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Revision as of 19:01, 23 September 2005 by Ndrake (talk | contribs) (Added External links section with link to site)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)About After the demise of popular game trading website Switchhouse.com many traders began searching for a trading site they could call their own. GameTZ's intuitive forum design and trading/matching system fostered a largely enthusiastic trading community, now strong as ever.
Multi-platform gaming magazine GamePro has cited trading sites, specifically GameTZ.com to be great alternatives to selling your games back to retail outlets at reduced value.
History
The Used Game Trading Zone was originally created by Stephen Osborne. We're not sure exactly when Stephen Osborne started UGTZ, but we did find a post on a USENET newsgroup from him about it dating back to December 23, 1996. As Stephen Osborne's site grew it became difficult for him to maintain it (he was doing it by hand at the time). Bill Marrs stepped in and automated it with an interactive web system in October of 1997. After that, the site was half on Stephen's site and half on Bill's. A few months later it was decided to move the entire site to Bill's home page. In summer 1998, the domain name "ugtz.com" was purchased, in spring 1999 UGTZ started using a real database, and in summer 1999 UGTZ started running advertisements.
At the beginning of 2000, Bill quit his regular job to focus on running and growing ugtz.com. In March 2000, Bill modified and cloned the trading engine used by UGTZ to handle trading music, movies, and books, the name of the site was shortened to Game Trading Zone, and the domain gametz.com (along with musictz.com, movietz.com, and booktz.com) began being used. At the beginning of 2002, all four zones were recombined into GameTZ and the other three domains were dropped. In February 2003, the site went to a subscriber-only format. Passive use of the site by non-subscribers was still possible, but a subscription was necessary to use all the features. In August 2005, the site went back to a voluntary subscriptions only (non-subscriber again have full access to GameTZ's trading features). History courtesy of GameTZ.com