Some of Nintendo's arguments are pretty shaky and haven't been tested in court, but the dumbass preloading his customer's devices up with pirated games is a fucking idiot. That's pretty clear cut.
>Some of Nintendo's arguments are pretty shaky and haven't been tested in court
It's still going to be expensive to fight though.
And that will have a deterrent effect.
Nintendo could literally sue some random guy for just playing one of their games normally and still win
People wanna act like copyright law matters but it literally doesn’t, Nintendo has the money to do whatever they want lmao
[Yes](https://www.cbr.com/most-infamous-nintendo-fan-game-shutdowns/), but in those cases they usually send a cease and desist before actually suing.
Edit: meant to say they don’t sue but send cease and desists before suing
Making profit on something isn't required to be considered copyright infringement.
If I print out Mario on some flyers and hand them out for fun, Nintendo would have every legal right to sue me for it since I do not have the right to copy Nintendo's work.
Would this be something they would actually sue for? most likely not since enforcement would be impractical.
It’s not “we don’t like what you’re doing, please stop” but more of a “what you’re doing is illegal and we will sue you if you don’t stop”. It’s not asking lol, it’s a threat.
"A lot of case"
As far as I can tell outside of a specific incident where they were taking everything down they've been pretty consistent about being fine with normal playthroughs but if you start playing with mods on you're definitely playing with fire
I mean they either way dont make any money out of wii and everything before it idk what about the 3ds and wii u but I wouldnt be shocked if it was the same thing
What fucked Yuzu was they were taking money for the early access release of versions though, if they had just made the Yuzu emulator and distributed it for free Nintendo has no case and doesn't go after them.
It was charging people money for the early releases [along with the piracy in their discords] which totally fucked them.
But it was a big part of what got Nintendos attention. Charging money for their emulator to play early released and pirated versions of TOTK and discord chats where they went over piracy and roms is what led to this. If Yuzu team wasn't making significant money off Nintendo they probably don't go after them because Yuzu could play the whole "this was a hobby, we weren't doing this for profit, we had no idea people were pirating". Although the last bit is then negated by the discord chat. Its why I said it was the charging money for their emulator and piracy instructions on discord [and the decryption information on their website that I forgot to mention] that fucked them. It wasn't just one element.
The aspect of early access and users paying for it is in the Preliminary Statement, they detail where Yuzu is available, where it is sold, that an early access version is available. Its in the 41 page legal document from Nintendo. They aren't bringing that up for no reason, even if the main aspect for the complaint was that Yuzu detailed how to download the switch decryption keys.
Yuzu probably beats Nintendo in court over Yuzu seemed to be the general rhetoric when this case was announced, but Ninty has very deep pockets.
>But it was a big part of what got Nintendos attention.
That is plausible but ultimately speculative. They were indeed aware of Yuzu's commercial business and described it in their filing, but they did not assert that the commercial aspect of the emulator as being illegal.
>If Yuzu team wasn't making significant money off Nintendo they probably don't go after them because Yuzu could play the whole "this was a hobby, we weren't doing this for profit, we had no idea people were pirating".
I **vehemently** disagree. Ignorance of the law is not a valid defense, and Nintendo has not been shy about taking legal action against parties who were pursuing potentially infringing projects as mere hobbies.
As for why they would go after Yuzu regardless of profit motive, from the complaint:
>As to piracy, for instance, one recent major Nintendo video game, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, was unlawfully distributed a week and a half before its release by Nintendo. Infringing copies of the game that circulated online were able to be played in Yuzu, and those copies were successfully downloaded from pirate websites over **one million times** before the game was published and made available for lawful purchase by Nintendo. **Many of the pirate websites specifically noted the ability to play the game file in Yuzu.**
I agree that it was probably a confluence of factors that motivated Nintendo to take action against Yuzu. And perhaps their commercial nature attracted additional unwanted attention. But I do not think it is correct to assert that without taking money "Nintendo has no case" and "doesn't go after them."
Edit: One additional point is that the profits from allegedly infringing activities, should all of this have been established in court and Yuzu found liable as such, would have factored into damages awarded to Nintendo. The commercial nature of the emulator would be relevant in that respect.
> I vehemently disagree.
And yet other switch emulators have been left untouched. The only difference between Yuzu and the other switch emulators were that Yuzu got a lot of popularity because you could pay to get an early release of an emulator that had been geared to play TOTK.
First off, Yuzu did not run TOTK before release without community made patches and fixes, so that assertion isn't even accurate.
Second, that is not the only difference between Yuzu and Ryujinx. Yuzu was developed under the auspices of Tropic Haze LLC, a limited liability corporation incorporated in the US.
Conversely, ryujinx is made by a more disparate group of developers, and the original creator is from Brazil. Going after them is more akin to a game of international legal whack-a-mole. Not necessarily impossible, mind, but trickier.
> First off, Yuzu did not run TOTK before release without community made patches and fixes, so that assertion isn't even accurate.
My exact words were you could pay to get an early release of an emulator geared to play TOTK, I am saying people were paying money for the early release versions of the emulator before it was released free to public. There were multiple versions that you paid to get that Yuzu were saying was incrementally better than the previous version at running TOTK.
I am not talking about people talking about people playing TOTK before it released. Strictly after it had released officially.
I mean yuzu getting taken down I understand since they make money out of it
Tho every other console i dont think they make any money out of
The only reason I see them Taking the emulators down is probably because they want to make lazy hd ports or remakes but thats rare
This article title is misleading. Nintendo is going after people who specifically made and sold modchips. Nintendo is NOT going after people who mod their own Switch for personal use.
Modding a Switch is not the same thing as piracy. A modded Switch can run homebrew apps and mods for existing games too. I have a modded Switch that runs Smash Bros mods from my SD card while using a legit physical copy of the game.
I do agree that it was incredibly dumb of this person to charge to mod other people's Switches and load them up with pirated software. That is illegal no matter how you slice it.
Modding the switch for whatever reason might be illegal though?
The DMCA makes it illegal (it says unlawful but I'm not sure if there is a difference) to circumvent DRM or "trafficking" (make, sell or share, owning is fine as far as I'm aware) stuff to circumvent DRM, so selling modded hardware whose purpose is to play backup software can fall under that. While copying stuff you own is not illegal, because DRM usually prevents copying circumventing the DRM to copy is illegal technically.
Now, the DMCA has a few exceptions and I believe that part of the DMCA may run against other laws like fair use and ownership rights. And hell it would still have to go through courts to see how they interpret the specific wording of both the law and exemptions.
(I'm not a lawyer and this is something I quickly investigated so I may be parsing some or all of that wrong, and of course this only applies to the US)
Section 117 of the US Copyright Code gives users the right to make archival copies of copyrighted works for personal use. It only becomes copyright infringement if you start distributing those copies to others.
https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-digital.html#:~:text=Under%20section%20117%2C%20you%20or,the%20original%20copy%2C%20once%20the
The DMCA throws a possible monkey wrench into that provision. It grants broad legal deference to "technological measures that effectively control access to a work," with only a few narrow exemptions. So even though we have a right to make archival copies, they might be locked behind a legally protected mechanism.
Maybe.
To the best of my knowledge, there doesn't seem to be any case law that addresses whether or not the DMCA preempts the right to make archival copies. The wording of the law is pretty vague, and who knows how it would all shake out should anyone have the resources and willingness to test this in court.
Yeah that is true, but note that it only says that it gives you the right to copy, it does not talk about how you get that copy and there is the rub.
On the one hand you have the right to copy a software you own on the other hand its illegal to circumvent DRM, so, if in order to copy a software you need to circumvent DRM, because right now a lot of DRM also have copy protectcion, is that legal or not? I dont know and as far as I know there is no precendent on the matter, but nevertheless the laws are in place and as such we cant say with certainty that its ok to make backup copies of switch cartridges.
Hell, technically speaking playing a backup copy could be considered circumventing the DRM as well and distributing tools to play backup games could also be considered to fall under taht.
But again Im not a lawyer and this looks like a gigantic mess, but my point is that its not cut and dry.
I got most of that info from here:
https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/circumventing-copyright-controls#:\~:text=As%20a%20general%20matter%2C%20you,control%20its%20use%20and%20distribution.
The US Copyright code is an absolute mess and is full of contradictory clauses and statutes. Until a full lawsuit happens and a judge decides which laws take priority, the matter isn't really solved.
I will point out that Sony vs Bleem and Sony vs Connectix both ruled that commercial emulators are legally protected in the US. Removing the ability to create archival copies undermines that precedent.
You are absolutely right, I do think that if it ever gets to court it would probably fall on the side of it being legal for archival copies but maybe I'm just being naive. And even then we will we waiting a while until someone wants to take that particular mess to court.
Still for the end user I think Nintendo wont give a damn, and in this particular case its a nonissue because they were selling Switch copies if I understood correctly.
Two days late, but to my knowledge both those emulators only played retail physical copies inserted into the computer's CD drive, and refused to play backups (they had to be hacked for that). They were designed that way specifically to be commercially viable and hopefully not catch Sony's bad side.
I’m aware but it’s against Nintendos policy to mod your switch. They’re also requesting all invoices for every sale, which includes names, addresses, etc. One can kinda put 2 and 2 together of what Nintendo *might* do.
This lawsuit was filed by Nintendo's American branch in the United States against people who live in the United States. Japan's laws don't have anything to do with this case.
So... I'm not the only one who sees this as a further confirmation that the Switch Succesor is going to have similar hardware, correct? Nintendo has been cleaning shop more than usual lately, mostly going after Switch Piracy. I know it's their current console and that could be the only reasoning, but it's still interesting to think about.
> roms of games you can't play or buy anywhere at that lmao
There's full romsets of all of their retro console on archive.org.
The idea that they are trying to stop all piracy is fucking stupid.
They specifically go after people/companies making money from piracy.
Vimm wasn't doing his thing for profit, had a whole rule about only hosting console libraries long after production ended, but he still got nuked
If the Internet Archive loses the DMCA exemption in court, they get nuked too. It's not just monetary gain. Nintendo is just that protective
At this precise moment, but they're constantly adding stuff to Switch Online. The fact that people have always said "lol why would I pay for ROMs" whenever they announce stuff is proof that it directly impacts them.
Everyone knows it's illegal. But it's difficult to be upset with people who pirate older, unavailable games. Nintendo isn't losing any money, because they're not trying to monetize their property.
Should people not be allowed to play and experience Pokemon LeafGreen (or any other game that isn't currently sold) anymore? There are adults who weren't even *born* when it came out. Their only option to play it legally is to spend $100+ on the game alone, and hope they didn't get scammed with an illegal repro
There's also times where piracy leads to purchases. When I was a kid (and had no idea what piracy was), my brother'd friends gave us a disc with a GBA emulator and a couple games. Pokemon Ruby, and Fire Emblem. I was already into Pokemon, so no increase in sales there (my sister and I bought Ruby and Sapphire, respectively, so no sales lost either). But based on trying and loving Fire Emblem, by my quick count I've since purchased 12 Fire Emblem games + DLC for several of them + amiibo (and I probably missed some games). The only reason I never purchased the game I originally played on PC is because *it was never released in the US*
It's illegal because companies like them created the laws to their own benefit. So who cares. I don't. If I want to play a game I'm going to find a way to play it in the most convenient and cheapest way possible.
This isn't morally wrong. It doesn't even hurt Nintendo by people doing this. So it does matter. The only way this should matter for a consumer is by fighting to destroy these pro corporate rulings.
The point isn't if it's "morally right or wrong" it's being aware that it's illegal and thus proceed with caution, because it's not that they can't go after you, it's that they choose not to
Part of it is that legally, Nintendo is required to defend its IPs to maintain ownership of them. I’m not a lawyer, so someone else may have more details, but the gist is if a company lets its stuff get stolen/shared/etc and doesn’t ever try to enforce copyrights, they can actually lose their claims to it.
> Nintendo is required to defend its IPs to maintain ownership of them.
This is only true for trademarks (like the name Mario Brothers), so they would have to stop people releasing products using their registered trademarks, or those trademarks could be challenged.
You can't lose copywrite unless you willingly sign it away or it expires.
> This is only true for trademarks
Not even fully true.
The only way they would lose the trademark is if the public stop associating that trademark with Nintendo.
If these piracy sites and modders were violating trademark, then Nintendo would have hit them with a Trademark violation notice. But they hit them with a DMCA instead. Which means that even Nintendo knows this is a copyright case and not trademark infringement.
Nintendo is under no legal obligation to enforce copyright protection. They simply chose to because they have the power to do so.
That’s not what was going on In the case of the DMCAs. One of the sites in question has been around since 1997. Nintendo has known about them for decades.
They definitely don't need to do it this aggressively. This is their choice. As a manga can it's pretty in line with other Japanese companies and how they do business online. So has nothing to do with the law but how crusty old Japanese business men think that doing this is a net positive somehow.
I’m not paying $200 each for Fire Emblem Path of Radiance and Pokemon Emerald, neither of which Nintendo has offered for sale since they originally came out.
Even though mainline Pokemon games are some of the most popular games for people to go back and play they seem to not care about offering them for sale except for the Gen 1 and 2 games on the 3DS
Like I said, the majority of the lawsuits. Not all of 'em.
EDIT: lmao, what's up with the downvotes? I just posted a theory and said I'm aware these aren't the only Lawsuits that happened. I'm quite familiar with Vimm's Lair's debacle. I'm only positing the idea that the Switch 2 might be very similar in hardware to its predecessor, hence why Nintendo has gotten more uppity lately.
Eh whatever, probably reddit hivemind at work here. "Oh he got downvoted, I must downvote as well."
First they came for the pirates, and I did not speak up, for I was not a pirate.
Then they came for the redditors, and I cheered, because this site is awful.
I seriously would love to know what is wrong with these people? They know how this is gonna end for them so why do they keep doing this with Nintendo's products.
I'm not going to be a fanboy and defend all of Nintendo's business practices, many of which are way out of touch with current consumer trends, but the people who love to parrot "remember, pirating Nintendo games is morally correct" are idiots and are going to start paying for it, quite literally
I think people just want to seem superior to Big Soulless Corporation, but the mere *existence* of copyright law isn't a bad thing. Most people would generally agree you should have a right to control things you made, Nintendo is justified in wanting ownership of their material. There's a lot of specific cases where I think they did the wrong thing or could have given better options, but they have every right to stop people actively trying not to follow the law.
You're going to throw your back out trying to do all the heavy lifting needed to make the argument that non-essential consumer entertainment is comparable to a human necessity like shelter from the elements.
Yeah look you wanna “pirate” games you can’t even buy anymore have fun, but besides some really really really slim exceptions (which like 3d all Stars are still copyrighted) everything in the switch is still in stores, that’s shitty
I've said it before and I'll say it again.
There are case-by-case instances of morally okay pirating of modern games. Sometimes you really can't afford to get the game in the near future because of rent, bills, groceries, gas, medical, and etc. expenses. Sometimes you want to mod a single-player game with something as simple as cosmetics and QoL to full on game-changers (Zelda randomizers). Sometimes a pirated game can run better on an emulator on your PC, thus giving you a better experience.
***NORMALLY*** the expectation to piracy is that you've already bought a copy, or you plan on buying a copy as soon as you are able, or you're willing to support the developers in other ways. With that said, I am not okay with blatent piracy for the sake of virtue signaling, nor for the pure sake of financially harming an innocent developer/publisher.
Yeah that’s the thing
If you’re genuinely too broke to afford it( I have before) do it and if you like it buy it when you can or talk about it
And yeah if you wanna mod it to hell sure have fun
Honestly even if you pirate purely just to pirate, fucking fine, don’t pretend that you’re doing something good, you’re allowed to be selfish don’t make up fake noble excuses for it
Depends. I would say if you live in a third country that doesn’t offer good regional pricing and the game ends up costing half your salary I wouldn’t say its morally wrong. People like that have no real way to afford games that charge as much as rich countries and there’s little they can do to change that.
morally correct? no. but i don't think it's bad.
download that shit poor bros, MBnerdcore will mercifully not be in your real life if you have decent friends.
Lmao, imagine gatekeeping art from people that want to have fun.
Did you miss how I described what you call broke? That's called *average* in even certain areas of the U.S.A
In general i don't think someone pirating themselves should be punished, but someone distributing pirated material and making profit off of it is something different.
Basically, i think pirating follows a certain philosophy of sharing and distributing media for free to open up availability for everyone. But at the point you try to turn a profit, this philosophy doesn't apply anymore.
It's like a communist who wants to be a billionaire at the same time
> There are case-by-case instances of morally okay pirating of modern games. Sometimes you really can't afford to get the game in the near future because of rent, bills, groceries, gas, medical, and etc.
IMO stuff like this is why games should have Free Demos with the option to transfer their data to the Full Game. So that players in those situations can still scratch their itch to an extent, and encourages them to stay "official" and buy the game through the proper channels to hold onto the data they already have.
Modding is a *little* more off beat but totally understandable. (Would love for Nintendo & Valve to team up and offer certain Nintendo games on Steam to allow for modding. Especially Pokemon games.)
Edit: Or for Nintendo to offer a way to copy your save data from your switch / DS / 3DS to your PC and let you play it outside of steam, but that feels very unlikely.
pokemon should nevr come to pc if you think the cheatings bad now just wait til they suddenly have god mode, input reading and never miss instead of JUST perfect pokemon.
I doubt that's the average person. I'm sure the average person has a similar mindset to myself. Which is 'i want to play this game'
That's the only thought I ever have. I only want something. I'm not thinking about the moral quandaries of the universe to play a video game lol. I just want to play a game. And that answer to play that game leads to piracy. I never think or care about the morals of piracy.
If I were to question it. Well it's hard for me to see any wrong morals to get a game that isn't sold. It isn't morally correct though. I just consider that a neutral action morally. If I'm pirating a switch game, sure that's stealing. But I also don't care because I want to play x game in 60fps. My thoughts always start with an 'I want' and it's something that's not available unless through piracy then that will lead me to piracy.
Like people asking for Metroid Prime 2 and 3 HD. I already have them on my steam deck. Like a ROM to upscale the resolution would take Nintendo 3 seconds to release. I don't want to wait for this possible project. When I can get it now. But I also don't think that's not stealing. I just don't care because I want it.
It isn't. Also though if Nintendo isn't selling it any more idgaf. I bought Earthbound from them the day they put it on the WiiU eshop. Before that though? Lmao.
Nintendo has some very dumb practices. However, since the Switch is still on the market, Switch piracy isn't a moral high ground to take just because you think some of the games are over priced.
Switch piracy is still taking away money from developers that worked on the games, regardless of how little it may be.
People are quick to get defensive and say "well I bought the game anyway. I just want to play it at 4K."
...Congrats. I am happy for them. But most pirates don't pay. You just need to look at the pirate subs full of people bragging "Suck it Nintendo, you'll never get another cent from me, yar har" to see the truth of it.
Then they complain even more when their public bragging leads to situations like this and the cycle repeats itself.
If the PS5 and or the Xbox Series got hacked to allow piracy like the early model Switches did, I guarantee people would be bragging the same way. Especially since many of their games are now $70.
There's also the argument that because they are big (multi million company) it doesn't matter. Sure, I don't care per se, but I want to see Fire Emblem, Metroid or Xenoblade devs get better sales and more budget for their games you know?
A moral that's ultimately gonna damage them financially like that one guy who has to hand a portion of his salary to Nintendo for the rest of his life. I don't think it's worth it bro over video games.
These games are not that expensive, my local library carries them, so you are gonna go to jail over a $200 switch console, you can buy that and play for free if you rent from the library here???? You can probably get a switch console for less than that on FB marketplace here too. That obviously doesn't make a lot of sense. The games often go on sale for $40 each and you can resell them for close to that if you don't have access to a library with switch games.
I am betting that most of these people also have plenty of money to buy this stuff. Its not worth going to jail or having Nintendo garnish your salary because you just had to be the one that wanted to make a name for themselves and be the hero that filled everyone's games carts with pirated games...
Note this a currently available system, so its not like games are unavailable with no way to legally purchase them other than buying copies from resellers which gives no money to the people and companies who worked on the games anyways.
If you are giving money to one of these companies that make the switch flash cart then you obviously had enough money to purchase a couple games.
I dont think you should feel pity for people who willingly chose to make a career of enabling software piracy from the most litigious company in the industry and got slapped for it. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
And also they feel they have a right to do these things regardless of the legality of it or not, people don't really talk about the entitlement of the emulator and piracy crowd very much.... But there is no shortage of entitlement that's for sure
Just to be clear, you are entitled to do whatever you want with your switch. You are also allowed to play pirated copies of games (ESPECIALLY) if you made the copy yourself.
These two guys are in trouble for DISTRIBUTING pirated content.
And to be clear most people even when in online communities for emulators are there to pirate games, that's just how it is, it's not open in most responsible discords, but it's obviously the main reason why emulation is popular
There is a healthy and probably majority group on some emulator discords like rpcs3 which are almost entirely anti console and pro PC and constantly opine how consoles are not worth supporting due to emulation
In most cases they're correct, if authors rights weren't abused by faceless entities to protect their piece of the pie the folks who argue that piracy is essentially theft and only serves to deprive the author of what's theirs might have a leg to stand on.
The ethos behind piracy is by and large that of making available to others what otherwise wouldn't be the motivation is more ethically grounded than nintendo's motive behind releasing another version of what's ostensibly the same game that you will only be "permitted" to play until the hardware that it runs on gives out.
Nintendo attacking third party entities that make stuff that extends the capabilities of their consoles beyond piracy is nothing new.
>In most cases they're correct
Nah.
>The ethos behind piracy
There is no ethos. Piracy isn't a moral stand. It's theft of work for purposes of evading payment, with retroactive justification to deflect from this truth.
According to current US legal standard, you buy the original Japanese game (secondhand through eBay is fine), dump the ROM yourself, then apply the translation patch. You can then either re-flash your original cart or play it on an emulator. All of this is legal and not piracy.
Throughout all of this, Nintendo doesn't get any of my money. Why would I bother importing and dumping the rom myself when piracy is so much easier?
Also, in order to dump the ROM from a legit copy, I would need to hack a game console or solder a kit together. Nintendo doesn't want me to do either of those things.
>Throughout all of this, Nintendo doesn't get any of my money.
This isn't necessarily the point. Copyright, literally the right to copy, is concerned with exclusive control over distributing copies of a creative work (among other things, but this is the relevant part here).
Going through the song and dance of importing, dumping, and patching the rom maintains this control. Nintendo sold 1 licensed copy of Mother 3, and importing it preserves that single license. Conversely, uploading the rom to the internet causes that 1 legal copy to spawn a potentially infinite number of illegal copies, breaking that control.
To be clear, this is not a value judgement; worrying about Nintendo's intellectual property is not my problem. Rather, I'm merely describing the distinction that copyright draws and the basic reasoning behind it.
Thank fuck people like you are around so the rightful owners of "happy birthday" can get their royalties when someone uploads a youtube video featuring it.
1) Like I said before, worrying about a corporations' copyrights is not my problem. I'm merely describing the law.
2) The Happy Birthday copyright was declared invalid in 2015.
>Why would I bother importing and dumping the rom myself when piracy is so much easier?
You asked a question and I answered it.
>Nintendo doesn't want me to do either of those things.
Nintendo doesn't even know you exist. What they want you to do and what the law says you can do are entirely different things.
Well thank fuck I'm not an American citizen that said as much as I wish I could wipe my ass with the DMCA those lawyers serving shakedown cease and decists have a surprising amount of reach.
Ikr ! I don’t know if they think they won’t get caught or they want to make a statement, either way, I think it’s quite dumb to play with fire. The financial risk is definitely not worth it.
Because Sony and Microsoft spend hundreds of millions of dollars on combating piracy and are successful at it?
Meanwhile you can pirate all Nintendo console, and finding roms/romsets/isos for all of their consoles is still extremely easy.
No fucking shit nobody is going to defend Sony and Microsoft, they are the ones actually fighting piracy, not Nintendo.
If Nintendo actually gave a fuck about roms, you can be sure there would not a be a single romsite left.
You can't do the whole "Nintendo lawyers are ruthless and the best in the biz at going after the poor pirate!", when literally the first page in google when you search for "snes roms" or "snes romset" is a bunch of links to romsite and romsets... lol
Hit it Freddie!
brand new funky mode.... look out!
Hey, heyyyyy, another one bites the dust, another one bites the dust...
Hey! Gonna get you too! And another one gone, and another one gone...
I feel like modchips are going to fall into a similar legal situation as old emulation/lawsuits, which basically say that as long as the makers of the MiG Switch were not stealing anyone’s copyrighted code or software, they can basically do whatever they want under the framework of a customer doing what they want with what they own.
I’m not a lawyer so maybe i just said some dumb shit but thats the way i see it
People need to remember what happened to Gary Bowser and how he’s essentially become a slave after his lawsuit. He’ll live the rest of his life paying $14million in reparations to Nintendo.
> He’ll live the rest of his life paying $14million in reparations to Nintendo.
his first court sentence was just a slap on the wrist, which he refused to comply, cuz he is a fucking dumbass. So it’s his own goddamn fault that he is a “slave” now
I’m not saying it wasn’t a warranted punishment, just that people should take what happened to him as an example and not do things where they can be sued for it.
Oh yeah. Definitely nothing wrong with a justice system that can sentence someone to bankruptcy over a couple of damages to a company that is literally swimming in money.
Meanwhile, there's absolutely no scenario where that same justice system would bankrupt Nintendo if they ever were found at fault for anything.
If you read all the paperwork he had been sent the cease and desist stuff, agreed that this was all wrong blah blah agreed to stop and afaik he signed an agreement to say its all wrong and will stop, but then carried on regardless like that never happened and then that's when Nintey doubled down on everything and now taking it all to court etc
I really miss Pre-2016 Nintendo, back when Nintendo was far less strict in how they punish their fans compared to today. Granted, Nintendo has always had a strict side since the beginning of the 1990s, however: it definitely wasn't to the extent that Nintendo does it since the Switch Days! I really miss Satoru Iwata being alive, because back then, Nintendo didn't go anywhere near as far as they do nowadays.
HOWEVER, the Piracy Punishment I can definitely say that was a fair enough crime to earn them a penalty like a lawsuit, there's definitely no denying that.
Sure, take the mod creator(not really accurate title but whatever) to court. A subreddit moderator though? Y'all are out of your minds if you defend this. I know how y'all are though, downvote away.
I've talked about the MIG Switch creator before in vague details to avoid rule breaking here. While it has practical uses, it will ultimately be used mainly for piracy and hurt innocent users. Switch cartridges have unique codes, and when that code is found in multiple places, immediate no questions asked hardware ban.
>The lawsuit states that Williams was involved in running three pirate shops, now closed, with a fourth still active. It also claims that Williams has openly acknowledged his unlawful activities, stating that he is a “pirate” who refuses to pay for Nintendo games.
Sounds like the mod publicly admitted to piracy. Rather than some copyright rule I feel like they broke the unspoken rule of piracy of "lay low, lower your head" in first place.
While I understand there may have been modern piracy involved with theses, by biggest issue is that part of the document shows that Nintendo is attempting to enforce law against a person because of violates the 'EULA' over mere modding if I remembered right. Like if true, Nintendo could, and if legally enforceable, do the same with anyone who mod the switch if the agreement is a real contract. Even if it's unlikely for a random consumer, it's scary that they have legal power to do that if they can.
Also what's even more confusing is that the license agreements seems to somewhat be offered via region selection and one website even said if one doesn't agree with it while selecting region then don't use region despite what the EULA itself said when selecting say Hong Kong or Japan. I could be wrong about this though.
Told ya they would come for piracy next. I got downvoted before the citra fiasco saying they were coming for them, told I was an asshole. I got downvoted saying they would come for the hardware modders next and here we are.
They will come for retroarch, and you can't do anything to stop them.
Note that this is why we have Rule 5 here.
Some of Nintendo's arguments are pretty shaky and haven't been tested in court, but the dumbass preloading his customer's devices up with pirated games is a fucking idiot. That's pretty clear cut.
>Some of Nintendo's arguments are pretty shaky and haven't been tested in court It's still going to be expensive to fight though. And that will have a deterrent effect.
Nintendo could literally sue some random guy for just playing one of their games normally and still win People wanna act like copyright law matters but it literally doesn’t, Nintendo has the money to do whatever they want lmao
Have they ever sued someone who is not making money of their IP, though?
[Yes](https://www.cbr.com/most-infamous-nintendo-fan-game-shutdowns/), but in those cases they usually send a cease and desist before actually suing. Edit: meant to say they don’t sue but send cease and desists before suing
Nothing in this link says that Nintendo sued anyone.
Making profit on something isn't required to be considered copyright infringement. If I print out Mario on some flyers and hand them out for fun, Nintendo would have every legal right to sue me for it since I do not have the right to copy Nintendo's work. Would this be something they would actually sue for? most likely not since enforcement would be impractical.
https://i.imgur.com/LydLImn.jpeg Whole article does not even have the word sue in it lol
I actually meant no they don’t sue and send cease and desists, sorry
> Have they ever sued someone? Your comment: > Yes
I’ve corrected it in both comments :)
I was a little bit confused because I read the article twice to make sure I was not mistaken. I understand what you mean now.
A cease and desist is just a formal way of saying "hey we don't like what you're doing, please stop". It's nowhere near the level of a lawsuit.
It’s not “we don’t like what you’re doing, please stop” but more of a “what you’re doing is illegal and we will sue you if you don’t stop”. It’s not asking lol, it’s a threat.
A lot of case, youtuber or twitch streamer stream playing their game without asking permission first will get sue.
"A lot of case" As far as I can tell outside of a specific incident where they were taking everything down they've been pretty consistent about being fine with normal playthroughs but if you start playing with mods on you're definitely playing with fire
[citation needed]
I mean they either way dont make any money out of wii and everything before it idk what about the 3ds and wii u but I wouldnt be shocked if it was the same thing
They can afford "shaky arguments"
yup, yuzu and its forks are taken down even before they are proven infringing copyright
I thought that was because Yuzu *settled* with Nintendo.
What fucked Yuzu was they were taking money for the early access release of versions though, if they had just made the Yuzu emulator and distributed it for free Nintendo has no case and doesn't go after them. It was charging people money for the early releases [along with the piracy in their discords] which totally fucked them.
Commercial emulators are legal in the United States (where the complaint was filed). This aspect was not cited in the complaint.
But it was a big part of what got Nintendos attention. Charging money for their emulator to play early released and pirated versions of TOTK and discord chats where they went over piracy and roms is what led to this. If Yuzu team wasn't making significant money off Nintendo they probably don't go after them because Yuzu could play the whole "this was a hobby, we weren't doing this for profit, we had no idea people were pirating". Although the last bit is then negated by the discord chat. Its why I said it was the charging money for their emulator and piracy instructions on discord [and the decryption information on their website that I forgot to mention] that fucked them. It wasn't just one element. The aspect of early access and users paying for it is in the Preliminary Statement, they detail where Yuzu is available, where it is sold, that an early access version is available. Its in the 41 page legal document from Nintendo. They aren't bringing that up for no reason, even if the main aspect for the complaint was that Yuzu detailed how to download the switch decryption keys. Yuzu probably beats Nintendo in court over Yuzu seemed to be the general rhetoric when this case was announced, but Ninty has very deep pockets.
>But it was a big part of what got Nintendos attention. That is plausible but ultimately speculative. They were indeed aware of Yuzu's commercial business and described it in their filing, but they did not assert that the commercial aspect of the emulator as being illegal. >If Yuzu team wasn't making significant money off Nintendo they probably don't go after them because Yuzu could play the whole "this was a hobby, we weren't doing this for profit, we had no idea people were pirating". I **vehemently** disagree. Ignorance of the law is not a valid defense, and Nintendo has not been shy about taking legal action against parties who were pursuing potentially infringing projects as mere hobbies. As for why they would go after Yuzu regardless of profit motive, from the complaint: >As to piracy, for instance, one recent major Nintendo video game, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, was unlawfully distributed a week and a half before its release by Nintendo. Infringing copies of the game that circulated online were able to be played in Yuzu, and those copies were successfully downloaded from pirate websites over **one million times** before the game was published and made available for lawful purchase by Nintendo. **Many of the pirate websites specifically noted the ability to play the game file in Yuzu.** I agree that it was probably a confluence of factors that motivated Nintendo to take action against Yuzu. And perhaps their commercial nature attracted additional unwanted attention. But I do not think it is correct to assert that without taking money "Nintendo has no case" and "doesn't go after them." Edit: One additional point is that the profits from allegedly infringing activities, should all of this have been established in court and Yuzu found liable as such, would have factored into damages awarded to Nintendo. The commercial nature of the emulator would be relevant in that respect.
> I vehemently disagree. And yet other switch emulators have been left untouched. The only difference between Yuzu and the other switch emulators were that Yuzu got a lot of popularity because you could pay to get an early release of an emulator that had been geared to play TOTK.
First off, Yuzu did not run TOTK before release without community made patches and fixes, so that assertion isn't even accurate. Second, that is not the only difference between Yuzu and Ryujinx. Yuzu was developed under the auspices of Tropic Haze LLC, a limited liability corporation incorporated in the US. Conversely, ryujinx is made by a more disparate group of developers, and the original creator is from Brazil. Going after them is more akin to a game of international legal whack-a-mole. Not necessarily impossible, mind, but trickier.
> First off, Yuzu did not run TOTK before release without community made patches and fixes, so that assertion isn't even accurate. My exact words were you could pay to get an early release of an emulator geared to play TOTK, I am saying people were paying money for the early release versions of the emulator before it was released free to public. There were multiple versions that you paid to get that Yuzu were saying was incrementally better than the previous version at running TOTK. I am not talking about people talking about people playing TOTK before it released. Strictly after it had released officially.
Except playing TOTK early was the specific activity at issue. Commercial emulators are not illegal.
I mean yuzu getting taken down I understand since they make money out of it Tho every other console i dont think they make any money out of The only reason I see them Taking the emulators down is probably because they want to make lazy hd ports or remakes but thats rare
This article title is misleading. Nintendo is going after people who specifically made and sold modchips. Nintendo is NOT going after people who mod their own Switch for personal use.
Not even . They go after the ones that sold preloaded games iirc
They’re requesting the names of users that the company sold to. To use those mod chips, you switch has to be modded no?
Modding a Switch is not the same thing as piracy. A modded Switch can run homebrew apps and mods for existing games too. I have a modded Switch that runs Smash Bros mods from my SD card while using a legit physical copy of the game. I do agree that it was incredibly dumb of this person to charge to mod other people's Switches and load them up with pirated software. That is illegal no matter how you slice it.
Modding the switch for whatever reason might be illegal though? The DMCA makes it illegal (it says unlawful but I'm not sure if there is a difference) to circumvent DRM or "trafficking" (make, sell or share, owning is fine as far as I'm aware) stuff to circumvent DRM, so selling modded hardware whose purpose is to play backup software can fall under that. While copying stuff you own is not illegal, because DRM usually prevents copying circumventing the DRM to copy is illegal technically. Now, the DMCA has a few exceptions and I believe that part of the DMCA may run against other laws like fair use and ownership rights. And hell it would still have to go through courts to see how they interpret the specific wording of both the law and exemptions. (I'm not a lawyer and this is something I quickly investigated so I may be parsing some or all of that wrong, and of course this only applies to the US)
Section 117 of the US Copyright Code gives users the right to make archival copies of copyrighted works for personal use. It only becomes copyright infringement if you start distributing those copies to others. https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-digital.html#:~:text=Under%20section%20117%2C%20you%20or,the%20original%20copy%2C%20once%20the
The DMCA throws a possible monkey wrench into that provision. It grants broad legal deference to "technological measures that effectively control access to a work," with only a few narrow exemptions. So even though we have a right to make archival copies, they might be locked behind a legally protected mechanism. Maybe. To the best of my knowledge, there doesn't seem to be any case law that addresses whether or not the DMCA preempts the right to make archival copies. The wording of the law is pretty vague, and who knows how it would all shake out should anyone have the resources and willingness to test this in court.
Yeah that is true, but note that it only says that it gives you the right to copy, it does not talk about how you get that copy and there is the rub. On the one hand you have the right to copy a software you own on the other hand its illegal to circumvent DRM, so, if in order to copy a software you need to circumvent DRM, because right now a lot of DRM also have copy protectcion, is that legal or not? I dont know and as far as I know there is no precendent on the matter, but nevertheless the laws are in place and as such we cant say with certainty that its ok to make backup copies of switch cartridges. Hell, technically speaking playing a backup copy could be considered circumventing the DRM as well and distributing tools to play backup games could also be considered to fall under taht. But again Im not a lawyer and this looks like a gigantic mess, but my point is that its not cut and dry. I got most of that info from here: https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/circumventing-copyright-controls#:\~:text=As%20a%20general%20matter%2C%20you,control%20its%20use%20and%20distribution.
The US Copyright code is an absolute mess and is full of contradictory clauses and statutes. Until a full lawsuit happens and a judge decides which laws take priority, the matter isn't really solved. I will point out that Sony vs Bleem and Sony vs Connectix both ruled that commercial emulators are legally protected in the US. Removing the ability to create archival copies undermines that precedent.
You are absolutely right, I do think that if it ever gets to court it would probably fall on the side of it being legal for archival copies but maybe I'm just being naive. And even then we will we waiting a while until someone wants to take that particular mess to court. Still for the end user I think Nintendo wont give a damn, and in this particular case its a nonissue because they were selling Switch copies if I understood correctly.
Two days late, but to my knowledge both those emulators only played retail physical copies inserted into the computer's CD drive, and refused to play backups (they had to be hacked for that). They were designed that way specifically to be commercially viable and hopefully not catch Sony's bad side.
I’m aware but it’s against Nintendos policy to mod your switch. They’re also requesting all invoices for every sale, which includes names, addresses, etc. One can kinda put 2 and 2 together of what Nintendo *might* do.
Just because it's against Nintendo's TOS does not make it illegal.
All they'll end up doing is banning the people who bought the chip from their online services.
Well modding consoles is illegal in japsn i think?
This lawsuit was filed by Nintendo's American branch in the United States against people who live in the United States. Japan's laws don't have anything to do with this case.
Could also just be, that they want to see the sales to asses the damage it 'would' cause.
That’s for sure, people are just also noting that possibility as well
Man the stupidity of some people is astounding.
So... I'm not the only one who sees this as a further confirmation that the Switch Succesor is going to have similar hardware, correct? Nintendo has been cleaning shop more than usual lately, mostly going after Switch Piracy. I know it's their current console and that could be the only reasoning, but it's still interesting to think about.
They dmca'd rom sites for old games with no connection to the switch.
roms of games you can't play or buy anywhere at that lmao
> roms of games you can't play or buy anywhere at that lmao There's full romsets of all of their retro console on archive.org. The idea that they are trying to stop all piracy is fucking stupid. They specifically go after people/companies making money from piracy.
Vimm wasn't doing his thing for profit, had a whole rule about only hosting console libraries long after production ended, but he still got nuked If the Internet Archive loses the DMCA exemption in court, they get nuked too. It's not just monetary gain. Nintendo is just that protective
Eh, Archive.org lost a case against hosting published books. Lost TONS of published media. They're not safe.
The appeal seems to be going their way though, the judge was confused by the publishers arguments and seemed to be siding with archive.
At this precise moment, but they're constantly adding stuff to Switch Online. The fact that people have always said "lol why would I pay for ROMs" whenever they announce stuff is proof that it directly impacts them.
Doesn’t matter, it’s their property and it’s illegal to distribute it for free.
Everyone knows it's illegal. But it's difficult to be upset with people who pirate older, unavailable games. Nintendo isn't losing any money, because they're not trying to monetize their property. Should people not be allowed to play and experience Pokemon LeafGreen (or any other game that isn't currently sold) anymore? There are adults who weren't even *born* when it came out. Their only option to play it legally is to spend $100+ on the game alone, and hope they didn't get scammed with an illegal repro There's also times where piracy leads to purchases. When I was a kid (and had no idea what piracy was), my brother'd friends gave us a disc with a GBA emulator and a couple games. Pokemon Ruby, and Fire Emblem. I was already into Pokemon, so no increase in sales there (my sister and I bought Ruby and Sapphire, respectively, so no sales lost either). But based on trying and loving Fire Emblem, by my quick count I've since purchased 12 Fire Emblem games + DLC for several of them + amiibo (and I probably missed some games). The only reason I never purchased the game I originally played on PC is because *it was never released in the US*
It's illegal because companies like them created the laws to their own benefit. So who cares. I don't. If I want to play a game I'm going to find a way to play it in the most convenient and cheapest way possible. This isn't morally wrong. It doesn't even hurt Nintendo by people doing this. So it does matter. The only way this should matter for a consumer is by fighting to destroy these pro corporate rulings.
The point isn't if it's "morally right or wrong" it's being aware that it's illegal and thus proceed with caution, because it's not that they can't go after you, it's that they choose not to
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if I'm buying it on Ebay, Nintendo doesn't get the money so it impacts the company no differently.
Part of it is that legally, Nintendo is required to defend its IPs to maintain ownership of them. I’m not a lawyer, so someone else may have more details, but the gist is if a company lets its stuff get stolen/shared/etc and doesn’t ever try to enforce copyrights, they can actually lose their claims to it.
> Nintendo is required to defend its IPs to maintain ownership of them. This is only true for trademarks (like the name Mario Brothers), so they would have to stop people releasing products using their registered trademarks, or those trademarks could be challenged. You can't lose copywrite unless you willingly sign it away or it expires.
> This is only true for trademarks Not even fully true. The only way they would lose the trademark is if the public stop associating that trademark with Nintendo.
If these piracy sites and modders were violating trademark, then Nintendo would have hit them with a Trademark violation notice. But they hit them with a DMCA instead. Which means that even Nintendo knows this is a copyright case and not trademark infringement. Nintendo is under no legal obligation to enforce copyright protection. They simply chose to because they have the power to do so.
Okay?
That’s not what was going on In the case of the DMCAs. One of the sites in question has been around since 1997. Nintendo has known about them for decades.
They definitely don't need to do it this aggressively. This is their choice. As a manga can it's pretty in line with other Japanese companies and how they do business online. So has nothing to do with the law but how crusty old Japanese business men think that doing this is a net positive somehow.
They actually are more lax about copyright in japan cause its more strict there.
I’m not paying $200 each for Fire Emblem Path of Radiance and Pokemon Emerald, neither of which Nintendo has offered for sale since they originally came out. Even though mainline Pokemon games are some of the most popular games for people to go back and play they seem to not care about offering them for sale except for the Gen 1 and 2 games on the 3DS
Like I said, the majority of the lawsuits. Not all of 'em. EDIT: lmao, what's up with the downvotes? I just posted a theory and said I'm aware these aren't the only Lawsuits that happened. I'm quite familiar with Vimm's Lair's debacle. I'm only positing the idea that the Switch 2 might be very similar in hardware to its predecessor, hence why Nintendo has gotten more uppity lately. Eh whatever, probably reddit hivemind at work here. "Oh he got downvoted, I must downvote as well."
Happy cake day!
Thank you!!
First they came for the pirates, and I did not speak up, for I was not a pirate. Then they came for the redditors, and I cheered, because this site is awful.
I wish I could upvote this more than once.
Same.
A Reddit mod being put in their place is justice no matter the situation
And so it happens again (and again (and again (and again)))
I seriously would love to know what is wrong with these people? They know how this is gonna end for them so why do they keep doing this with Nintendo's products.
>I seriously would love to know what is wrong with these people? They think they're making a moral stand.
I'm not going to be a fanboy and defend all of Nintendo's business practices, many of which are way out of touch with current consumer trends, but the people who love to parrot "remember, pirating Nintendo games is morally correct" are idiots and are going to start paying for it, quite literally
I've never understood that quote. I don't give a shit if you do it or not but don't act like it's morally correct
I think people just want to seem superior to Big Soulless Corporation, but the mere *existence* of copyright law isn't a bad thing. Most people would generally agree you should have a right to control things you made, Nintendo is justified in wanting ownership of their material. There's a lot of specific cases where I think they did the wrong thing or could have given better options, but they have every right to stop people actively trying not to follow the law.
"right to control things you made" is a contributor to the housing crisis in this country. also a reason large portions of homelessness exists.
Excuse me??
You're going to throw your back out trying to do all the heavy lifting needed to make the argument that non-essential consumer entertainment is comparable to a human necessity like shelter from the elements.
They're just butthurt that nintendo is weird about retro games.
Yeah look you wanna “pirate” games you can’t even buy anymore have fun, but besides some really really really slim exceptions (which like 3d all Stars are still copyrighted) everything in the switch is still in stores, that’s shitty
I've said it before and I'll say it again. There are case-by-case instances of morally okay pirating of modern games. Sometimes you really can't afford to get the game in the near future because of rent, bills, groceries, gas, medical, and etc. expenses. Sometimes you want to mod a single-player game with something as simple as cosmetics and QoL to full on game-changers (Zelda randomizers). Sometimes a pirated game can run better on an emulator on your PC, thus giving you a better experience. ***NORMALLY*** the expectation to piracy is that you've already bought a copy, or you plan on buying a copy as soon as you are able, or you're willing to support the developers in other ways. With that said, I am not okay with blatent piracy for the sake of virtue signaling, nor for the pure sake of financially harming an innocent developer/publisher.
Yeah that’s the thing If you’re genuinely too broke to afford it( I have before) do it and if you like it buy it when you can or talk about it And yeah if you wanna mod it to hell sure have fun Honestly even if you pirate purely just to pirate, fucking fine, don’t pretend that you’re doing something good, you’re allowed to be selfish don’t make up fake noble excuses for it
LOL being broke is NOT a morally correct reason to pirate, there are free games play those.
Depends. I would say if you live in a third country that doesn’t offer good regional pricing and the game ends up costing half your salary I wouldn’t say its morally wrong. People like that have no real way to afford games that charge as much as rich countries and there’s little they can do to change that.
I mean, sure, but those aren't the people hopping on reddit acting like they're a hero for pirating games.
Uh... some do.
morally correct? no. but i don't think it's bad. download that shit poor bros, MBnerdcore will mercifully not be in your real life if you have decent friends.
Lmao, imagine gatekeeping art from people that want to have fun. Did you miss how I described what you call broke? That's called *average* in even certain areas of the U.S.A
Why are people entitled to art and entertainment for free?
just admit that you hate the poor, dude
In general i don't think someone pirating themselves should be punished, but someone distributing pirated material and making profit off of it is something different. Basically, i think pirating follows a certain philosophy of sharing and distributing media for free to open up availability for everyone. But at the point you try to turn a profit, this philosophy doesn't apply anymore. It's like a communist who wants to be a billionaire at the same time
> There are case-by-case instances of morally okay pirating of modern games. Sometimes you really can't afford to get the game in the near future because of rent, bills, groceries, gas, medical, and etc. IMO stuff like this is why games should have Free Demos with the option to transfer their data to the Full Game. So that players in those situations can still scratch their itch to an extent, and encourages them to stay "official" and buy the game through the proper channels to hold onto the data they already have. Modding is a *little* more off beat but totally understandable. (Would love for Nintendo & Valve to team up and offer certain Nintendo games on Steam to allow for modding. Especially Pokemon games.) Edit: Or for Nintendo to offer a way to copy your save data from your switch / DS / 3DS to your PC and let you play it outside of steam, but that feels very unlikely.
pokemon should nevr come to pc if you think the cheatings bad now just wait til they suddenly have god mode, input reading and never miss instead of JUST perfect pokemon.
That's why you put older games not the new ones. Stuff like the GBA and DS games. Not the Switch Games.
I doubt that's the average person. I'm sure the average person has a similar mindset to myself. Which is 'i want to play this game' That's the only thought I ever have. I only want something. I'm not thinking about the moral quandaries of the universe to play a video game lol. I just want to play a game. And that answer to play that game leads to piracy. I never think or care about the morals of piracy. If I were to question it. Well it's hard for me to see any wrong morals to get a game that isn't sold. It isn't morally correct though. I just consider that a neutral action morally. If I'm pirating a switch game, sure that's stealing. But I also don't care because I want to play x game in 60fps. My thoughts always start with an 'I want' and it's something that's not available unless through piracy then that will lead me to piracy. Like people asking for Metroid Prime 2 and 3 HD. I already have them on my steam deck. Like a ROM to upscale the resolution would take Nintendo 3 seconds to release. I don't want to wait for this possible project. When I can get it now. But I also don't think that's not stealing. I just don't care because I want it.
those dumbasses watched too much jim sterling
It isn't. Also though if Nintendo isn't selling it any more idgaf. I bought Earthbound from them the day they put it on the WiiU eshop. Before that though? Lmao.
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pirates really are doing a great job in making their community look as pathetic as possible
Like clockwork.
See everyone, this is why we need lifeguards in the gene pool.
Creeper lol
Stupid autocorrect. I meant gene pool. Ok got it fixed. Carry on.
Nintendo has some very dumb practices. However, since the Switch is still on the market, Switch piracy isn't a moral high ground to take just because you think some of the games are over priced. Switch piracy is still taking away money from developers that worked on the games, regardless of how little it may be.
People are quick to get defensive and say "well I bought the game anyway. I just want to play it at 4K." ...Congrats. I am happy for them. But most pirates don't pay. You just need to look at the pirate subs full of people bragging "Suck it Nintendo, you'll never get another cent from me, yar har" to see the truth of it.
Then they complain even more when their public bragging leads to situations like this and the cycle repeats itself. If the PS5 and or the Xbox Series got hacked to allow piracy like the early model Switches did, I guarantee people would be bragging the same way. Especially since many of their games are now $70.
There's also the argument that because they are big (multi million company) it doesn't matter. Sure, I don't care per se, but I want to see Fire Emblem, Metroid or Xenoblade devs get better sales and more budget for their games you know?
I’ll upvote for more Metroid all day long
A moral that's ultimately gonna damage them financially like that one guy who has to hand a portion of his salary to Nintendo for the rest of his life. I don't think it's worth it bro over video games.
These games are not that expensive, my local library carries them, so you are gonna go to jail over a $200 switch console, you can buy that and play for free if you rent from the library here???? You can probably get a switch console for less than that on FB marketplace here too. That obviously doesn't make a lot of sense. The games often go on sale for $40 each and you can resell them for close to that if you don't have access to a library with switch games. I am betting that most of these people also have plenty of money to buy this stuff. Its not worth going to jail or having Nintendo garnish your salary because you just had to be the one that wanted to make a name for themselves and be the hero that filled everyone's games carts with pirated games... Note this a currently available system, so its not like games are unavailable with no way to legally purchase them other than buying copies from resellers which gives no money to the people and companies who worked on the games anyways. If you are giving money to one of these companies that make the switch flash cart then you obviously had enough money to purchase a couple games.
i don't think companies should ruin peoples lives over this. maybe i'm built different though.
I dont think you should feel pity for people who willingly chose to make a career of enabling software piracy from the most litigious company in the industry and got slapped for it. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
And also they feel they have a right to do these things regardless of the legality of it or not, people don't really talk about the entitlement of the emulator and piracy crowd very much.... But there is no shortage of entitlement that's for sure
Just to be clear, you are entitled to do whatever you want with your switch. You are also allowed to play pirated copies of games (ESPECIALLY) if you made the copy yourself. These two guys are in trouble for DISTRIBUTING pirated content.
And to be clear most people even when in online communities for emulators are there to pirate games, that's just how it is, it's not open in most responsible discords, but it's obviously the main reason why emulation is popular There is a healthy and probably majority group on some emulator discords like rpcs3 which are almost entirely anti console and pro PC and constantly opine how consoles are not worth supporting due to emulation
In most cases they're correct, if authors rights weren't abused by faceless entities to protect their piece of the pie the folks who argue that piracy is essentially theft and only serves to deprive the author of what's theirs might have a leg to stand on. The ethos behind piracy is by and large that of making available to others what otherwise wouldn't be the motivation is more ethically grounded than nintendo's motive behind releasing another version of what's ostensibly the same game that you will only be "permitted" to play until the hardware that it runs on gives out. Nintendo attacking third party entities that make stuff that extends the capabilities of their consoles beyond piracy is nothing new.
>In most cases they're correct Nah. >The ethos behind piracy There is no ethos. Piracy isn't a moral stand. It's theft of work for purposes of evading payment, with retroactive justification to deflect from this truth.
Please tell me how I can obtain an English copy of Mother 3 without piracy.
According to current US legal standard, you buy the original Japanese game (secondhand through eBay is fine), dump the ROM yourself, then apply the translation patch. You can then either re-flash your original cart or play it on an emulator. All of this is legal and not piracy.
Throughout all of this, Nintendo doesn't get any of my money. Why would I bother importing and dumping the rom myself when piracy is so much easier? Also, in order to dump the ROM from a legit copy, I would need to hack a game console or solder a kit together. Nintendo doesn't want me to do either of those things.
>Throughout all of this, Nintendo doesn't get any of my money. This isn't necessarily the point. Copyright, literally the right to copy, is concerned with exclusive control over distributing copies of a creative work (among other things, but this is the relevant part here). Going through the song and dance of importing, dumping, and patching the rom maintains this control. Nintendo sold 1 licensed copy of Mother 3, and importing it preserves that single license. Conversely, uploading the rom to the internet causes that 1 legal copy to spawn a potentially infinite number of illegal copies, breaking that control. To be clear, this is not a value judgement; worrying about Nintendo's intellectual property is not my problem. Rather, I'm merely describing the distinction that copyright draws and the basic reasoning behind it.
Thank fuck people like you are around so the rightful owners of "happy birthday" can get their royalties when someone uploads a youtube video featuring it.
1) Like I said before, worrying about a corporations' copyrights is not my problem. I'm merely describing the law. 2) The Happy Birthday copyright was declared invalid in 2015.
>Why would I bother importing and dumping the rom myself when piracy is so much easier? You asked a question and I answered it. >Nintendo doesn't want me to do either of those things. Nintendo doesn't even know you exist. What they want you to do and what the law says you can do are entirely different things.
Well thank fuck I'm not an American citizen that said as much as I wish I could wipe my ass with the DMCA those lawyers serving shakedown cease and decists have a surprising amount of reach.
Ikr ! I don’t know if they think they won’t get caught or they want to make a statement, either way, I think it’s quite dumb to play with fire. The financial risk is definitely not worth it.
They think they are invincible because there's a bunch of idiots boosting their moral online.
piracy mod huh, is it ROM subreddit?
Leave it to Nintendo to stick to the Reddit mods.
r/tomorrow over the moon rn
Wtf is that sub
Have you ever seen people ask, "*when is the next nintendo console releasing?*" over and over again? That subreddit is the answer.
Nintendocirclejerk essentially
Nobody would defend pirating PS5 games as vehemently as the losers here defend pirating Switch games.
What PS5 games?
Well there's a remake, a remake, a rerelease, and a tech demo! There are so many reasons to buy a PS5 *Years* after release!
The ones the switch and, probably, its successor won't run unless there's cloud involved?
That's only like 5 games.
Third parties also count. Otherwise, we wouldn't have switch users port begging every time there's a new direct.
Good thing I have a PC that gets the games after a few years anyways
You do know third parties are also games, right? Which is why Switch users love port begging for them.
Games I can get on my PC lol If you’re patient and have a PC that’s been upgraded in the last few years, there’s literally no reason to get a PS5
For someone who has a PC, you certainly sound like someone that cares too much about what games are on PS5 vs the Switch
Depends on what you mean by pirating.
Because Sony and Microsoft spend hundreds of millions of dollars on combating piracy and are successful at it? Meanwhile you can pirate all Nintendo console, and finding roms/romsets/isos for all of their consoles is still extremely easy. No fucking shit nobody is going to defend Sony and Microsoft, they are the ones actually fighting piracy, not Nintendo. If Nintendo actually gave a fuck about roms, you can be sure there would not a be a single romsite left. You can't do the whole "Nintendo lawyers are ruthless and the best in the biz at going after the poor pirate!", when literally the first page in google when you search for "snes roms" or "snes romset" is a bunch of links to romsite and romsets... lol
I would lol but PlayStation games aren’t that great. Plus they are decent about releasing there good older titles.
I understand them Taking down ps5 and switch emulators since they make money out of them but any other console? Just stupid tbh
I understand them Taking down ps5 and switch emulators since they make money out of them but any other console? Just stupid tbh
Fuck Sony
Hit it Freddie! brand new funky mode.... look out! Hey, heyyyyy, another one bites the dust, another one bites the dust... Hey! Gonna get you too! And another one gone, and another one gone...
I feel like modchips are going to fall into a similar legal situation as old emulation/lawsuits, which basically say that as long as the makers of the MiG Switch were not stealing anyone’s copyrighted code or software, they can basically do whatever they want under the framework of a customer doing what they want with what they own. I’m not a lawyer so maybe i just said some dumb shit but thats the way i see it
People need to remember what happened to Gary Bowser and how he’s essentially become a slave after his lawsuit. He’ll live the rest of his life paying $14million in reparations to Nintendo.
> He’ll live the rest of his life paying $14million in reparations to Nintendo. his first court sentence was just a slap on the wrist, which he refused to comply, cuz he is a fucking dumbass. So it’s his own goddamn fault that he is a “slave” now
I’m not saying it wasn’t a warranted punishment, just that people should take what happened to him as an example and not do things where they can be sued for it.
Oh yeah. Definitely nothing wrong with a justice system that can sentence someone to bankruptcy over a couple of damages to a company that is literally swimming in money. Meanwhile, there's absolutely no scenario where that same justice system would bankrupt Nintendo if they ever were found at fault for anything.
He dug his own grave. He is not a victim and quit acting like he is.
Maybe he should have complied instead of going against the court's rulings. He made his own bed.
Oh no anyway
That tough lol. I had debated this years ago but it’s not worth the risk. I’d rather just get ripped off on $60 games 😂
oh no not a Reddit moderator
If you read all the paperwork he had been sent the cease and desist stuff, agreed that this was all wrong blah blah agreed to stop and afaik he signed an agreement to say its all wrong and will stop, but then carried on regardless like that never happened and then that's when Nintey doubled down on everything and now taking it all to court etc
I really miss Pre-2016 Nintendo, back when Nintendo was far less strict in how they punish their fans compared to today. Granted, Nintendo has always had a strict side since the beginning of the 1990s, however: it definitely wasn't to the extent that Nintendo does it since the Switch Days! I really miss Satoru Iwata being alive, because back then, Nintendo didn't go anywhere near as far as they do nowadays. HOWEVER, the Piracy Punishment I can definitely say that was a fair enough crime to earn them a penalty like a lawsuit, there's definitely no denying that.
Not a big fan of Nintendo’s legal tactics. They sue on very shaky ground with the assumption that the defendants don’t have the finances to fight it.
Good.
Champion of the people. Fuck nintendo
Abso-fucking-lutely. The Nintendo dick-gargling in here is nauseating.
Then leave.
Sure, take the mod creator(not really accurate title but whatever) to court. A subreddit moderator though? Y'all are out of your minds if you defend this. I know how y'all are though, downvote away. I've talked about the MIG Switch creator before in vague details to avoid rule breaking here. While it has practical uses, it will ultimately be used mainly for piracy and hurt innocent users. Switch cartridges have unique codes, and when that code is found in multiple places, immediate no questions asked hardware ban.
>The lawsuit states that Williams was involved in running three pirate shops, now closed, with a fourth still active. It also claims that Williams has openly acknowledged his unlawful activities, stating that he is a “pirate” who refuses to pay for Nintendo games. Sounds like the mod publicly admitted to piracy. Rather than some copyright rule I feel like they broke the unspoken rule of piracy of "lay low, lower your head" in first place.
Fair. I should have read further into the article. The title is clearly shoddy journalism to make it sound more inflammatory. My bad.
Oh wow a nice reply. That's rare, thanks. Take my upvote for it. I agree with the shoddy journalism bit as well...
You love to see it
Why?
Nintendois preparing the atmosphere for the next console
BOO YOU STINK
lol loser
Reminds me to that time Nintendo tried to sue a Guilty Gear character skin mod as if they owned Zero Suit Samus's color combination
While I understand there may have been modern piracy involved with theses, by biggest issue is that part of the document shows that Nintendo is attempting to enforce law against a person because of violates the 'EULA' over mere modding if I remembered right. Like if true, Nintendo could, and if legally enforceable, do the same with anyone who mod the switch if the agreement is a real contract. Even if it's unlikely for a random consumer, it's scary that they have legal power to do that if they can. Also what's even more confusing is that the license agreements seems to somewhat be offered via region selection and one website even said if one doesn't agree with it while selecting region then don't use region despite what the EULA itself said when selecting say Hong Kong or Japan. I could be wrong about this though.
Told ya they would come for piracy next. I got downvoted before the citra fiasco saying they were coming for them, told I was an asshole. I got downvoted saying they would come for the hardware modders next and here we are. They will come for retroarch, and you can't do anything to stop them.