Another person selling Retropie - Pixel Arcades

[Capeman]

They're also grabbing random assets off the forum. I made this image as a boot graphic. Gotta love the leeches of the internet...

[simonster]

It Looks like they are sponsoring the the North East Retro Gaming show. Is it worth contacting the organisers to advise them of the potential of linking up with a company distributing ROMs illegally (let alone the RetroPie software itself)? Or do you think they are actually the organisers of the event?

[markyh444]

@simonster definitely contact them.

[Nismo]

@simonster not only the roms or retropie, most of emulator has licenses that don't let you sell them, and it doesn't work without emulators...

[UDb23]

@Capeman Did you contact them about it?

[UDb23]

I think it's the case that Retropie creators contact these people asap.

@Buzz: any update on registering Retropie trade mark in Europe ?

[InsecureSpike]

@simonster said in Another person selling Retropie - Pixel Arcades:

North East Retro Gaming show

i just PM'd RayGun @AttractMode, as their supplying that too

[simonster]

I contacted the organisers of the North East Retro Gaming Show, I haven't heard anything back, but if they at least ask questions, it will be interesting.

[simonster]

The North East Retro Gaming Show's response was "You need to take this up with Pixel Arcades. Your fight is with them."

Basically, I get the feeling that they are of the opinion Pixel Arcades are funding their event and therefore don't want to know about it.

[UDb23]

@simonster seems so.

[BuZz]

https://twitter.com/RetroPieProject/status/856530821934665729

Their twitter account now seems removed. A clear conscience then!

Their website is hosted on godaddy

host pixelarcades.co.uk
pixelarcades.co.uk has address 160.153.136.1

Feel fee to email abuse [at] godaddy.com to let them know they have a customer selling systems with 26,000 pirated games on (provide a link to a page as evidence). They also sell retropie (can tell from some screenshots I saw) but don't mention that on their site as far as I can see.

[UDb23]

@BuZz They show "how to" videos for Retropie on their facebook page... so they are using Retropie.

What about creating an "official" standard text that any Retropie forum users can use to send (read submerge) by e-mail to people like these ?

[simonster]

I've emailed godaddy and Paypal (given that's who process their payments) and we'll see what happens.

[herb_fargus]

@simonster i was thinking of throwing a convention for the war against drugs, in order to fundraise I figured we could just sell drugs to fund it.

[BuZz]

@simonster sorry it should have been [at] godaddy.com btw

[simonster]

Thanks @BuZz , I worked it out anyway.

[BuZz]

I wrote an email to the event.

Regarding your sponsorship by Pixel Arcades:

I heard you replied to a user who already emailed you:
"You need to take this up with Pixel Arcades. Your fight is with them."

It is disappointing to hear you don't mind about being sponsored by a
company who profits from selling other peoples work (RetroPie with
thousands of copyrighted games). This damages our reputation and
threatens the project.

An event funded by Piracy - not a good image for a Retro Gaming event.

Looks like we may need to highlight this on our website, as well as
twitter feed - Not sure that will be the press you want though. (we
mentioned it on twitter already -
https://twitter.com/RetroPieProject/status/856530821934665729) - they
were quick to shut off the twitter account.

I would recommend you separate yourselves from this company - It's a bad
association for emulation and exactly the sort of thing that gets
emulation projects closed down. People profiting from selling ROMs are
no better than someone selling pirated DVDs down the market.

I suspect it's more than them being sponsored by some 3rd party company. Says on the website about machines being "for sale" after, so I wonder if they quite closely linked etc. Perhaps they are actually helping run the event or maybe it's the same people.

It's a shame that people feel the need to profit on the work of others. If they want to sell arcade machines - fine. No need to include copyrighted games. It's pretty obvious why they do - to add value - to make more money.

[simonster]

I take it that you've heard nothing further @BuZz ?

I had another look at their contact page and on a whim copied and pasted their contact number (a mobile phone) in to Google. It returned another company: "The derwent slate plate company" and the name Ross Pennington on their contact page with the same mobile number.

[felleg]

Looks like they removed the product listing from their website. I can't find in anymore, and the link from google returns an error 404. (edit: i removed the link)

[simonster]

@felleg could you remove the link please, we don't want to push traffic in the direction of the website.

They still have a number of other products for sale including the RetroPie converted classic consoles SNES, Playstation, etc.