Third Party Sellers (Aftermarket) Third Party Manufacturers and Third Party Writers
When it comes to your favorite shows, films, games or something else sometimes there’s an extra thing that we need. However, sometimes the official content creators of your favorite media for whatever reason might not have it, it usually comes down to the fans to make it to satisfy other fans. Fans (or grifters) will usually try to help each other out when it comes to something (sometimes just for the money). I decided to write about some that I know about.
Third Party Sellers (Aftermarket)
The Aftermarket is what happens after a product leaves circulator and is sold for higher prices by earlier buyers. There are also scalpers that buy products in bulk and then sell them for higher prices to the customers, even if the product is still in service. One of the more recent examples I can think about is how PS5 was scalped. However those scum of the earth face an issue with the PS5 getting more in stock, effectively making their purchase worthless.
Third Party Manufacturers
Now third party manufacturers are when people make and sell products based off of a media, such as Art or other things. Some sell stuff for a product but also to fill the niche. Some are well known and loved such as one I know well called Clone Army Customs, an unofficial Lego third party Manufacturer that sells clones from Star Wars that don’t have proper minifigures, they even have a real life store. I also know a few stores for other third party products such as for tabletop Miniatures options.
While some third party manufacturers make stuff for cosplayers such as armor or prop weapons to sell to people. A fairly recent discussion I had of buying something third party comes from a talk I had with a discord friend…
My Friend has been streaming The Witcher 3 (2015) after the reveal of The Witcher 4 back in December. While playing, we talked about what all the witchers wear, their medallions. Now to simplify A LOT, Witchers are monster hunters that wear medallions that in universe hum when magic is near and are shaped for the Witcher group they are from.
The Developers of The Witcher games, CD Project Red, sell merchandise on their store such as The Witcher Medallions for two of the Witcher groups called The School of the Wolf and The School of the Cat. However they are both out of stock here in America but there is the option to pre order the new School of the Lynx Medallion from The Witcher 4. There are also five different Witcher schools in game canon whose medallions aren’t sold officially.
Also the Medallion depicted in the games aren’t the ones as described in the Books with them being circular with the animal emblem on them, which the Netflix show did right when adapting the books (One of if not the only thing the Netflix show did right in that regards).
Because of the limited Options, I decided to look into third party Options. Amazon has a lot of options for the medallions, both the game animal head and the Book/show circular ones with some going for around 10 dollars and are cheap while others are more expensive ranging in the $50+.
There are some times where the company gets involved when they see it as harmful to their brand. One, I remember happening and a topic usually talked about separating art from the Artist.
Any Source game made by Value including Half Life 2, is one of if not the biggest example of separating art from the artist I can think of. From the early days Garry’s mod (2006) which is a modified version of Half Life 2 which allows for players to mess around in its engine doing all sorts of things, such as the current generation’s using it for Skibidi Toilet.
Garry’s Mod has an online mode in which people can run servers. One such group of servers are the Roleplay Servers in which people can Roleplay in different settings such as Military ones including WW2, Modern, Star Wars (usually The Empire’s Stormtroopers or The Republic’s Clone Troopers) Halo and a lot others.
However, it is known that on these servers you can “Donate” to the servers and be “Gifted” in game rewards such as custom jobs or other features such as more customization options including emotes or custom skins. Known Gmod hater, Bud Games, made a YouTube video where he asked people how much they spent on Gmod servers alone. The prices range from $30-$100 depending on the person and server.
One of the most famous Servers was a Hogwarts Roleplay Server in which people roleplay as Hogwarts students. These servers lasted for years but in mid 2022 was shut down randomly under threat to the Facepunch Studios Warner Bros., who ordered the total termination of the game mode. This came nearly a year before the release of Hogwarts Legacy (2023). The most famous and most played of the Hogwarts servers’ called Star By Star, which I learned from former Players, claimed that the two other Servers, Clone Wars and Halo RP, had similar pricing with the ability to buy “Overpowered Classes and customization such as custom player models”. The other two servers were facing lower player numbers with many members already leaving the community before Hogwarts got terminated.
The same players claim that apparently the head of Star By Star used donated money to buy a car under a company car.
It’s also worth noting that Star By Star is actually the name of a Star Wars book from 2001.
Something one of the Players I know claims is that if Disney were to take action against Star Wars RP Gmod servers, it would be “Destruction of biblical portions”.
Third Party Writers
Something else third party is free stuff such as Fan Fiction. Anything the worst minds of humanity could think of have been made on sites like on AO3, who come up with the most horrifying mental images ever created and are technically third party. This is the occasional masterpiece of Fan fiction but good luck finding that through all the smut.
However a lot of fan works that are made for free such as Fan Fictions are made from love, such as fan films which have a lot of talented people behind it.
However other times it is for people to stick it to those in current control of their favorite franchise, such as Spider-Man Lotus whose creator didn’t just hate on minorities but also people working on Spider-Man movies.
Conclusion
So in conclusion, the third party market is a lot more free but also has a lot more variety when it comes to certain things on the franchises they making.
Source; www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks53xwrdnfQ&ab_channel=BubGames.
