Amazon temporarily sells pirated copies of popular PC games



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Image: Frostpunk

Over the weekend, people buying on Amazon thought that they were going to hit the jackpot: recent popular PC games like Frostpunk and Surviving Mars for the price of a cup of coffee. Problem: These copies have been hacked.

The word "dubious business" came out for the first time in a Reddit thread on Saturday. "I think it's a silly thing for them [Amazon] I do not know if anyone wants to try it though," read the thread, which is related to & # 39; & # 39; B07FKBJT5K & # 39;); window.ga ("unique.send", "event", "commerce", "kotaku" – Amazon temporarily sells pirated copies of games Popular PCs "B07FKBJT5K"; "data-amazontag =" kotakuamzn-20 "href =" https: // www? .amazon.com / dp / B07FKBJT5K / ref = zg_bs_2445220011_2 _encoding = UTF8 & psc = 1 & refRID 37ZK9GZC4MY05BZ6TK76 = & tag = kotakuamzn-20 & ascsubtag = 4c18b8ca77019c4bfd6fcbcf3ab235ce5177da2f & rawdata = [t|link[p|1827638232[a|B07FKBJT5K[to|1550650747[b|Kotaku">a$299copiede Frostpunk whose seller was listed as Amazon Digital Services The ice management game is usually sold for $ 29.99 Other users have presented Similar ads like Surviving March $ 39.99-for $ 3.99.

A user, CodependentlyWealthy, did a little sleuthing. "I decided to pay $ 3 to play detective , "they said of Frostpu nk ." This is hacking. Someone has taken the GOG version of the game, repacked it with their own installer signed and published by Ace Media Group LLC & # 39; and submitted it to Amazon. The installation program seems pretty legitimate, but the uninstaller does not work. They left the metadata files GOG and Galaxy64.dll (for the Galaxy GOG client integration) in the installation directory. "

GOG is a PC game platform whose biggest claim is its lack of DRM.On the one hand, it's nice to be able to buy games without invasive software in the passenger seat, but that leaves room for exploitation, in which case it appears that hackers took copies of GOG games, added their own custom installation program, and claimed them as their own. [19659006] User reviews of these game listings include similar claims.Offers are not marked as "currently unavailable" and can no longer be purchased. Survivor March & # 39; Developers, meanwhile , took to Twitter to solve the problem :

"This is not a sale that we have approved and we are suspicious of the legality of it," they wrote. "We can confirm that no update is working will be with and we will advise to avoid that. "

Amazon, up to here, said nothing, although some users have reported having managed to get refunds . Kotaku reached out to Amazon to comment, but as of publication, the ethically questionable inventor of fake vacation has not yet responded.

Posters on the Resetera game forum point out that Amazon has not managed to control the video game lists before. Last October, the fantasy RPG Lords of Xulima appeared on the all-consumer mega-store for $ 1.99. At the time, the game developer said that he was trying to get the removal of the list, but Amazon's requests made this task difficult.

"We are trying to remove this seller, but Amazon seems to require a lot of documents." ] Xulima developer Numantian Games wrote on their Steam forum. "It seems like you can sell a hacked game without a problem, but if the owners complain, they have to submit a lot of very complex documents." What a shame. "

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