Forward: Please do not go on eBay and contact the seller. we already did that, and there's nothing more to be gained from it.

We're happy to announce that, for the first time we're aware of, unauthorized copies of a Safety Stoat Studios game have appeared on eBay. We could not be more excited!

Finally, after 12 games, 2 albums, and a lot of elbow grease, prayers, tears, adrenaline, and cortisol, we have arrived in the space traditionally occupied by industry giants like Nintendo and Sega: we now have unauthorized reproductions of our IP showing up in Asia!

We've worked hard to stretch our marketing budget of $0 to get the word out! We tirelessly wrote Reddit posts, wrote Itch blogs, told our friends, talked the products up to our moms, and refused to sign up for Twitter. However, no amount of marketing can compete with, for example, the exposure if our roms were to randomly show up on cheap, knockoff handhelds. We could not, in a million years, convince somebody that our game had a rare, Japan-only cartridge release and was somehow worth $120. But, here it is! Free marketing! Of course, I would feel very bad if anybody paid $120 for a free game, but I do hope that somebody sees the listing and, perhaps, Googles it to find the game's real web page.

Let's talk about that box! We had nothing to do with the design, so it's cool to see how somebody else has interpreted our work. It does leave something to be desired though. We think that the bright stripes on the top are a poor choice. We would have gone with something darker to match the dragon graphic. The title does look badass and we like the hiragana(?) below, although we have no idea what it says. The dragon itself, though doubtlessly stolen from something else, is quite cool and we especially like how it looks on the cartridge.

The back is uninspiring, although it's pretty cool to see our screenshots on a real box. We're also very curious what the text says. Is the copy inspiring enough to make us want to pay $120 to play this game? Only a Japanese-speaker would know for sure!

In conclusion:

1. Boo-ya! We win! We're a real developer now! In your face, homebrew-games-convention-that-shall-not-be-named-that-rejected-all-our-submissions-last-month!
2. I discourage you from buying this or similar products. It's less about the copyright infringement and more about our mission. When we release games for  free, it's because the games are supposed to be for everybody. Download our games! Enjoy them! Share them! We hope they make your life a little bit brighter! If you want to play our games on original hardware, you can buy an Everdrive and an SD card for less than $120 and put all our games on it with our blessing.
3. But actually, if you would, you know, be willing to pay for our products, we do have a lot of kids to feed. Drop us a line? Contact: safetystoatstudios@gmail.com ;)

PS: Thank you to the friend-of-stoats that contacted us on Reddit about this listing. Much appreciated :)

PPS: A few people have pointed out that the art is derived from the box art for Imagic's Dragonfire. The 1982 publication date does explain those stripes.