News Etsy Accuses Game Boy Publisher Of Piracy For Selling Its Own Games

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Indie game maker FerranteCrafts has shared an update on social media about why some of their physical Game Boy games are no longer available in their Etsy shop. The reason is quite surprising.

The owner of FerranteCrafts says Etsy is accusing them of piracy, even though they only sell products they create themselves.

For those who don't know, FerranteCrafts makes complete boxed versions of homebrew games for the Nintendo Game Boy. These include titles like Hunt the Gwumbus, Black Castle, and G-Zero. They also produce physical versions of Sebastian Staacks' GB Interceptor - a device that plugs into your Game Boy to record gameplay. All these items are sold with permission from the original creators and made by FerranteCrafts. Yet, Etsy has been flagging and removing several of their games from sale.

Ferrante Crafts (@ferrantecrafts.bsky.social)

Some of you may have noticed some #gameboy games disappearing from the #Etsy shop over the past 3 months. I've been trying to contact Etsy since they removed the first one, but it took 2,5 months to finally get an actual reply instead of the automated ones.

bsky.app

FerranteCrafts explained in a post:

"You may have noticed some games vanishing from our Etsy shop over the last 3 months. I've been trying to reach Etsy since they removed the first one, but it took 2.5 months to get a real response instead of automated ones.
I think this started because knockoffs are now showing up on AliExpress, so a bot likely spotted this and assumed I wasn't making the cartridges and other items myself. This seemed to be the case when I finally got a human to tell me they removed the items because they were resold products.
But after I explained everything, they suddenly changed the reason to promoting piracy by selling unauthorized or fake copies of video games.
I explained that I have permission from all game creators, who make their own games, but Etsy abruptly ended the conversation, saying they now consider the case closed and won't reconsider."

We've contacted Etsy to see if they can explain this decision and possibly rethink it.

For now, you can still buy blank cartridges and GB Interceptors from FerranteCraft's Etsy store, but everything else must be purchased from the publisher's website.

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