Pirated Games Sold On Ebay

[emplehod-sales]

I like to look for good prices on PC games on Ebay, but I'm getting tired of coming across the hundreds of listings for cracked and pirated games being sold. Any game listing that says "No Key" or "Offline Only" or "No Online Play" is a pirated title.  Any seller that attempts to sell you a separate Steam account or other to play a game is pirated. If I wanted a pirated title to play offline, I could just download it myself for free. These crooked sellers are just middlemen and making a profit selling pirated software. I think Ebay should crack down on this illegal activity.

[kathiec]

There are about 1.5 billion listings on eBay on any given day. There's no possible way they can monitor each and every one of them. The way eBay monitors listings for counterfeits and pirated items is through their VERO program. The rights owners sign up for the program and can ask eBay to remove listings, which eBay does 99.9% of the time. So you should check with the game publishers to see if they're VERO members and report the listings to them.

[emplehod-sales]

Thanks for your input.

[mudshark61369]

@emplehod-sales,

  "Any game listing that says "No Key" or "Offline Only" or "No Online Play is a pirated title".

If the games you are interested in are older ones, that may not be true. Games that stopped being supported by newer operating systems, may be playable if a Mimic program is used on your computer, but its online feature was probably terminated when the original operating system(s) it was designed to work with, support ended.   If a game required a key for online play, and it was used by the original owner, it may not be able to be used again for online play, since the Game's publisher rights, does not allow the code to transfer.  You may be able to pay for a new code from the Game's publisher if the game is still being sold and supported.