Man... I've just read the topic. Give me a name, and i'd kill him. just kidding (... who know actually?). selling freely released betas... next someone will buy PS2 and make false boxes, with TEST paint on it, and will try to sell them for a higher price. I hate that kind of people.
So i just sent you the information to most the staff. Turns out I got another PM from this guy and he wants to sell something else that I know he does not even legally own, and it was handfed to him free of charge. I know this because there is only 1 other member on here who owns the beta disk. Very frustrating to see something that i already own (legaly) being sold illegally when he does not even own the beta disk and was given to him free of charge. At this rate only the staff and people involved in this little incident know the name of the guy. It's probably best that way so that the proper authority such as the staff can take him down. Then once he's gone it's all free game lol.
I've reached the roots of this problem. He's been selling halflife 1 for DC as well. He's been banned, but there may be further repercussions for other users.
It seems that non 0th member have been getting free handouts from 0th bit members. These people turned around and began selling them EN MASSE to other people. There's a good reason why these people weren't part of the 0th bit, and giving them data has resulted in this big headache for me. I found TWO assemblergames.com people without 0th access selling 0th items to grimdoomer. Grimdoomer was also spamming sales of these items BEFORE he bought them, basically to raise money to BUY them. He was also selling Halo 2276 that someone gave/sold him. Some of the people selling 0th items (free stuff) are members. Pretty much everything from Ptpo, Assemblergames, and xbox-underground that is free to people in the know is being sold. To nip this in the bud, we're probably going to have to make certain free titles very widely available so that people will no longer be able to profit from this data. I have not yet taken any action, but certain people ( you know who you are) need to talk to me before I dust off the banhammer.
Amazing: I get sick during the weekend and all hell breaks loose. I think the best solution would be to make downloads with invites only from now on, so we can have a grip on who downloads what. Since we're a relatively small forum with an even smaller sub-forum this sort of procedure shouldnt be a pain at all.
Well thats not the point of my downloads on my site. Stuff released through me is for everyone. But they do have to register, so if I know the names, I can prevent further access.
What I meant before is that we should further restrict the access to 0th content at least temporaly to prevent other similar attempts from certain users to sell our content.
so it was grimdoomer that was doing this? I rarley check this subforum as it's not frequented as much as the rest of the site and when i do...WHAM! all this!
bastards. The few times I've released anything I've done it because I've wanted knowledge spread to people, not to see some douche re-selling it. -_- luckily none of the stuff I've released would probably be of any interest to these opportunists
I mentioned this as a reason why I was personally not so keen on handing material over. You may be accused of profiteering by selling something that is not available currently, but if you hand it over for gratis it really does piss you off when you discover other people (and those you thought you could trust) going off and peddling it for a swift buck! Let's hope that it doesn't put others off presenting future material. Bah! :banghead:
Not really as these files were as they were meant to be, which is freely available. This wasn't so much a 0th bit leak as much as people trying to pull the wool over fellow AG members which is pretty low.
All parties have been spoken to. Discretion is urged for those dealing with forum newcomers. A simple "what betas do you have for sale" should be a good screener. If dreamcast halflife and every single title available for free on ptpo and AG pops up for sale in their list, it's probably a good indicator of a bad start...
