$10K worth of SNES PAL games "lost" in the mail

[Shonumi]

I don't know how many of you have been keeping up with this, but byuu has been going through some tough times. He's been doing an SNES preservation project, basically trying to correctly dump and document every SNES game and other materials like the manuals. A number of SNES games still haven't been adequately dumped (e.g. the dumps are incorrect in some way, and the hashes get passed around as correct even though no one verified it). Additionally, byuu has been documenting the specific boards/PCBs/circuitry each game uses. Essentially, he's making his own database like redump.org but for SNES games.

To that end, he tried to enlist the help of someone in Germany with a lot of rare PAL SNES games. 100 games were sent, but only 0 came back...

Spoiler: (Show Spoiler)

... and that's absolutely ridiculous. I find it highly unlikely that 100 games would just disappear through normal package processing. I mean, nothing came back except the empty shell of what once was a cardboard box. I've seen package processing facilities before; that's not what happens. Everyone else can think what they want, but I'm calling theft on this. I can't really apply Occam's Razor. This isn't just incompetence. Consider that international packages have to declare what's inside to customs. So... someone will less than honorable intentions could easily have seen the listing and figured to take a peek. Packages that go through customs are subject to inspection as well, meaning it could easily have been opened by a number of employees. This probably wouldn't have happened domestically, imo.

Byuu's accepting money (via Patreon) to recoup the losses to the game collector in Germany. He shipped another batch just fine last year iirc, but this year really screwed him over. If you don't want to chip in some cash, totally cool. I just wanted to get the word out, and I'd appreciate it if everyone else could spread the news. Don't want to seem like I'm trying to push his patreon, but I'm really into game preservation (I'm considering scanning a bunch of GB/GBC/GBA manuals to make my own database). I'd hate to see gaming history lost to greed like this.

[DrHouse64]

I saw that on his Twitter, it's very discouraging for his project.
A lot of SNES dumps aren't clean dumps and that's a shame. Game preservation is important, and game companies don't seem to interested on that so we have to do it ourselves, that's a lot of work and money.

[Runo]

Can't he apply for a full refund? Especially since it was all lawfully declared.
It's the shipping company's responsibility.
I have a friend who lost an emotionally important and expensive (though maybe not as expensive as this one) package to international shipment.
When they refused to refund him, he sued them, and eventually got about double the money he lost, which was enough to cover for everything including the lawyer.
This happened here in Brazil, so I wouldn't know much about legal differences, but the letter you posted even says he can ask for a refund, doesn't it?

Tough break, anyway. This really looks like theft.
I hope he gets through this.

[mimimi]

Good news, the packet arrived after all:
https://byuu.org/emulation/preservation/found-package/

[Runo]

Now that's a nice development Good to know

[DrHouse64]

Just saw the good news. That's cool

[sulblazer]

Oh good, the cartridges were all found. Appears it was incompetence after all.