Brainwaves Episode 65 – Stormy Weather

nannyGOAT says:

Thanks for crediting us, boardGOATS, for the stuff about counterfeit games. You are absolutely right, “Co-mingling” within Amazon stock is a big problem, but if you can demonstrate it is a fake, where Amazon is the seller you can mostly get your money back.

Another big problem are the online auction houses though. Sellers with unidentifiable names set up shop, sell a load of counterfeit stuff cheaply, then close and reopen under a new name. These are easy to spot when you know what you are looking for, but if you don’t, especially if you are buying for gifts.

The Zavvi case was unusual because it was a relatively reputable company with a large quantity of fake of different items, which, as you pointed out, calls into question the origin of their stock. The initial denials suggest that either they were trying to front it out, or that they believed their stock was genuine and did not initially question its provenance. This may suggest the company themselves were a victim of some scam, but I suspect we will never know.

In my head, there are two types of problem here: The full-price fraud, and the cheap, obvious knock-off. Both are very wrong, but in the first case, the buyer is the main victim. In the second case, the buyer is getting what they pay for (i.e. rubbish for peanuts) and it is mostly the publisher and society as a whole that suffers. Some people feel that the first is a more serious offence, but the damage to a company’s production reputation damaged in this way is very hard to rebuild. This is especially true when some people playing the game, say family of the buyer, don’t realise it is not a genuine copy.