RetroPie being sold with ROMs on Amazon

Riverstorm

I don't if you track these but there seems to be an influx in sales of RetroPie and ROMs installed on SD cards in the US on Amazon. Here's a few examples:

TMT Enterprises:
httpx

Comanche Computing:
httpx

Digital Bytes:
httpx

This last one is the best one. It doesn't have RetroPie installed but they sell a 128GB SD card that is "RetroPie ready" with instructions on how to set it up. There's only one question in the Q&A area. I believe they are blank SD cards of different sizes on different postings from reading the reviews. They must be selling from overseas as the poor English is kind of a giveaway. They sell the card then dump support on the docs and forum.

Question: 
There was no instructions on the package. Now what???   

Answer: 
You find the instruction in following url. 
https://retropie.org.uk/docs/ 

By Village market  Seller   on October 23, 2018

herb_fargus

@Riverstorm feel free to modify the urls like httpx or something . No need for this forum to contribute to their SEO. Too many wankers ripping off the project...

Riverstorm

@herb_fargus - Yeah all the wankers are coming out of the woodwork for the holidays trying to make a dollar. I think a guy would spend all of his free time trying to stop them with any type of impact. They are just a dime a dozen everywhere now infringing on the RetroPie name, logo and even boot-up screens. One vendor mentions they would need to upgrade from 4.3 to 4.4 to correct the issue so they must follow the project closely.

Hopefully that speaks to the success of RetroPie but also I was talking with a guy that claimed RetroPie was getting in the way of understanding/configuring Retroarch. I thought that's the point. RA might receive a 9 or 10 for flexibility and power but maybe 4 or 5 for ease and usability. It takes time to learn RA effectively. RetroPie simplifies all that configuration, unifies non-Libretro cores and standalone ports alike under one user interface with many of the configuration options in a GUI or menu.

The success of the Nintendo mini's and the recent Atari VCS kickstarter attests to people willing to pay big dollars for a simplified user experience an that's one of the places where I think RetroPie delivers.

You don't see all these fly-by-night Amazon market place vendors singing the praises of RA or Libretro. They advertise these cards with RetroPie at the front and 11,000 ROMs plug-n-play ready with room to add your own games in the descriptions. I'm a bit surprised Nintendo didn't focus more of it's energy toward these type of folks openly selling their games on the Amazon marketplace. They are definitely not in for the spirit or love of gaming as most are here.

I did clean up the post and remove the links above so as to not aid and abet their greed.