There's more to this. He made these videos in partnership with the
Video Game History Foundation, yet another
nonprofit Jirard has been "working with".
These guys also have ties to Wata Games through the
VGHF's founder, Frank Cifaldi. Wata is a scam group that was working alongside Heritage Auctions that Karl Jobst exposed for purposefully creating a bubble in the retro gaming market.
I was looking into this, and I saw somebody tweeting at Karl to look into it a while ago. So Jobst might want to take a second look into things. It was suggested that Jirard might be doing this with VGHF to help Wata create an aftermarket for consoles with Eshop games on them.
Here's a shitty NintendoLife article for further reading on Cifaldi's work with Wata Games.
Doing more digging on the VGHF and Jirard's videos and that "Jirard is doing this with VGHF to help Wata create an aftermarket for consoles" theory is becoming more and more crystal clearly true.
First off. Jirard made a followup to the eShop video, I think a section of it is very pertinent.
In this video, during a segment that starts at 7:45, Jirard has a segment that disregards emulation as a solution for preservation, as well as makes it out to be
vewy vwery haaaawd. He says that relying on this is "gatekeeping" classic games. Obviously this whole segment fails to understand that old hardware will fade away eventually and stop working.
He also has segments with VGHF staff (including Frank Cifaldi) throughout the video, including an entire segment with them at 14:41. This video only makes it more clear how deeply Jirard works with this
nonprofit for the benefit of money grubbing idiots.
Now, let's go further into the Video Game History Foundation's links to companies/organizations that benefit from scarcity of games.
On the "Projects" page of the VGHF website, there's a section that reveals they also work with Limited Run Games.
I'll get the part about LRG my fellow farmers will care about more out of the way... Yes, LRG is woke.
They fired a woman at the request of a tranny because the woman was excited for the wizard game.
But the more pertinent part here, is that LRG is a company that runs on FOMO, and produces, well, extremely limited runs of games both indie and higher end.
They're even currently doing a limited run of Persona 4 Golden.
It's in the name. If they produce 1000 physical copies for a game, then that's the only physical copies for that game,
ever.
They're a company that benefits from the scarcity of games in the very outset, given it's their business model. If we allow them to write off emulation, it's very possible for them to release "limited runs" of classic games. I'd say that if the VGHF were truly about preserving games, then working with LRG would be antithetical to that cause, since they actively limit the copies available to preserve.
Kelsey Lewin is somebody who appears in Jirard's video as Co-Director of the Video Game History Foundation.
She is however, no longer listed on the team page.
I think I know why.
If we look at an older archive of the team page...
Kelsey Lewin owns "Pink Gorilla", a chain of retro game stores.
Knowing what we know now, wouldn't you say that's a massive conflict of interest? A retro game store can also benefit from game scarcity by raising prices.
That would also cut into what Wata is trying to do, so bye bye Kelsey!
Let's look at Pink Gorilla's homepage and see where they're located.
Oops! All Seattle! (California 2!)
It's clear that Jirard has quite the large investment and relationship with the VGHF, as well as the VGHF working with companies/organizations that benefit from scarcity of older games, such as Wata Games, Limited Run Games, Pink Gorilla, and
probably more.
