: Strange, should there be a German DVD version of WC4? No, certainly not. I'm currently working on a translation of the game, e.g. the video sequences. If there are people out there who are interested in this, please drop me a line. It would be a great encouragement.
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So, does anybody here know this guy?
 
Over at wingcenter.de I cautioned somebody who wanted to bid on this item, because I thought, it wasn't quite kosher. At that time I only knew of one auction and it could have been that he really was selling a legal copy of WC4 (and making advertisement of an illegal project at the same time).
But now that I know that he's selling more than one, I really think he's selling self-made copies.
 
I'd suggest reporting him to eBay, since stuff like that is clearly against their terms of agreement or whatever it's called.
 
Hard to say if what he does is legit. There have been multiple people in the past that sold copy after copy of the WC4 DVD so it is entirely possible he got a whole lot of them. I got my copy from someone who was selling hundreds of WC4 DVDs at that time and it is definitely an original one.
 
If you look at the other things he sells, he seems to get old hardware components in bulk from somewhere. If he got a whole lot of the graphics cards WC4DVD once was bundled into, that may be an explanation. But he also frequently picks up negative evaluations - which most of the time deal with too much S/H cost, bad packaging, and long transaction duration times. Well.

I've sent him a friendly mail to ask about his project. Let's see.
 
Whatever... I'm looking forward to my DVD. ;)


EDIT: And even when he sell's copy's, why report him?
Are you working for eBay, so you have to look after their interest's?
It's not like any company would still make money with the originals.
 
I've got an answer from the guy:

Was die vielen Wing Commander 4 DVD's angeht, ich hatte einfach Glück gehabt. In America hatte jemand diese Scheiben angeboten für einen fairen Preis. Da ich abschätzen konnte wieviel sie hier in Deutschland bringen würden habe ich einfach ein dutzend gekauft und verkaufe sie nach und nach bei Ebay.

Translation:
Concerning the many WC4 DVDs: I simply was lucky. Somebody in America (sic!) offered them to me for a reasonable price. As I could estimate what they are worth over here in Germany, I bought a dozen and sell them now one by one on eBay.
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He also says that there are not many left, so the price will rise (yeah...).

Concerning his work with the videos, he says the he now only has a storage problem, as he encodes in DV, and uses 3.5MB per second (whatever that means, I'n no video editing guy). But he'll stay in contact.
 
I won't tell mcgruff not to be stupid because that would be lik asking a fish not to swim...

And even if the DVDs are legit, I don't know about the extra files and stuff he's offering. This is particularly shady, because it's not just a matter of downloading a file off some torrent site for free, or copying a cd from a friend. This guy is actually making profit out of this weird things he's selling.
 
As he isn't actively selling them, but rather just including them as a free bonus it certainly wouldn't be easy to sue him I guess. Also aren't all the files free anyhow? From a quick glance I think you can find all of them at wcnews?
 
Edfilho said:
I won't tell mcgruff not to be stupid because that would be lik asking a fish not to swim...
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He's not all *that* stupid... I have read some of his posts that are actually serious.
 
cff said:
As he isn't actively selling them, but rather just including them as a free bonus it certainly wouldn't be easy to sue him I guess. Also aren't all the files free anyhow? From a quick glance I think you can find all of them at wcnews?
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Well, then it's all ok :)
 
Yes, one of the main reasons I really don't like this freaking country... it's pretty annoying.

You can't even go in a shop and buy Computer Game or similar things because everything is dubbed and whatnot...


But what has this to do with this thread?
 
C.MAC said:
Whatever... I'm looking forward to my DVD. ;)


EDIT: And even when he sell's copy's, why report him?
Are you working for eBay, so you have to look after their interest's?
It's not like any company would still make money with the originals.
Click to expand...

Why report him? Sellers who sell illegal copies of items cause problems all around. Besides the obvious ethical and legal implications, they undercut sellers who are selling legitimate copies, and often times they fool unknowing buyers into buying their product.

As an eBay seller myself, yes, I am interested in protecting eBay's interests.
 
There have been a few people that have a good number of DVDs. It was an OEM product, so any overstock would just be sitting around when they were done sending out the hardware it came with. It's not like they could box them up and sell them, since they didn't have the distribution rights to do that. It seems that some of whatever was left over has gotten to various people. There's not really any reason to believe this fellow isn't legitimate unless someone has gotten a copied disc from him.
 
C.MAC said:
You can't even go in a shop and buy Computer Game or similar things because everything is dubbed and whatnot...
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And I'd be so happy if all the'd do were dubbing...
German censorship is pretty harsh when it comes to violence rendering some games close to unplayable in the cut versions.
 
Darklightr said:
Why report him? Sellers who sell illegal copies of items cause problems all around. Besides the obvious ethical and legal implications, they undercut sellers who are selling legitimate copies, and often times they fool unknowing buyers into buying their product.

As an eBay seller myself, yes, I am interested in protecting eBay's interests.
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Quoted again for truth. It's not eBay's interests that you're protecting by reporting shady sellers, it's fellow buyers'. Copies are often poorly manufacturered, lack in features or simply don't work. It's in all our best interests to do our part to eliminate them from the system. That being said, the picture of the DVD he has there is legit, and there have been people who have happened across large quantities of the WC4 DVD.
 
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