Some customers of Wata Gamesa company active in the video game market of the past, have launched a class action to try to put an end to what is defined as a real racket created to artificially leaven the price of some gamessuch as Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda.
The class action was launched by Jacob Knight, Jack Cribbs and Jason Dohse, who filed it with California’s Central District Court.
The accusation against Wata Games, owned by Collectors Universe, is that of having created a bubble in the collecting of retro games, deceiving customers and giving life to a real criminal racket.
Basically, collectors send their games to Wata to determine their condition and rarity. Wata asks for money to speed up the process and takes a 2% commission on games worth more than $ 2,500.
According to collectors, Wata would have stolen them by artificially raising the value of the retro games market, thus charging the premium price for its services, plus taking a long time to send the games back to the owners.
Average waiting times to get games back reached 150 days, with some particularly serious cases reaching eighteen months, such as that of a Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance for GameCube.
Such allegations are not new to the market videogame collecting. Many of those of the class action come from a documentary by youtuber Karl Jobst who accused Wata Games, Heritage Auctions and various collectors of collusion to raise the price of some titles. Indeed, the situation in the retrogaming world has become very opaque, with prices having risen enormously in recent years, often for unknown reasons.
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