Official VGFive Thread

Here are some of the cool things happening at vgfive that have me trading there these days.

Free Trades!
Trades on vgfive are free now (no more tokens), and you can buy points if you're short on banked points.  The economy has improved significantly, and games are settling well into the 100pts = $1.00 valuation. Even though there are a few members who consistently have a unrealistic expectation for what someone is willing to pay for a game, most are doing a pretty good job.

Cash for points means less trade risk if you bank points!

It should be known that the cashout system has gone through a couple of revisions and is currently offline to ensure cashouts follow the new format.  It should be back online soon, but you may never need it.  Basically, you're likely not going to be successful just selling games for profit on the site (due to the cashout frequency limitations), but you do have a way to cash out some points on a regular basis if you're not finding the games you want.

There are good games there.  Go look!

I've traded out a lot of games recently and gotten some really quality games in over the last few weeks. Brand new games are available and listed as such. Newer games are currently available (such as GTA V, Batman Arkham Origins, The Last of Us, Xenoblade Chronicles, Shin Megami Tensai IV, etc.) Here's what I've picked up thus far in October - many of these for the equivalent of $15 of points or less:

Vita:

  • Mortal Kombat (1,000 points)
  • Lumines (1,750 points)
:360:

  • Hitman HD Trilogy (2,500 points)
  • Battlefield 3 (1,000 points)
  • Saints Row: The Third (1,350 points)
  • Wheel of Fortune (1,000 points)
  • Kingdoms of Amalur (1,500 points)
  • Sleeping Dogs (1,500 points)
  • Dead Island Riptide (1,900 points)
  • Dragons Dogma (1,500 points)
Wii U:

  • The Wonderful 101 (4,500 points)
 
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I and many other former Goozers/VG5ers are taking the Leap to LEAPTRADE. It is a great time to sign up since they are giving a $5 BONUS just for signing up, another $5 BONUS for sending out your 1st trade and an additional $5 BONUS for each referral.

Please use my referral link here:

http://www.leaptrade...referrer:murg75

Just got this Awesome message from LEAPTRADE:

We’ve all heard about the trouble that Goozex is having. While we don’t know what happened to them, we know that it's been rough on you guys, and we want to do something to help. You’re a gamer, we're gamers, you love to trade games, we love to trade games. That makes you family. As a gesture from us to welcome you guys to the Leaptrade community, we are going to give you your next 4 trade-in’s for only 40 cents shipping each. Think of it like pouring a 40oz on the street of gaming for our fallen comrades.

We understand you may be a little gun shy. We get that, and we will stick around, listen, and help make Leaptrade feel like home.

So, how do you get in on all this cheap shipping? Step 1, if you got this message on Leaptrade, you’re done, we already set you up for the 40 cent shipping. For everyone else, just send Leaptrade a message, or email us at [email protected], show us your Goozex or VGFive cred and we’ll take care of the rest.

Make sure to spread the word and tell your friends, anyone we missed or didn’t message yet. That is, unless they're loaded and have a gold plated Nintendo in a display case, then they've got money to burn. The Leaptrade Team

 
z0jx.jpg


 
Weird. I went to VGFive this morning around 8 a.m. EST and the site was still up. Now when you type in vgfive.com, you get this:

Heroku | No such app

There is no app configured at that hostname.
Perhaps the app owner has renamed it, or you mistyped the URL.

What is Heroku? Does anyone have a link to the VGFive chat room? I think it was ran by Quake something.

 
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Midas2012 says no way. lol He's given them his blessing.

I kinda think it will sputter along.

 
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I can confirm that VGFive is no more, although that's just based on me knowing that I can't access the site on the back end. I'm assuming the bill wasn't paid and the hosting company cut off of the owners by taking down the site.

We've got a community site going that's basically just forums now to discuss it. Over at http://www.vg2.me but there won't be trading there. It's simply to keep the site's community going.

 
I can confirm that VGFive is no more, although that's just based on me knowing that I can't access the site on the back end. I'm assuming the bill wasn't paid and the hosting company cut off of the owners by taking down the site.

We've got a community site going that's basically just forums now to discuss it. Over at http://www.vg2.me but there won't be trading there. It's simply to keep the site's community going.
said you was going to protect our points so how is that going to work out

 
Had a good run, I think I did about 250 trades in the year it was going (both incoming and outgoing) and I ended up being 0/0 before it went down so I can't complain.  Other than the "perfectly good trading site now gone" complaint.  Once I saw Goozex drop I knew the end was close for VGFive.  Looks like a lot of traders have gone to Leaptrade but I don't think I'll be making that transition, right now I'm here at CAG and over on 99Gamers which is working out pretty good so far.  We'll see.

 
So that's it for vgfive?  Those of us with points are essentially screwed?  

Of course, I just HAD to accept that trade request of Sticker Star 2 weeks ago and now I have 4900 points I can't use.

Sigh...I'm done with trading sites.  I used goozex and got screwed when they went under, then went to vgfive thinking everyone was there just to get screwed again.  

 
Today I got my last trade from VGFive. The person could have pretended they sent the game just to get points but they were honest. Now I had 250 points and one pending feedback left. 

 
So at the risk of bringing back a zombie thread...

It looks like Goozex (Bay) in any shape or form, is completely gone. Their company filing expired in Nevada, their lawsuit against their creditor was dismissed, and their stock was delisted for failure to file anything of the required documents.

I think it might actually be safe to tell my story... or even actually bring back VGFive as it existed before they swooped in. Not sure there's interest in it anymore, though. Seems like there are plenty of good options for trading nowadays, which is great.

 
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TZ We would love to hear the story. Looks like a lot of traders from Goozex moved to 99gamers/leaptrade

Leaptrade has queues and friend to friend trading. Action is slow over there. 99gamers is sell games for coins, buy this game for this coin etc.

Anyways I know a lot of people liked VGfive,

 
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Well, the core of it is basically what people speculated. It was either shut the site down, sell the site to Goozex, or risk whatever legal action might have arose from ignoring the messages that I got from Goozex regarding VGFive.

In the end I sold the site in order to keep the community going and give people a chance to spend their credits down if they wanted to. The amount I sold it for was basically to cover my legal fees related to completing the sale. From there I managed the site for essentially nothing until it died, making changes as Goozex came up with ideas. I made a couple hundred dollars over the ensuing nine months, based on how much business the site was doing (after costs). Nowhere near worth the amount of time I put in, but it was always more about passion than profits.

It was likely that there wasn't much of a case against me, but there would have been enough legal costs up front to hit me pretty hard. That was my lawyer's advice at the time (and he was an excellent guy through the whole process, keeping my costs down from what he'd normally charge).

All said and done, VGFive's death was more a result of Goozex's demise. The site on its own was financially fine even under new ownership. I'd relaunch it again in a heartbeat, but I feel that the landscape of both trading and how people get their games has changed quite a bit since those days.

 
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You always seemed like a great guy, so even if you don't open another site, I'm sure most of the communities would love to have you around. 

 
I feel that the landscape of both trading and how people get their games has changed quite a bit since those days.
It has but you also were the first to allow digital trades. I think you should fire that beast back up--as long as you had some sort of legal protection that is. I'm speculating and this is way past my area of expertise but I wonder if you could do something along the lines of a coop. Bay's strength was in bullying you with a specious lawsuit behind closed doors. Make it a community decision. You were basically running it like a cooperative anyways without the legal protection of one.

I expect to see it up tomorrow ;)

Edit: I should add that I really liked your place in that landscape. It was a hobby that you cared about with an economy to distribute problems arising from people being jerks. It cultivated other people who shared that hobby pitching in with some of the work (like curating the database) and it kept costs down while keeping the site sustainable. Other sites might keep costs per user down but VGFive's mix of cost, service, and sustainability was just about right for me.

 
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Personally I would like to see vgfive come back now that the gooz is officially gone.  Ever since vgfive went down my trades have pretty much gone down to zero.  I just don't have time to search and barter etc.  I tried a few of the others but nothing seems to have moved as smoothly as vgfive.  Of course all the points are probably gone forever but I would cautiously go back if it ever came back.

Just my two cents.

 
i think you would have a lot of problems getting people back to your site for a number of reasons.

1. when goozex was going belly up, you posted on vg that you will do  everything in your power to make sure that our points will be safe.

2. when goozex did finally go belly up and our points was worthless  you then said there was nothing you could do to protect our points what you knew from the start so why you said you was going to do everything you could to protect them (when you could do nothing) pissed off a lot of people

3. thought you said you signed something with goozex saying you will never open up another site or after watching VG crash you said you would never open up another site or have anything to do with another game site after we lost all of our points 

but best of luck to whatever you do, just dont count on many coming back  like it was in the good old days 

 
i think you would have a lot of problems getting people back to your site for a number of reasons.

1. when goozex was going belly up, you posted on vg that you will do everything in your power to make sure that our points will be safe.

2. when goozex did finally go belly up and our points was worthless you then said there was nothing you could do to protect our points what you knew from the start so why you said you was going to do everything you could to protect them (when you could do nothing) pissed off a lot of people

3. thought you said you signed something with goozex saying you will never open up another site or after watching VG crash you said you would never open up another site or have anything to do with another game site after we lost all of our points

but best of luck to whatever you do, just dont count on many coming back like it was in the good old days
That's a valid point and something that has a story behind it. I did hope to launch something once the site went down, assuming the legality of it was covered. The problem with "saving the points" was that I never expected the site to be shutdown by the web host rather than Goozex themselves. Once the host locked down the site, the backups of the database (the only running record of points) got locked down as well. The best backup I had was a few weeks old at that point, and obviously that would have been problematic since points changed hands on a daily basis. We actually had a new domain set up, but nothing to relaunch with.

I do feel like anyone who used the site for any length of time got a good value from any points they had in circulation. I hate that the site just ceased to exist, but I think that was kind of known to be coming down the pipe once Goozex shut down. I didn't know any more than anyone else did until the day it happened.

I should clarify that I was just saying I *could* relaunch the site from a legal standpoint. I don't currently have any real plans to do so.

 
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What were their legal threats based on?
They didn't like that I told people about VGFive via the Goozex messaging system, which I only did after another new trading site had done the same thing. I recall that quite a few of us asked the Goozex team for guidance on if other sites advertising was allowed, and there was no response.

After the new owners had purchased Goozex, they felt it was unfair competition. They also felt that the other site was unfair competition because they used Goozex to tell people about their new site, but of course that site is still operating to this day.

The original intent of VGFive was to keep the community together because Goozex was looking like it could shut down any day, which was why we used the forum to communicate initially. That only went on for a couple of days until I launched our own forums, specifically because I didn't like using the Goozex forums for such a thing. In fact, once I saw that the other site was allowed to message people on Goozex to promote their site, that was the very day that I started work on VGFive.

I think that had we just stuck to being secretive like other sites had done, instead of keeping things public in the forums, VGFive likely would still be around.

 
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I'm not a lawyer, but I don't see how they would have a legal leg to stand on based on that.
My lawyer didn't believe so either, but he couldn't come up with any case law that we could have used to avoid the discovery phase of a suit (which is where my costs would have gone way up).

Putting it plainly, with a newborn at the time, it was either legal fees or diapers. :)

 
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Personally I would like to see vgfive come back now that the gooz is officially gone. Ever since vgfive went down my trades have pretty much gone down to zero. I just don't have time to search and barter etc. I tried a few of the others but nothing seems to have moved as smoothly as vgfive. Of course all the points are probably gone forever but I would cautiously go back if it ever came back.

Just my two cents.
I was always an advocate of automated trading over systems where you actively need to create trades. I still think the queue system, despite its flaws, it a pretty good one... so long as there is active management of the economy. The original queue system used at Goozex, IMHO, got too big to be efficient (because of things like buying points and new user bonuses).

 
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This thread coming back just reminds me of my disappointment over Goozex and VG5 being gone.  I agree with tz's assessment about the queue system being preferable.  I've had next to no activity on 99 Gamers and nothing at all on Leaptrade.  Sadly, I think the summit of game trading has passed with the purchasing of digital games consistently rising.  As a consumer, I don't get the appeal of digital at all since there's no way to recoup any of the money put out for the games once you're done with it.

 
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This thread coming back just reminds me of my disappointment over Goozex and VG5 being gone. I agree with tz's assessment about the queue system being preferable. I've had next to no activity on 99 Gamers and nothing at all on Leaptrade. Sadly, I think the summit of game trading has passed with the purchasing of digital games consistently rising. As a consumer, I don't get the appeal of digital at all since there's no way to recoup any of the money put out for the games once you're done with it.
bad thing about the two sites now

leap trade has very few traders there and its based on price so people are going to bitch- im not letting my game go for that cheap or im not paying xxx when its only xxx new

99 gamers can be abused very easy for people who have been there longer and have tons of points. Buy up all of the cheap games and resell at a profit. *that is why most of the name your price sits dont last long

im shocked 99 gamers have lasted as long as it has.

 
99gamers advertises a lot. I've had pretty good luck on the site. Plenty of dumb traders on there though
what i loved about 99 games so far

Was able to dump the 2 wii controllers got for like 10 each for 100 points.

Was able to grab 3 copies of mario kart between 8 to 14 coins each and dump them to best buy for 22 each.

 
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