http://www.joystiq.com/2012/01/29/man-ransoming-unreleased-r...

Some of you have probably already seen this, but I view this as a cautionary tale in how public opinion can flare up in a majorly negative way in what will likely result in a "cease and desist" against this guy, at a minimum.

If you're doing something "grey market" (i.e. illegal, but not really directly damaging somebody) be careful with how you publicize your efforts and be ready for the blowback if it gets out there.

I hope it still gets released, it looks interesting, to say the least.

One of my three proto games happens to be based on a comic book property owned by Marvel Comics.

Part of me wants to release the game, and another part would like to get some money from it (by selling the disc to a collector, not hold it for ransom like this guy.) But I sure as hell do NOT want their lawyers on my ass. Especially now that they're owned by Disney.

This isn't the first time Resident Evil stuff has went out of control with the authorities. An N64 proto went the same way and I even think it was confiscated.

After reading the article, the guy is obviously misinformed.

No one is going to buy the proto for $2000 once it is dumped.

And if it is the one I think it is, he is taking a huge loss on it. If not, the same person, I have no idea but with "2" copies of the game being available, then I have no idea but I don't know how they let people write articles like that when they don't know their history about these things. At least talk to Frank Cifaldi and do some research, sheesh.

The people that responded to the article are even worse.

The obligatory "I think Stadium EVENTS is 500K" on ebay without knowing about best offers and understanding basic premises of this is just even more head shaking.

Sometimes I wonder about people sometimes; it's worse than the sterotypical group of people that come in to GameStop or GameStop worker "know-it-alls."

All this article says is someone has a resident evil proto and is looking for some cash to dump it. This isn't news. What is there to be cautious about? Maybe I'm missing something.

I think the poster means "caution" as in if you are trying to do something like this and it gets too big, this happens.

Not sure how an anonymous person is going to get ceast and desist. You have to prove that person has it, whoever "anonymous" is.

My thoughts exactly.

-  An EPROM and an EEPROM are two TOTALLY different things.
-  Stadium Events is not worth half a million dollars to anyone
-  Protos are worth a fraction of their original price after being dumped (note: ignore stupid Earthbound)
-  Haxzzors! are not the cause for ROMs to leak, that shit is dumb

It's awful.

The comments are just as bad as well

What do you expect? Joystiq isn't a very smart place to be in. Could be worse, this could've been posted on Kotaku BOOBS BOOBS SEX BOOBS BOOBS WE'RE TOTALLY A GAME BLOG Kotaku.

My point in posting this was NOT that the linked story was well-written, because it's not. The author is woefully misinformed about the dynamics of the prototype market...and I think we are all in agreement on that point.

My point WAS that it is worth exercising a bit of caution with regards to how things get publicized related to that market.

The story links to a forum where the "fund raising" is going on. If Capcom got a burr up their ass about this, and their lawyers actually got motivated,there would be nothing anonymous about the owner of the prototype. You deceive only yourself if you think it is difficult to trace who the players are, either by following the Paypal trail, or getting IP addresses from the forum. Either would be readily available to lawyers who were worth a damn at showing that illegal activity is going on related to their intellectual property.

At a minimum, they could easily get Paypal to freeze the funds.


ETA:  anyway, this is all a "watch your ass, out there", because I think sometimes people lose sight of the risks associated with something seemingly innocuous that actually amounts to illegal activity in the eyes of the law.

posted on the internets. must be the truth.

What is this in relation to, Josh?

^not to you, just the dudes opinion in that article. pretty sad article and sad bunch of folks jumping on his bandwagon.

No need for caution now, folks. The ROMs are released. I've been playing them for a bit now.