Amazon Busted for Selling Pirated Video Games

With Amazon Prime Day now in the rear view mirror, many Prime members are enjoying that sweet, sweet loot they've procured. The online mega retailer is known for their amazing deals and ease of access, but it appears that they're in a bit of hot water regarding the sale of pirated games.

From Twitch Prime loot, to just amazing gaming deals, Amazon is the go-to spot for many looking for a new play experience. However, many buyers grew leery when they noticed Surviving Mars and Frostpunk both for under 4 bucks. Everywhere else, these titles are still at full retail value. Because of that inconsistency, many interested gamers took to investigative matters into their own hands. Though the effort included many, it was Redditor CodependtlyWealthy that revealed these copies were in fact pirated.

But how did he find this information out? Where was the proof? Well, first it required them digging deep into the game's files. Here's what he had to say, "I decided to pay $3 to play detective. It's piracy. Someone took the GOG version of the game, repackaged it with their own installer signed and published by "Ace Media Group LLC" and submitted it to Amazon. The installer looks fairly legit but the uninstaller doesn't work. They left GOG-specific metadata files and Galaxy64.dll (for GOG Galaxy client integration) in the install dir."

This same Reddit board brought the attention of others, all saying that the deal was still showing for them and that they too were able to verify that it was pirated. This group has also brought this issue up to Amazon, though the retailer has yet to acknowledge the initial complaints.

Though pirating games is nothing new and it's a pretty common joke of "if you don't pirate a game, are you really a PC gamer," but as a PC gamer myself I really just want to mention that pirating titles, especially indie titles, is so harmful. Though the indie market is growing, it is still having to compete with aggressive AAA titles with a fraction of their marketing resources. Though it does save money in the short run, in the long-run you could be hurting your chances of ever experiencing something from a particular developer again. Game creation isn't easy and it takes a lot of time and money. By pirating games, you are robbing them of their compensation for that time.

Hopefully Amazon will take care of the issue soon, these things do fall through the cracks from time to time.