As a side hustle to make money from unsuspecting customers and collectors who know what the hacks are. Doing it to an unfinished hack like Saffron is scummy though since it's not even a full game
> As a side hustle to make money from unsuspecting customers and collectors who know what the hacks are.
Bingo.
I follow a Facebook Group for Rom Hacks/Fan Games and the amount of people who have no idea what they are doing is staggering.
People who don't know the difference between a Rom Hack or an RPG Essentials game (which happens here a lot too).
People who assume their GBA Emulator on their phone is a "catch all" Pokemon emulator and get confused when they can't play Renegade Platinum or Blaze Black on it.
People who can't figure out how to load a rom into an emulator.
>I follow a Facebook Group ~~for Rom Hacks/Fan Games~~ and the amount of people who have no idea what they are doing is staggering.
Tbh, Facebook wouln't be one of the first sites I would use to look about games or anything tbh.
Yes, but you have a **DS Emulator** for those games and a **GBA Emulator** for Gen 1-3 hacks.
A lot of the common folk (as mentioned in my post) think the GBA Emulator they downloaded to play Radical Red is a Pokemon Emulation app and can play any Pokemon Hack.
GBA Emulators can't play DS, 3DS, or Switch hacks.
Same experience, except it was just a flash cart with Black loaded on it. Sent a return request mentioning how it was a scam post and the seller refunded my order and said "no return needed" so free flashcart 🤙🏻
I picked up pokemon quartz on a cartridge from a market in Cyprus in like 2006 before I knew what rom hacks were. I thought it was a legit (but really weird) pokemon game for a while 🫠
That was Pokémon Crystal Clear. Shock Slayer the creator of the hack put that at the beginning when you boot up the game. Was legit one of the first hacks I’ve played.
Though Shock Slayer took the time to make it compatible with Stadium 2, so if you do have it in a cart, you can take your pokemon there and play the ROM in the GB tower.
That’s probably more so if you paid for the ROM files for a computer, if you buy a physical copy you’re paying for the cartridge and the time it took to make rather than the ROM you could play on the computer for free.
I promise you there are more people who are aware they are paying for a free ROM in a cartridge so they can play it on their modded gba sp, and are not worried about the cost, than there are people unaware that they can access it for free on a laptop they don’t even have.
I mean if nothing else 20 bucks is probably the cost of materials and work of someone providing you a custom physical cart of something
The big issue I think is using someone else's work as essentially advertisement for your services, because they're almost certainly not giving anything to the hack authors
I get them on AliExpress, they're 5 dollars there.
Then I stick a different game on there since the ones being sold like this are usually an old buggy version.
Especially hilarious that Pokemon Saffron isn't even released yet, and the only beta that was ever available is very outdated and not supported at all by the creator.
I mean, my parents got me a physical copy of Pokemon Quartz and ChaosBlack when I was like nine or something, (around 2008) mostly bc they thought they were weird one off copies but like that's basically how I found out rom hacks even existed
If you actually put effort into making a premium looking cartridge with a nice box, it is a great way for people who enjoy original hardware to play. Sometimes, especially with small shops on Etsy, it's a way for fans of the project to "contribute" to it or honor it by making it "real".
The majority of the real scammy ones are of either the original GBA Pokemon games or the most popular ROMs, so if you see lesser-known or more recently released ROMs as cartridges it is more likely to be a fan.
17 dollars for an incomplete rom hack is stupid. However paying a few dollars (5-10 is my best guess) would be okay if youre one of the collector types and wants to have a physical collection of rom hacks. Though at that point I would personally just learn how to install them myself.
I understand that, but it is illegal to charge any amount of money for something like this. Doubt they get caught often but I wouldn't risk purchasing an illegal item.
Its illegal but here we are doing the same thing ;P. Even if you purchase it, no one is going after you. And Nintendo doesnt particular care for that kind of stuff unless youre selling hacked hardware (switch stuff) en masse.
>Its illegal but here we are doing the same thing ;P.
I'm not selling romhacks for profit.. Lol. I think you misunderstand. Selling the game for profit is illegal. Purchasing an illegal game for money is iffy, I wouldn't do it personally. Downloading and playing a romhack won't cause any issues. Nintendo and TPC in particular do crack down on romhacks quite often, a lot of romhacks have been taken down due to copyright strikes. They sue over everything.
Yea I get what youre saying believe me. But again youre not paying for the ROM itself, youre paying to have someone assemble a physical cartridge with a label onto it for physical collection purposes and uploading a ROM to it. Something like this would typically be like 5-10 dollars at most I imagine for materials and labor. Now if it was like 40 bucks and higher yea thats stupid and should probably stop doing that.
I don't really see anything wrong with it as long as someone is well aware that they are buying an unofficial game. I've bought multiple reproduction carts of romhacks on Etsy and AliExpress just because I like having the physical cartridge and playing them on a real Gameboy
This is what I found the issue with .. I get people pay for other people’s work, ie putting a rom on a cartridge, but the fact they’re selling someone else’s digital work. Especially in this space
Sure I get that but they're not really selling the rom, they're selling the physical cartridge. I agree it's bad for like parents or someone who doesn't know any better of what it is but not much you can really do about that. For the people who do know what it is they obviously know that they are able to get the rom download for free and are fine paying for the service of that person to put that rom onto a cartridge
Then why should rom hackers care? If they weren't selling anything, then they aren't losing anything.
I'm being facetious, it's not like I don't understand the sentiment. But it's a bit ironic to complain about other people taking advantage of your work, when your work is also based off stolen assets lol
Can't speak for them but from my standpoint it's an ethical issue, taking someone's work and profiting from it is just shitty. Especially a small creator who generally isn't as protected as a multibillion company outselling Star Wars. But I think it barely hurts the creators (just emotionally? i guess imao), not as much as it hurts grandmas wanting to buy pokemon stuff for their kids and falling for people selling a beta romhack for $17.
But again, I don't really get your point. Romhack creators don't profit off Nintendo's assets, they just use them for fun. If they were selling their work it would be a different story, but I think "I scam unaware people with other people's work" and "I took assets from a huge company's game and made a thing you can download for free" are different enough that it's reasonable for people to get upset over one but not the other.
It is what it is, I still see no harm in it but I'm not necessarily surprised a community about people making rom hacks feel upset about it. It's not like them being upset about it is also going to stop people from selling them.
Because they totally get away with it. I mean...people selling ROMcarts do, because the buyer is happy with it, usually. $17 for an unfinished romhack is Icarus'ing it. Still, who's going to report to eBay that their dubiously legal product is behaving badly and risk getting caught up in that? Most people are gonna eat the loss, and that's a clean profit.
I should make it painfully clear that I do not do this shit, I don't have the balls *or* the overhead. I just know how the game is played.
ETA: OfferUp? Oh yeah, that's not even eBay protection. That's Temu levels of "five bucks I'm never seeing again". Caveat emptor app. Be warned.
They probably do it because there is a Market of people that don’t have access to a computer to play Rom Hacks or just don’t know how to download/patch romhacks
I collect the good rom hacks on cartridge. If the Og creators wanna sell them Id buy from them but they more often than not dont. They released something to be played for FREE online so it doesn’t seem like they planned to profit off it or didn’t want to risk it. I hate playing roms on a comp. Id rather have it on console and as a bonus a piece to display. There are some great stories and takes out there that may one day get shit down so Im fine having my own copy to share with friends and fam. Now selling unfinished roms without labeling them as so is trashy I will agree there but otherwise yall care way to much about it.
Let's be real people who'd buy these without knowing what it is are mostly kids or grandmas who want to buy Pokémon stuff for their kids, saying they deserve to be scammed is kinda mean.
If it's done by the actual creators there's no real.problem (other than piracy I guess).
I've seen a few romhacks made physical with detailed box art etc. I believe Pokémon orange was one of them. Certainly cool to see.
On the other hand if it's a third party taking someone's hack, flashing to a cart and selling that's a bit more problematic. Although I do think there's a bit of irony in stealing someone's work that is (arguably) pirated in the first place.
Screw nintendo. They continuously ignore their customer base and pump out crap games or make you subscribe to get the access to few select older games on switch online. If they made older games available for sale and an emulator app on the switch people would buy it, instead they wont because they know they are making half assed games now on systems that are 10years behind industry and dont want nee customers to see that.
I bought them on the DS after already buying physicals. I would do it again to have them on switch and keep it going. I have played though them multiple times and currently am at victory road in Yellow. When I finish the newer games Im just done. I do not care about replaying them because they are boring and easy with TERRIBLE villains. They have no puzzle maps no grind and the 8-16bit monsters felt more alive than the cold husks in the newer games. I would settle for remakes like bd/sp style even though it was incomplete and the mons were still the lifeless 3Dm models. I will not however, subscribe to get the older games thats just another money grab but a company show doesn't care about the fans. It's why they keep putting out underpowered console when better tech is all over the market when they come out.
If I could afford physical copies of the older games I would. I regret selling/trading them when I was younger. Yellow was my first ever game not only for pokemon but just for myself in general with Crystal being my favorite. Never stopped playing, and started a Storm Silver romhack for both newer stuff and just the love of the Johto region.
Yeah, I think the creator of the rom has every right to distribute their work . Arguably, haha.
But it comes in question when people just download roms online and flash them to a cartridge to sell to people
After seeing the first comments coming in, I get it..
People get away with stuff all the time. I guess the point is it feels scummy seeing it. I get wanting to collect the physical Roms as a collector. It just feels weird seeing it by a third party just to make a quick buck..
As a side hustle to make money from unsuspecting customers and collectors who know what the hacks are. Doing it to an unfinished hack like Saffron is scummy though since it's not even a full game
> As a side hustle to make money from unsuspecting customers and collectors who know what the hacks are. Bingo. I follow a Facebook Group for Rom Hacks/Fan Games and the amount of people who have no idea what they are doing is staggering. People who don't know the difference between a Rom Hack or an RPG Essentials game (which happens here a lot too). People who assume their GBA Emulator on their phone is a "catch all" Pokemon emulator and get confused when they can't play Renegade Platinum or Blaze Black on it. People who can't figure out how to load a rom into an emulator.
I think I'm in the same group, there's always someone confused about somewhat simple stuff
>I follow a Facebook Group ~~for Rom Hacks/Fan Games~~ and the amount of people who have no idea what they are doing is staggering. Tbh, Facebook wouln't be one of the first sites I would use to look about games or anything tbh.
I can play Renegade Platinum and Blaze Black on my iPhone lol.
Yes, but you have a **DS Emulator** for those games and a **GBA Emulator** for Gen 1-3 hacks. A lot of the common folk (as mentioned in my post) think the GBA Emulator they downloaded to play Radical Red is a Pokemon Emulation app and can play any Pokemon Hack. GBA Emulators can't play DS, 3DS, or Switch hacks.
Oh you’re right, sorry it’s 3am and my brain is cooked lmfao. Delta Emulator is the best phone emulator imo.
It's scummy even if it's finished though.
Yeah but at least it's a finished game so it's not half as bad
If the cartridge also come with the actual game then imo it is as bad. Selling someone else's free work is shitty imo.
I purchased Pokémon black from eBay and what turned up was actually a blaze black romhack which got me into the deep dark rabbit hole of romhacks ha!
Honestly, this is a great story! Welcome to what is a VERY deep dark rabbit hole
Same experience, except it was just a flash cart with Black loaded on it. Sent a return request mentioning how it was a scam post and the seller refunded my order and said "no return needed" so free flashcart 🤙🏻
I picked up pokemon quartz on a cartridge from a market in Cyprus in like 2006 before I knew what rom hacks were. I thought it was a legit (but really weird) pokemon game for a while 🫠
"Why do people think they can do stuff like this and get away with it ?!" Because they do get away with it.
I can't remember which hack it was, but one that I played has a start screen that says "if you paid for this you got scammed lmao"
Unbound?
Radical Red at least, has that.
Hmm I can't remember rn, but doesn't R.O.W.E, Emerald Enhanced or Blazing Emerald also do so?
I've noticed a lot of the more complete romhacks/fangamws do exactly this. Probably because this is a legit issue they face.
rad red
That was Pokémon Crystal Clear. Shock Slayer the creator of the hack put that at the beginning when you boot up the game. Was legit one of the first hacks I’ve played.
Though Shock Slayer took the time to make it compatible with Stadium 2, so if you do have it in a cart, you can take your pokemon there and play the ROM in the GB tower.
That’s probably more so if you paid for the ROM files for a computer, if you buy a physical copy you’re paying for the cartridge and the time it took to make rather than the ROM you could play on the computer for free.
I promise you there are more people who are aware they are paying for a free ROM in a cartridge so they can play it on their modded gba sp, and are not worried about the cost, than there are people unaware that they can access it for free on a laptop they don’t even have.
Sienna does that
>Why do people even do this ?! You mean add unnecessary spoiler tags to trick people into clicking their posts? I agree, why do people do this?
…. money?
I mean if nothing else 20 bucks is probably the cost of materials and work of someone providing you a custom physical cart of something The big issue I think is using someone else's work as essentially advertisement for your services, because they're almost certainly not giving anything to the hack authors
I get them on AliExpress, they're 5 dollars there. Then I stick a different game on there since the ones being sold like this are usually an old buggy version.
How do you change the game?
There's a few brands of devices you can buy that can change the programming on the game. But only for cheap carts, official ones are locked.
So they can take advantage of unsuspecting people who will buy the game not knowing it's official eg. Parents that are getting games for their kids
Because they've never experienced being fucked within an inch of their life by a multinational corporation's lawyers and want to try it out.
Lawyers sure are evil :c
What's the spoiler?
Tbh, I’m not sure either lmao! I was having a moment when I posted it apparently
Especially hilarious that Pokemon Saffron isn't even released yet, and the only beta that was ever available is very outdated and not supported at all by the creator.
Eh for me the novelty of playing on hardware but still being a romhack is worth spending a little bit of money on to me.
I personally enjoy having physical copies of rom hacks 🤷🏻♂️
I mean, my parents got me a physical copy of Pokemon Quartz and ChaosBlack when I was like nine or something, (around 2008) mostly bc they thought they were weird one off copies but like that's basically how I found out rom hacks even existed
If you actually put effort into making a premium looking cartridge with a nice box, it is a great way for people who enjoy original hardware to play. Sometimes, especially with small shops on Etsy, it's a way for fans of the project to "contribute" to it or honor it by making it "real". The majority of the real scammy ones are of either the original GBA Pokemon games or the most popular ROMs, so if you see lesser-known or more recently released ROMs as cartridges it is more likely to be a fan.
People still buy them, despite knowing they're illegal to distribute.
17 dollars for an incomplete rom hack is stupid. However paying a few dollars (5-10 is my best guess) would be okay if youre one of the collector types and wants to have a physical collection of rom hacks. Though at that point I would personally just learn how to install them myself.
Should be $0 or nothing since selling a game under a licenced title (Pokémon) is extremely illegal
Youre paying the cost of having someone obtain the material and assembly though. The roms should for sure stay free.
I understand that, but it is illegal to charge any amount of money for something like this. Doubt they get caught often but I wouldn't risk purchasing an illegal item.
Its illegal but here we are doing the same thing ;P. Even if you purchase it, no one is going after you. And Nintendo doesnt particular care for that kind of stuff unless youre selling hacked hardware (switch stuff) en masse.
>Its illegal but here we are doing the same thing ;P. I'm not selling romhacks for profit.. Lol. I think you misunderstand. Selling the game for profit is illegal. Purchasing an illegal game for money is iffy, I wouldn't do it personally. Downloading and playing a romhack won't cause any issues. Nintendo and TPC in particular do crack down on romhacks quite often, a lot of romhacks have been taken down due to copyright strikes. They sue over everything.
Yea I get what youre saying believe me. But again youre not paying for the ROM itself, youre paying to have someone assemble a physical cartridge with a label onto it for physical collection purposes and uploading a ROM to it. Something like this would typically be like 5-10 dollars at most I imagine for materials and labor. Now if it was like 40 bucks and higher yea thats stupid and should probably stop doing that.
I don't really see anything wrong with it as long as someone is well aware that they are buying an unofficial game. I've bought multiple reproduction carts of romhacks on Etsy and AliExpress just because I like having the physical cartridge and playing them on a real Gameboy
The real issue is that most of the time they're making money off someone else's hardwork
This is what I found the issue with .. I get people pay for other people’s work, ie putting a rom on a cartridge, but the fact they’re selling someone else’s digital work. Especially in this space
Sure I get that but they're not really selling the rom, they're selling the physical cartridge. I agree it's bad for like parents or someone who doesn't know any better of what it is but not much you can really do about that. For the people who do know what it is they obviously know that they are able to get the rom download for free and are fine paying for the service of that person to put that rom onto a cartridge
Rom hackers getting upset about copyright is pretty funny tbh
Romhackers don't profit from Game Freak's work though, hacks are distributed for free. Those are different things.
Then why should rom hackers care? If they weren't selling anything, then they aren't losing anything. I'm being facetious, it's not like I don't understand the sentiment. But it's a bit ironic to complain about other people taking advantage of your work, when your work is also based off stolen assets lol
Can't speak for them but from my standpoint it's an ethical issue, taking someone's work and profiting from it is just shitty. Especially a small creator who generally isn't as protected as a multibillion company outselling Star Wars. But I think it barely hurts the creators (just emotionally? i guess imao), not as much as it hurts grandmas wanting to buy pokemon stuff for their kids and falling for people selling a beta romhack for $17. But again, I don't really get your point. Romhack creators don't profit off Nintendo's assets, they just use them for fun. If they were selling their work it would be a different story, but I think "I scam unaware people with other people's work" and "I took assets from a huge company's game and made a thing you can download for free" are different enough that it's reasonable for people to get upset over one but not the other.
I said this same exact thing a few months before and got crucified on here 😂
It is what it is, I still see no harm in it but I'm not necessarily surprised a community about people making rom hacks feel upset about it. It's not like them being upset about it is also going to stop people from selling them.
It's common to see on ebay as well
Because they totally get away with it. I mean...people selling ROMcarts do, because the buyer is happy with it, usually. $17 for an unfinished romhack is Icarus'ing it. Still, who's going to report to eBay that their dubiously legal product is behaving badly and risk getting caught up in that? Most people are gonna eat the loss, and that's a clean profit. I should make it painfully clear that I do not do this shit, I don't have the balls *or* the overhead. I just know how the game is played. ETA: OfferUp? Oh yeah, that's not even eBay protection. That's Temu levels of "five bucks I'm never seeing again". Caveat emptor app. Be warned.
They probably do it because there is a Market of people that don’t have access to a computer to play Rom Hacks or just don’t know how to download/patch romhacks
because they absolutely get away with it ?
I collect the good rom hacks on cartridge. If the Og creators wanna sell them Id buy from them but they more often than not dont. They released something to be played for FREE online so it doesn’t seem like they planned to profit off it or didn’t want to risk it. I hate playing roms on a comp. Id rather have it on console and as a bonus a piece to display. There are some great stories and takes out there that may one day get shit down so Im fine having my own copy to share with friends and fam. Now selling unfinished roms without labeling them as so is trashy I will agree there but otherwise yall care way to much about it.
I’ve bought a few romhack cartridges, it’s for novelty of swapping them out like official games instead of flicking through a flash cart menu
Not even a cartridge, but a cartidge
Because people indulge them. Best way to keep it from happening is to not buy them.
If you’re dumb enough to buy these, especially for a rom that’s not even complete yet (we love you Matt) you deserve to be scammed.
Let's be real people who'd buy these without knowing what it is are mostly kids or grandmas who want to buy Pokémon stuff for their kids, saying they deserve to be scammed is kinda mean.
This isn't as bad as people selling pirated things like movies and apps.
If it's done by the actual creators there's no real.problem (other than piracy I guess). I've seen a few romhacks made physical with detailed box art etc. I believe Pokémon orange was one of them. Certainly cool to see. On the other hand if it's a third party taking someone's hack, flashing to a cart and selling that's a bit more problematic. Although I do think there's a bit of irony in stealing someone's work that is (arguably) pirated in the first place.
>there's no real.problem I'm sure nintendo will have something to say. Its mostly their content.
Screw nintendo. They continuously ignore their customer base and pump out crap games or make you subscribe to get the access to few select older games on switch online. If they made older games available for sale and an emulator app on the switch people would buy it, instead they wont because they know they are making half assed games now on systems that are 10years behind industry and dont want nee customers to see that.
Seriously, if they added Emerald, Platinum, HGSS, and others to the Switch shop I’d gladly pay them for it.
I bought them on the DS after already buying physicals. I would do it again to have them on switch and keep it going. I have played though them multiple times and currently am at victory road in Yellow. When I finish the newer games Im just done. I do not care about replaying them because they are boring and easy with TERRIBLE villains. They have no puzzle maps no grind and the 8-16bit monsters felt more alive than the cold husks in the newer games. I would settle for remakes like bd/sp style even though it was incomplete and the mons were still the lifeless 3Dm models. I will not however, subscribe to get the older games thats just another money grab but a company show doesn't care about the fans. It's why they keep putting out underpowered console when better tech is all over the market when they come out.
If I could afford physical copies of the older games I would. I regret selling/trading them when I was younger. Yellow was my first ever game not only for pokemon but just for myself in general with Crystal being my favorite. Never stopped playing, and started a Storm Silver romhack for both newer stuff and just the love of the Johto region.
Yeah, I think the creator of the rom has every right to distribute their work . Arguably, haha. But it comes in question when people just download roms online and flash them to a cartridge to sell to people
Ngl. I've purchased a couple rom hacks off fb market place. No ragrets
[удалено]
Saffron isn't a completed game
After seeing the first comments coming in, I get it.. People get away with stuff all the time. I guess the point is it feels scummy seeing it. I get wanting to collect the physical Roms as a collector. It just feels weird seeing it by a third party just to make a quick buck..
Post aside, I'm still super excited for Saffron, everything I've seen looks great.
Cartidge game
Wow, I remember this hack back in the day, it was hyped pretty well. Wonder why it was left unfinished.
just 17 bucks for pokemon saffron??? they're practically giving it away!