A Reddit post in the GameBoy subreddit caught some eyes. It showed a fake yellow Game Boy Pokémon cartridge displayed at a GameStop. The post received many comments, pointing out the poor quality of this bootleg Pokémon game.
This has sparked concern, especially with GameStop launching new Retro GameStops across North America, where retro game authenticity should be a priority.
Lol, it’s Game Stop not the Library of Congress. These are minimum wage employees they’re not trained in repro carts
That doesn’t make it okay for them to be selling counterfeits.
Especially selling the counterfeit for $50 USD.
If they’re cheap and common games, I don’t think it’s a big deal to have fakes mixed in if it doesn’t bother the buyer either.
Now for more rare stuff, it matters more. Feels like mtg cards, where a certain threshold it should be graded for authenticity and condition
Video game grading is a massive scam. Karl Jobst did a series of videos on it, and it’s basically price rigging and speculation investments for profit.
Oh huh, that’s interesting. I’ll definitely have to check that out
I think the employees would have a database of titles to ascertain value, so they are basically trained in this field.
I would argue that the employees may be negligent in the need to verify with the database due to being overworked minimum wage part timers who are just looking to “get the job done” and not care about mistakes made.
The presence of a database also does not mean they are explicitly taught to say “you need to use this database to verify, here is how to query it and ensure it looks right”
GameStop could probably address this partially with hyper-focused UI walking them through a review but then employees are just going to hit “next next next” just to get it done
I think this idea is cursed and a bad idea for GameStop to implement because this is inevitable and we are going to see this over and over again. This was already a recurring joke at some locations selling older games, esp. Pokemon, prior to GameStop formalizing the “Retro” branding
I’m into retro audio, cassettes, records, etc. I’ve noticed that all the thrift stores get raided by the resellers often. Same with the good clothes. There’s a “vintage” store at my local mall that sells old thrift clothing, like the nice band t shirts, and they sell them for like $50
The whole retro game market has become this as well, just resellers buying up all the games and reselling then for absurd prices
This really does seem like the endgame for all collectibles–to eventually get capitalized to the point that outsiders come in and start speculating/buying out new releases/limited editions solely to flip for profit.
In plenty of cases I’ve seen, they never even have the product in their hands–they’ll just transfer the order to the highest bidder. I guess it’s the nature of collectibles and limited-edition stuff, but it just takes away the fun for a lot of the people who enjoy the hobby/collectibles/etc… it’s kinda deflating when you can’t even get the item without paying a premium to some rando that has no interest in it first (instead of just paying the vendor/manufacturer directly at their list price).
The GameStop problem is that the corporation has a trade in quota for each store. Even if the employee knows that someone is trying to trade in a repro they’re encouraged to buy it to meet the quota. That shit gets sent to a centralized warehouse anyway.
GS as is will be an absolute shitshow of chinese knockoffs
For any GB, GBC, and GBA fans, I highly recommend the GB Operator from Epilogue. It’s a super simple USB device that will not only play your games and back up your saves, but will also authenticate your cartridges. It’s great for something like Pokémon Ruby and Saphire, which has a lot of bootlegs floating around.
There’s just no way you could reasonably expect retail employees to verify games. There will need to be an automated system that is more difficult to bypass than it’s worth, and that will likely be more expensive than it’s worth.
We are getting to a point where there are fakes out there that are 100% identical to the real thing, and aren’t all that cheap. It’s an interesting situation.
