Selling hacks without permission, claiming that this permission has been given?

I'm not saying we should but wouldn't there be some way to get Sega's legal team on their asses? I'm sure Sega themselves could sue the hell out of them for copyright infringement and illegal duplication of licensed works among other things.
I know they might not be able to take down pirates in China or Russia. But getting rid of the ones from the USA/Europe on Etsy is possible.

The big sellers on there I know of are 8Bitevolutiongaming, Fanbrew Games (was linked earlier.), Coastline Games, and TheCartridgeArcade.

 

I could actually see Sega doing that. Now that Sega is actually making a little money off of rom hacks, this type of thing could actually be hurting Sega more directly now. They'd probably at least care a little. But I don't know the nitty-gritty details of these things, so I can't be too sure that they'd just up and agree.

 

I say it'd be fine, as long as the creators of the hack gets paid part of the money. They get money for putting them on cartridges and selling them, while we should get money for creating the actual hack...

 

No. That'll just create problems for the community as a whole. Mod makers have always skirted along the coattails of legality by not turning a profit from them. There's a reason Valve has just started poking at the prospect of paid mods. The second our community crosses that line, it'll be lights out for hacking.

 

As Misinko said. Paid mods can ruin a franchise pretty hard. Steam is a sneaky one since they can actually do so aswell. I know for a fact some developers don't want mods from their games to be paid. So I completely is against this.

 

Selling hacks of games without the consent or licence from the original authors of said game is highly illegal and a form of piracy. ROM or on cartridge. You'd be basically making money off of stolen property.

It should be fine to release Sonic ROM hacks and other hacks of Mega Drive games for free, as you aren't making money off of Sega's licenced works, since Sega themselves seem to be promoting this type of thing now with the Steam Workshop.

You're better off making your own game from scratch with your own original characters if you wish to make money off of game design and the like.

 

To bring a little bit of different light into the swing of this topic, I'd like to point something out that I've noticed after browsing some of the games for sale: the box art. Seriously, all of these cover arts look like Baby's First Photoshop. Megamix looks somewhat okay (in the sense that I don't feel eye cancer immersing), but then there's stuff that's screaming agony.

This tells us two things: Not only do they not give any respect to the individual developers' property, they care just as little about the actual product. They just take whatever's there on the scene, perhaps look at the download numbers to see if it surpasses a certain threshold, and then shove it out after an hour of mindlessly throwing the art together.

They even had ERaZor on there. Even though I always wanted to have a private cartridge as a personal trophy thing (ignoring my pumped ego here :V), what they did here just feels like an insult. The screenshots alone show that they didn't even play beyond the fucking tutorial.

I'd mind less if their "job" was at least done with some heart to it, but nope, it's just a mindless machine of garbage getting pumped out. Nothing we can do about it, though, so it's just as worthless to complain about it or even report it.

Also, little funny comment on that hack (which has 92 five-stars, apparently).

 

Selbi those reviews are for other games they have purchased. I agree what everything you say, but honestly, apart from just asking, there's naught we can do. At least not right now, never say never.

 

I actually don't think those are from different articles, I honestly think they're bot-generated comments that are posted under everything to lure gullible people into buying their crap.

 

they watermark their boxart, so you better not even think about stealing it.

 

I don't think anyone is, I have no interest I just wish they wouldn't go behind hacker back but whatever. If you get away with it, why wouldn't you do it?.

 

You and Stephen would certainly deserve the acknowledgement for S2R, RHS. It's a damn good hack.
Maybe they haven't been tempted to do so yet, because it is still in WIP stage. That might change however, once you guys have wrapped it up.

Although every hacker would feel complimented that someone bothers to make cartridges of their work, I doubt any of them like the thought of these leeches making money off of their hard labor of love and creativity.

 

Well, at least someone made this picture. I feel like playing this game now =P

 

BINGO! Unintentionally, someone here discovered the reason which makes me to never to release my hacks to the public in any future far or close of right now. Honestly, I'm not surprised with people making money of hacks. I see this happening since I joined the romhacking community almost 15 years ago, when I was just making brazilian portuguese translations of ROMs to my first (and stinguished) team "Odin Games". This fact (the money-making of ROM hacks and translations) is really old and requires absolutely no attention, especially when this can be easily ignored by us.

 

That would get you into a heap of trouble. Rom hacks are derivative works based on Sega-owned intellectual properties. Only Sega is legally allowed to make money off their own IPs. Their lawyers would take you down faster than you could say sorry.

 

Thanks to Dandaman955 for bringing it to my attention, but my game is now up for sale too!

https://www.etsy.com/listing/256986971/clearance-sonic-bash-custom-sega-genesis

Not too fussed it's up there. In fact, if it was an EU (or a JP cover), I'd be tempted to buy it. Still, wished they asked first but, what are you gonna do.

 

An interesting extract from the sellers page.

"Do you get permission from the homebrew designers to sell these games?

In some instances, yes, we do get permission from the designers of the games to produce these on cartridge form. Sometimes we just don't know who created them, especially the hack games. Please understand, we DO NOT make ANY profit from the game program, we just offer the service of putting the game in a physical form to be enjoyed on a real console. All credit is given to the original programmers when we know who they are!! They deserve the credit for making such cool games available to the gaming community. We just put their work on a physical cartridge for people who would otherwise not even know these games exist!"

Makes me wonder, if you were to challenge their sale of the game as the author of the title, would they take it down? After all, they will then know who the creator is, and permission will have been denied. If they refused to pull the sale, I think it's safe to say that everything within that statement can be disregarded, and they will be making a profit off it.

 

"[...]we DO NOT make ANY profit from the game program, we just offer the service of putting the game in a physical form to be enjoyed on a real console[...]"

That right there is going on extremely thin ice. Does it really take $20 to create a cartridge with electrical components and case?

 

It should also be worth noting that they sell some of their games for $10. Why would it take more money to produce one game than another?

EDIT: Example.

 

One possible note is that some hacks are smaller than others, or require less special hardware, such as battery backups. Pana Der Hejhog itself is only 1MB and has no SRAM. It also could be about popularity; if some hack is more popular than something else, then they are likely going to be able to manufacture it cheaper. Obviously this all is hypothetical, we do not know how much this actually costs
EDIT: I also noticed any games they have that say "CLEARANCE" as opposed to "SPECIAL ORDER" are half as expensive.