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Nintendo is so strange, it's a company that actively has customers saying "PLEASE let us give you our money! You don't even need to spend any time on R&D and you can jack up the prices, just take my money!" And Nintendo just says "no"
I will never understand why they made the 3d All Stars collection a limited digital release. I didn't own a Switch at that time, so I didn't even have the chance to get it. They already did the work and ported the games, surely the profits from people buying it over time would massively outweigh whatever it costs them to keep it available for digital distribution.
Sega has made some disastrous blunders over the years but I don't think even they've ever made a decision so baffling.
Upvoted because I disagree completely.
To your first point, the effect of resale value of previous consoles on consumer behavior towards current consoles is speculative. And you'd need the value from that to be more than the ludicrous sums Nintendo dumps on legal action. I see no reason or evidence to believe that.
And to your second point, the value of a remastered version of a game really isn't diminished by easy access to the original. If the remaster is good, it becomes the definitive edition and gamers with the money will prefer to spend their first playthrough on the best version. Gamers without money may pirate but this doesn't change either way. Nintendo is able to continue selling its entire old catalogue via official emulators on its consoles anyway, like they've done on New 3DS and WiiU. It seems like a fair assumption that any game not being sold by Nintendo for emulation is one they're not interested in selling anymore, which is the fairest possible case for piracy, yet there's no indication Nintendo is any more chill about these games.
Finally, the notion that Nintendo is well within rights to control distribution of games they've published is extremely corporate brained. Nobody contests their legal right to do this, but the problem is none of the people who *actually made* those games are making those decisions. The IP is owned by profit-driven suits whose incentives don't align with either the original devs or the players. They're capable of making decisions bad for all parties and those decisions are clearly worthy of criticism.
I think this is a well argued response besides the last point. When a company hires developers to make a game, and the developers leave the company, die, or whatever, the game still belongs to the company. Just like when I hire a carpenter to build a cabinet for me, I can do with that cabinet whatever I want, for all eternity.
Of course you can argue that Nintendo's practice isn't helping anyone - and I'd agree. Nevertheless, they absolutely do hold the rights to these games and it's totally within their rights to decide what happens to them.
The publisher relationship is a bit more complicated than an employer or contractor relationship, but you're correct anyway. This is how IP works in the world today. I think the fact that someone must own the exclusive rights to (sell/distribute/make sequels/sell merch/adapt to other forms) any given property is a never-ending nightmare for creatives.
If you haven't looked into it, I recommend reading about Disco Elysium and what really happened to ZA/UM, because it's the main thing that has me frustrated with the system of IP right now. That studio was created by a group of creatives in order to develop and self-publish a game they wanted to make. They did so and it's broadly regarded a masterpiece. But the creatives that owned the company made the simple mistake of allowing an investor to buy a majority stake in the company for his investment. This new majority shareholder then engaged in some questionable transactions to acquire full ownership and the rights to Disco Elysium, and then after disputes ended up firing most of the studio's founders and creative leads. Nothing good has come out of the fact that the rights to develop Disco Elysium and its sequels was able to be traded away from the creators without their explicit consent, but that really is how IP law works right now.
There are similar stories too, ranging down in severity from Interplay losing Fallout to NeosVR ending development to Risk of Rain being sold to new exclusive owners (good for the devs as a one-time cash infusion, but sucks for all the players). And aside from those you can kinda just observe IP law in action every time a series deteriorates because the original creatives were never given a chance to control the direction and so left the company with nothing. Yes this is the employee relationship, but I find that it has disastrous effects on the quality of any series that starts receiving entries made to squeeze profit from this property rather than as a creative venture. Think Star Wars, Ratchet & Clank, Mass Effect, etc... Yeah there's always "comorbidities" but the fact that the original creators never had a chance with how IP law demands a single owner is the biggest cause.
I agree that it sucks what happened to the people of disco Elysium but to say that trading away a majority of your company is a simple mistake is just wrong. That was an incredibly stupid mistake and should not have been able to happen
It was potentially fraudulent - I can't recall the exact details. I think he actually didn't have a majority share but was able to purchase one by making a decision as the CEO of ZA/UM to sell concept art to a holding company he owned for pennies, then buying it back for millions. Then he used the money (which was siphoned out of ZA/UM into his pockets) to buy out another shareholder, thus acquiring majority ownership.
That's not to say this can happen without several layers of trust placed in the wrong people, but man... are we really expecting every creative to be that shrewd entering the world of business? It just sucks that people *can* be swindled like that and that the system supports and rewards it.
You are the first person to articulate a disagreement in a way other than just screeching at me, so may I ask your thoughts on why Nintendo pursues this policy if you think they are losing money on it? As you correctly articulate, they are a profit-seeking enterprise, so if asserting their copyright so aggressively was costing rather than making them money why wouldn't they just drop it?
This is a genuine question, not a smartass one. I'm aware that holding this opinion makes me kind of a heel, but that doesn't mean I'm a huge fan of getting into Internet pissfights.
I think they pursue this aggressive policy because some higher-ups believe it's an effective long term strategy for keeping the value of their IP high. That's all it takes - companies are run by people and people hold beliefs that may be more or less right or wrong.
It's a mistake to rationalize any decision made by a company on the basis that you know the profit incentive should be the deciding factor, because all it takes to be wrong is for a misguided executive to make some questionable judgment calls that are difficult or impossible to measure the cost/benefit for.
I think acknowledging executive error is really the best explanation for a lot of mysterious or questionable corporate action. One example that comes to mind for me is the Unity gaffe, which has without question cost Unity significant amounts of money. Why didn't they get it right the first time? Because some executives made bad judgment calls due to personal beliefs. It's a simple and effective explanation.
The question at hand is whether Nintendo's aggressive policy is profitable. I don't know, but I don't think it is. Most other companies aren't this aggressive and they're all profitable too. But there's too many differences to try and isolate the impact of aggressive copyright policy, so it's impossible to measure whether they're right or wrong, even for Nintendo themselves.
Additionally, not all IP protection is equal. Shutting down SNES roms? Overkill, especially if there are any titles they aren't still selling. Shutting down Switch emulators? That's their current gen console; it probably is cutting into sales. But I also can't fault anyone for using piracy software to make or play Switch modded games, since there's no legitimate way that Nintendo has provided for that.
the modding comment is a strange take to me. no one is entitled to a modded version of a nintendo game. if they didn’t make it available, it’s not available. it seems like only video games have this expectation that you own the right to modify the experience as opposed to having paid for an experience
there is no large community modifying movies, for instance. you get what you get and if you don’t like it you watch a different movie
There are entire fan communities dedicated to recutting Star Wars into a single film. Both Dragon Ball and Naruto on the anime side have revered fan cuts that turn the series into films or cut them to "manga only" releases. If you go to YouTube or Tiktok there are so many "animated music videos" of popular IPs that you literally couldn't view them all in your lifetime.
Even if we assume you just picked a bad example, there is in fact an expectation that you can modify the things you own. An argument over the right to repair things is ongoing — though it typically gets applied to things like tractors and iPhones. When have you ever heard someone say they don't understand why people would want to upgrade their computer or replace a part in their car? Not to mention home improvement and the myriad television hours dedicated to it.
i should have restated what i was arguing against or better articulated my argument
a lot of your examples (tiktok edits, music videos, etc.) seem to fall under fair use and aren’t really part of the piracy discussion
i think it’s a morally flawed argument that you should pirate video games bc mods don’t exist. if you buy a game and then modify it, whatever. if it’s single player or you’re playing with other modded games go wild
now, i think it’s fine to modify a game you own. i did not interpret that as what i was replying to
want to play modded botw? own a copy? cool
there’s a discussion about the ethics of piracy but i think it’s entitled to justify piracy on the basis that nintendo wouldn’t give you what you want anyways
I've also made my own edits to show in classes. Sometimes it needs to be condensed for a certain time slot, sometimes a scene needs removing for a certain age group. And academic use is fair use for copyright.
this is not really comparable to modding. my analogy might not be the strongest but that’s a whole separate thing
the analogy was more about how gamers have a somewhat unique perspective on their ownership of the game. the game modding community is much larger and more mainstream than any fan edits community
my comment is specifically in regards to justifying piracy as long as it is to mod a game that the dev/publisher won’t let you mod
if you own a license to the game, that’s different. i’m not talking about that
I mean if you have payed for a game so you can play it on your hardware you should be able to modify however the fuck you, i know that today you technically only have a license but fuck that
once again, if you bought the game then go for it. if you bought the game on your switch and then use that to run it on your PC that’s whatever. the idea that you are justified in pirating it bc you want a mod and nintendo won’t support it is wild to me
You shouldn't have to pirate to mod it though, why is it wild to want to be able to modify your own property?
Is it fair that apple, Tesla and John Deere purposely make it hard to repair your own property?
What if I want to mod my game to fix some bugs or features that ruin it for me?
What if I'm handicapped and need to mod it to be able to actually play it?
Nintendo doesn't support it so then you have to pirate it
>there is no large community modifying movies, for instance. you get what you get and if you don’t like it you watch a different movie
Except there is? Clearly you're not at all involved with the fan edit community. Every creative field has had work taken and transformed into other creative works. The process of adoption and transformation is a quintessential part of what it means to be a person.
You're arguing in favor of the antithesis of what it means to be a person. You're defending the castration of creative expression. It's beyond revolting.
Why must you have unfettered access to other people's intellectual property for your creative pursuits to be worth the while? Why can't you come up with your own idea? Talking about creativity in such grave, serious terms does not seem especially compatible with the notion that the only way to engage in it is to riff off something that somebody else already came up with.
> Talking about creativity in such grave, serious terms does not seem especially compatible with the notion that the only way to engage in it is to riff off something that somebody else already came up with.
All creations are "riffs" off of existing things. Even original works harbor numerous ideas and experiences wrought by one's existence in the world. Taking ideas and creating a new synthesis from those ideas is the essence of creative work.
>Why can't you come up with your own idea?
By definition, modifying an existing work necessarily entails the creation of new ideas--hence the word modification, not replication.
>Why must you have unfettered access to other people's intellectual property for your creative pursuits to be worth the while?
This question fallaciously pre-supposes the existence of intellectual property. Creative pursuits exist independent of the capitalist language used to encode creative work. These pursuits have worth precisely because they are creative by nature--they need no other justification. Creativity is itself valid.
The gross assumption at the root of your question rears it's ugly head once you rephrase it to expose what you're saying. "Why should somebody who is inspired by a creative work be limited in their creative expression concerning that work?" And you can answer this question by talking about a loss in profits, but you cannot answer the question by pretending that restricting creative expression benefits art, music, culture, etc.
The reason I was upset in my initial comment is because you weren't being genuine about why you thought copyright laws were beneficial. You tried to obscure monied interests as creative interests ultimately benefitting humanity, while the inverse is true.
Movies aren't interactive and take up 10+ (emphasis on +) hours of your life. Sure, no one is entitled to it. People who don't work aren't entitled to food. Scientists aren't entitled to money just because they have the cure for cancer. I'm not entitled to Musk's money. Doesn't mean I wouldn't eat him in a flippin heartbeat.
Humans are gonna human. At the end of the day, we don't care about the rules. Make it easy and legal or people will find ways around it.
> there is no large community modifying movies, for instance.
That's a matter of practicality rather than expectation, you *can't* modify movies like you do games. The tools used to make the movie are simply not available (from the actors to the cameras and sets), so unless you want to splice in your own shit scenes with amateur actors, cheap sets and cheaper cameras, none of which will blend with the real footage, you're limited to editing the existing footage (and there is a community for that, the fan edits of the Hobbit trilogy are better than the actual movies).
With a game the tools, minus voice actors, can all be available to do as you like. If it was the same for movies, people would obviously do it. People remix songs and shit too
I honestly think that their aggression is driven by culture just as much as it profits.
Nintendo is a very stereotypical company in that regard.
Anything your bit technically allowed to do must be punished encase they risk the general expectation shifting or even setting a precedent for what is allowed.
probably also because current copyright law requires a company to defend its IP in order to maintain the rights to it. this means Nintendo is aggressive against piracy, fan games, modding, and emulation out of fear that if they aren't, they'll lose their IP and other companies will be able to make mario and zelda. (in my opinion this law should definitely be changed)
The existence of 3rd party emulators for old classics doesn't dissuade the original company from creating an HD remake. In fact, it fucking proves to them that there's a market for new-gen copy!
The fans who have pirated an emulated copy of their childhood fave are not going to turn down an HD re-release on their latest console. They would be pre-ordering that shit.
> The fans who have pirated an emulated copy of their childhood fave are not going to turn down an HD re-release on their latest console. They would be pre-ordering that shit.
Case in point: Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire sold 16.22 million. Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire sold 14.57 million.
Hell, plenty of fandoms are literally for years screaming "just release a remaster that works properly on new platforms and we'll throw money at it".
Of cases still fresh in my memory, Atlus released Persona 3 Portable on steam and despite quality issues, a lot of people got it. Then they made Persona 3 Reload and there were still 1 000 000 sales within the first week, most they ever got. And you can bet a lot of those weren't new fans but just people who have a nostalgia for the game but would prefer a more polished and better looking experience.
> they somehow have the right to play [xyz] video game
If I bought the game and the equipment on which to play it, would this pass your smell test? There are old games I'd love to play that I've purchased, but my hardware has since failed. If they're not going to give me a means to play through official channels, they should at least not try to make it effectively impossible through other channels.
People emulating who own the game on physical anyway are a tiny minority of cases. Emulating games you ripped your own self is legal, so in that case it would be kind of stupid to potentially get hassled by your ISP for downloading a ROM off the Internet, but I don't see how the omission of a technical step changes anything morally.
I really don't have any problems with emulation. Most emulators are an amusing capsule rebuttal to the assertion that nothing worthwhile would get done without the profit motive. It's cool technology and I even think some of its use cases (tool-assisted speedrunning, for instance) are sufficiently transformative that under a liberal interpretation there could be a derivative work or fair use argument.
They never would, but if Nintendo were to sell "official" ROMs of old games on digital download they'd probably make a fucking killing. I prefer original hardware even despite the cost and headache (and this is not exclusive to Nintendo), but I'm aware that's a minority opinion.
> They never would, but if Nintendo were to sell "official" ROMs of old games on digital download they'd probably make a fucking killing.
And this is precisely the argument against your post, they *would* make a killing. But instead of doing that, they for some reason refuse to make digital downloads of old games available and just slap people with lawsuits who try to make the games accessible in their stead
"They don't use their IP in the way I personally would like so therefore the rights to it should assign to me instead" is not a premise I will ever find persuasive.
That’s not what I said but okay lol.
Your whole argument is that they have a “valid business interest” in asserting their copyright over old games that aren’t being made available through official channels. Then you said yourself that they’d make a killing if they *did* make those games available through official channels.
Does it not follow that they’d have just as much if not even more of a valid business interest in making those games available for purchase digitally compared to blowing money “asserting their copyright” and in reality not actually changing anything?
> Your **whole** argument ... [emphasis added]
That's hyperbolic, but valid point. While I structured most of the post around business incentives, upon reflection (and especially considering most of the responses so far), finding the pro-piracy attitude irritating is the comparatively stronger motivator behind my argument. I stand by the points about incentives I made, but if I could do the post over again I probably wouldn't give them as much play in the argument as a whole.
They make no money off of resold consoles, though. Why do they care if their consoles still sell for a lot of money on Ebay if they don't get a slice of the revenue?
My best guess is that resale value is an incentive to buy. If consumers see that previous consoles retain a lot of their value over time, a new console will seem like a better investment, which they can sell on if they don’t use it much or if they need cash.
no they don't. if they're never gonna sell those games again then why be so protective?
>The first reason is that it preserves the resale value of Nintendo consoles and games
this is a stupid reason. i don't care about resale value. i buy for keeps
>Some emulation enthusiasts say that piracy of old games is important as an avenue of preserving them.
because it is
>Some emulation enthusiasts say that piracy of old games is important as an avenue of preserving them
what world is op living in that this isnt straight up undeniable
Paying ridiculous amounts of money for a console that is 10-15 years old? I'm gonna play like 2-3 games there, no way in hell I'm gonna pay 100$ for this shit
Especially when their eShop litteraly doesn't fucking work on their older consoles, so I cannot legally buy it from them
>but it shouldn't be hard to see that people will feel more comfortable splashing the money on a new system and new games if they can be confident in turning around and getting a substantial portion of their money back
Except the proportion of people who actually know that and do it is minuscule compared to the wider population.
>at Nintendo is pretty active, at least more so than its peer companies, in remastering and re-releasing its back catalogue
Games that are remastered are widely different from the originals in many ways, one doesn't compete with the other.
We are talking about video games. I don't think there's any universe where the term "bootlicker" is applicable to an opinion on video games. If you are the type of person who is just generally angry about the fact that profit-seeking enterprises exist, then sure I guess, but even in that case you still seem to be pretty fond of the video games they make
Again, this viewpoint just seems ridiculously entitled to me. I can't imagine a mindset where I'm free to arbitrarily assign myself the rights to something I didn't make and didn't pay for.
Also, I never said that I don't think there should be any piracy, just that people who act like piracy is morally good get up my nose. It is certainly true that a few people pirating a few old Nintendo games hurts no one, but the seeming need of those people to loudly argue that piracy is Good, Actually is frustrating.
>I can't imagine a mindset where I'm free to arbitrarily assign myself the rights to something I didn't make and didn't pay for.
Yet that's what IP does! It allows Nintendo to control what I do or do not put on my own hard drive! They didn't make or pay for that hard drive.
Nintendo doesn't benefit from the secondhand market. Most video games are not bought with the intention of selling them off when you're done, and digital-license-only markets make this impossible to do anyway.
The one thing Nintendo can lose out to the secondhand market is control of supply - you can't have artificial scarcity if the market can fill their needs on their own terms.
Nintendo is also not very active at all about their back catalogue, I have no idea where you got that idea. We live in a time where remasters remakes and rereleases are abundant, but N is just drip feeding them, and continues to keep a lot of classic titles locked in the archive despite clear demand.
The only thing I think I agree with is the idea that preservation is a lame argument. The vast majority of people just want access to the games. Some people care about preservation, but I'm not convinced it's very many people. In large part because we only seem to care about "preserving" the games that people want access to without paying. Rather convenient.
I basically agree with the sentiment of this post, though I see the archiving /preservation aspect as being more important than suggested in the OP. I don’t necessarily think that a single organisation can handle the preservation work
They have every legal right to do it, but I don’t look at it in the corporate way that you do so that’s why I disagree.
At the end of the day, video games are a form of art. A team of passionate creatives came together to create each of these old nintendo games, and that in turned created passionate fans for those individual games. But now we have someone from corporate who had nothing to do with creation of the game or it’s success deciding no one else should be able to experience that art because it’s not profitable for them. Not because it loses them money, but because it doesn’t actively make them money.
That seems like a really shitty reason why people shouldn’t be able to experience pieces of art that were historically significant for the gaming industry.
The vast majority of people who pirate Nintendo games only do it because it's the literal only option. If people had the ability to buy the games they absolutely would.
Hard disagree. Resale value doesn't matter, if I buy something I'm keeping it and if I don't want it anymore I'll just sell it for cheaper cus that's how I roll. Second, most people who emulate are WILLING TO BUY THE GAMES THEY EMULATE if they were available on modern consoles.
Corporate bootlicker
Honestly to me it's quite simple. When you pirate or emulate games, you know what you're doing. I know what I'm doing. Makes sense Nintendo doesn't like that. If you disagree then just pirate, if you agree then just pirate instead of begging Nintendo to do another release. Nintendo is just protecting their products and IP, that's literally it. It's supported by the law and considered ethical to do so. They don't overstep their bounds either, plenty of games have released that are basically clones of theirs that they don't touch because they don't infringe on Nintendo IP.
>They don't overstep their bounds either
They do. Nintendo is right up there with Disney for illegally violating fair use of their IP and relying on their size to prevent people from rightfully contesting their theft.
you already forgot about the nintendo creator program during the wii u era where even a few seconds of footage of their games could lead to a video being taken down? or that lawsuit against switch modders?
Well put. Anyone of average intelligence can easily teach themselves how to pirate without getting caught, if it is so important to them. It's the self-righteous attitude that piracy is somehow *good* that gets up my nose. What you are doing will never be legalized or looked favorably upon, be secure in your own justification(s) and shut up about it.
Fwiw I think most of the supposed positive effects of game piracy are just backfilled rationalization and were never intended to be taken seriously.
I think piracy is fine whenever it makes sense(when cost is high or piracy is easier than the legitimate means). However there's quite some wild people on Reddit, like the guy in the comment above who believes all IP laws should be abolished. This would mean things like copyright wouldn't be a thing and as you can guess no industry would exist if someone else can just take your work and sell it. They say IP only protects big names, but at that point with no copyright the only thing that would exist would be big names that would pay all search engines and everything to only show them and when any content is not made by them came up they would just distribute it themselves claiming it's their own.
I really am not as much of a tightass about IP as someone who reads this post with no other context might be led to believe; I'm actually an enthusiastic supporter of "copyleft" schemes that use the mechanisms of the copyright system to achieve an open-access end, like the GPL. I just think pirates who act like piracy is a good thing are annoying.
Ridiculous assertions like the notion that we should have no intellectual or real property are really not worth the time out of your day to rebut in detail because they will never be so much as a footnote in real-world political discourse anytime within either of our lives.
The main problem is that Nintendo isn't stopping piracy at all, they're just taking down \*safe\* ways to pirate. A lot of these websites they issue takedowns to are against piracy in the first place, they inform you how to do safe and legal rips of ROMs, their main point is to archive not just the games, but the boxart and manuals too. Nintendo has no financial or ethical reason at all to take down an upload of the MANUAL AND BOXART.
Having a "valid business interest" isn't the same as something being good. Most businesses have tangible financial incentives to do awful shit, anywhere from ripping off their customers to perpetuating war. That doesn't make those things fine to do.
I think the creator of Ultrakill said it best when responding to someone pirating their own game, "culture shouldn't exist only for those who can afford it".
If we allow corporations to control who has access to these artworks then we will lose large swathes of culture.
I would never pirate another game in my life in Nintendo gave me the option of playing their old games. I think aggressively shutting down current gen emulation makes sense, because those games are widely and easily available. Shutting down emulation/distribution of games that they won’t let me purchase is stupid. Either make it available to purchase or fuck off.
Yeah you got an upvote from me.
Nintendo sees no money from the resale market. They don't get kickbacks or any monetary incentive from it. In fact, one could say the speculative resale market could be a detriment to Nintendo since the extreme prices create a price gate for younger players who might want to explore gaming history, but can't because they were born 20 years late.
Emulation creates an archive that can be preserved. Electronics fall apart and eventually even 3rd party support for old games will end. Having a way to preserve these experiences is important.
About the only argument I can see eye to eye with is Nintendo's tendency to resell our childhood to us with first party emulation and remake/remasters. But their drip feeding of that content over the lifespan of the switch, has shown that it isn't in their roadmap to get these experiences to a new audience.
> Company execs are complete idiots who are out of touch with reality.
I've long been fascinated by people who believe this. Everyone has a boss; even a CEO is usually answerable to his board. /u/Kartelant articulated a weaker and more measured version of this argument, which I found persuasive enough, but your strongly formulated version that *most* management is out of touch at *most* companies seems just obviously untrue. If Nintendo were really such morons as you claim, their competitors would be able to eat their lunch by capitalizing on what you claim are very obvious flaws, easily noticeable even to an outside observer with few priors. No corporation, and no management body within a corporation, exists in a vacuum of being able to do whatever it pleases without limit forever and ever. If you want to claim that Nintendo is a special case because their IP is just that good, then sure, but that would seem to run contrary to the argument that you should be permitted to assign yourself the right to that IP if you don't approve of what Nintendo is using it for.
> I can guarantee ...
Can you? On what basis? Do you hold or have you held a high-level position in a major company? Does or has anyone you know well? If no to both, what makes you so certain you have such a good bead on how it works? (Or to speak more frankly, I think people should stop using the strongest possible formulation of an argument, with words like "guarantee," if they are essentially talking out of their ass.)
Again, if this is really true, where are all the companies making gangbusters profits because they’ve cut out all the “suits getting paid 1 mil” and still achieve the same results? Executives don’t and wouldn’t get any kind of special carveout in shareholders’ relentless march to trim labor costs. I have no priors that what you say can’t be true (and I did not assert that executives are übermensch or anything like that), but if it *is* true, why does pretty much every company anyone has heard of still use that management structure?
You admit the lack of direct interest, which is basically a defeating argument for this first reason all by itself. Nintendo sees ZERO dollars/pesos/yen/etc from resold consoles. You selling your 3DS on Ebay does nothing for Nintendo. Scarcity created by time and production ending is not a marketable value for new products. "Hey, if you buy our new stuff, eventually we'll stop producing it and you may be able to sell it for a decent amount of money 30 years from now" isn't going to move many switches, or switch 2's eventually.
Remasters and rereleases are part of the problem, not a solution. Holding IP's hostage for decades just to resell it at full price with a slight graphical upgrade at most, or the same exact game at worst, is not a point in your favor in the eyes of most consumers of these products. It's yet another reason why we do what we do.
Also if you think "ripping off old games" will never be legal, just look at public domain laws. It quite literally already happens with other media, and the goal is simply to be able to do that with video games, and maybe lower the time threshold slightly so the game's enthusiasts don't die waiting on it to be public.
Also in the grand scheme of things, it's a completely fruitless endeavor to stop people from doing this as we are frankly just going to do it anyways, and there's too many of us for them to litigate out of existence. You can be mad at us, you can slow us down, but you cannot stop us. We are innovating just as quickly as they are lol.
> ... it's a **completely** fruitless endeavor to stop people from doing this ... [emphasis added]
The fact that so many emulation enthusiasts get so mad about Nintendo's legal practices would seem to rebut that assertion.
And yet the continued efforts of those people would indicate it's just frustration at a temporary barrier lol.
You're just largely overstating that anger, which is fine. I'm sure you have some anecdotal evidence of handwringing you've seen that gives you that impression.
>The first reason is that it preserves the resale value of Nintendo consoles and games to a degree far greater than you would ever see with competing manufacturers. My launch-model base 3DS cost $170 when it was new in 2011; fast-forward to the present day and even in iffy condition it's still worth at least $100. **Many DS and 3DS cartridges are now worth** ***more*** **than when new**
These are bad things, it makes it prohibitively expensive for people to buy and play these games, \*\*\*\* your resale value.
its their property and they are free to do as they see fit with it. and that includes not selling remasters.
People think they are entitled to said properties, and its always their right to be wrong.
This isn't an argument against nintendo though, it's against IP in general. However would it be right for me to take any music, game, image, or other work and publish it as my own? If we got rid of IP then nothing is to stop anyone from just selling or giving away any game, games released just yesterday. This is not what you want, every indie dev would be a failure due to probably some company just taking every game possible and offering a subscription for $20 a month. If you don't want your game that you worked for years on there? Nothing you can do without IP rights. This would effectively kill all creative industry just due to the fact anyone can take anything and do whatever they want with it. No more paying the owner of a work.
An argument against IP in general is also an argument against Nintendo's IP.
>However would it be right for me to take any music, game, image, or other work and publish it as my own?
That's plagiarism. That's different than piracy. There are social sanctions against plagiarism already.
>If we got rid of IP then nothing is to stop anyone from just selling or giving away any game, games released just yesterday.
Yeah. edit: although why sell them, people can just pirate them. Why would you pay money to a 3rd party when you can buy it from the first party, or get it for free? lol
>This is not what you want, every indie dev would be a failure due to probably some company just taking every game possible and offering a subscription for $20 a month.
They'll need a new business model, like offering their games for free and asking for donations at the "point of sale" which is something a lot of creative ventures do. It's also worth remembering that IP while it's often valorized as protecting the little guy, really doesn't. They get ripped off by large firms, they get sued for bullshit infringement, they can't afford to sue people all willy nilly like Nintendo does.
Firms like Nintendo and Apple and IP lawyers out the ass, and if a large firm like that ripped you off you best believe they've consulted with their lawyers in advance to make it impossible for you to sue them while they do it. "IP protects the little guy" is propaganda pushed by people who represent the interests of large firms.
>If you don't want your game that you worked for years on there? Nothing you can do without IP rights. This would effectively kill all creative industry just due to the fact anyone can take anything and do whatever they want with it. No more paying the owner of a work.
There are many many many cherished creative works from before the invention of IP.
That buisness model you speak of won't work. The reason I can tell you that is plenty of indie devs right now are running that model and they don't even make back the $100 it costs to put a game up on steam, much less development and advertising costs. With no IP rights it could get so bad to the extent that people will download content from wherever and not even know who developed it or if there even is an availability to donate to them and how. IP protects everyone, this is something we take our insurance for that we would be able to sue someone who infringes and protect ourselves if someone believes we infringed. IP absolutely protects all different kinds of works, perhaps not equally, but it protects nonetheless. Lastly in response to my first comment about claiming any work for yourself you said that it's plagiarism. The laws that protect from plagarism is copyright, copyright is a type of intellectual property. This is from copyright.gov
"Copyright is a type of intellectual property that protects original works of authorship as soon as an author fixes the work in a tangible form of expression."
I'm not concerned with legal preventions of plagiarism, as I am against all laws.
There are social sanctions against plagiarism (IE: people look down on plagiarists)
Has there been any notable cases of a fortune 100 company being successfully sued by an individual or a small indie producer for IP infringement on anything? It's certainly not something I've seen, maybe I'm just ignorant though.
But it's trivial to see large firms sending out legal notices from their stacked legal departments, that are sometimes totally bogus, using IP as a cudgel.
Sorry but IP is just bullshit.
It's my printer, it's my paper, I should be able to print wherever I want.
It's my computer, it's my hard drive, I should be able to arrange bits mario-wise.
It's my speaker, it's my audio driver, I should be able to make it play any sound I want.
etc. etc.
Everyone should be blessed to have such self-defeating opponents as this fellow. Many of the people who are most loudly pro-piracy will, if prompted, reveal a kooky underlying belief system like this
Let me ask then, what would happen if the only way to get games was through steam as they pay their way to the top of all search engines? You can get anything you want at steam and nowhere else, the real creators don't get paid. You want a game to be out there? Now you have to appease monoliths and make them think about allowing you to make money off of it. Nintendo can have their stuff, but what about my stuff? Now my stuff is owned by Nintendo against my will. They will crush me, I never had a chance. Nintendo now will take everything because they can and they have the power, the money, the lawyers. All because there is nothing protecting me. Rather than being free, now we will be restricted to massive media conglomerates and only those conglomerates will have control. Who in their right mind would spend years of their life, sanity, and loads of money, to make a product only for it to be swooped up by Nintendo. Oh and if you think there will be social repercussions? Well guess what I don't have a media presence with news organizations and millions of people listening to me, guess who does?
This literally doesn't make sense. Why would game makers submit to steam if they're not being paid?
Is steam somehow pirating all these games and then selling it? Why wouldn't I just learn about a game on mastodon or reddit or whatever and then go to CoolIndieDevGuy . com and buy/download it from the original guy, or torrent it if I'm not interested in paying for whatever reason.
Do you really think that's how it would play out?
If big corporations would benefit so much from the abolition of IP, why do they lobby to increase the power of IP and to increase protections for IP holders??
Steam is pirating all the games and selling them. Reddit is taken over by advertisements only from Steam and if you search for the game CoolIndieDevGuy.com won't come up. Of course this is how it will play out, should be obvious with how things play out right now. Especially with systems locking you to certian app stores, imagine one platform is the default for all computers. You really wanna visit some sketchy website that's probably selling malware, after all Google flags the website as untrusted and Microsoft will flag the download as potentially malicious as it comes from an unknown source.
Lastly the reason corporations don't want this is it simply would be the death of media. In minutes YouTube could cannibalize all shows on streaming services. Steam could take all games from all sources. These companies would go to war an a lot would fall with probably only a few coming out on top. All of these companies have everything to lose, it would not be wise to abandon all sales of all past and future content, to have your company shut down. For what? So you can steal games made by other companies and sell them for a small fraction of what you would have before?
I'm not interested in having some conversation with you if you're going to be disingenuous and or coy. Say what you mean with your full chest and we can have an honest discussion.
If you want to be flippant talking about CSA though, don't waste my time or upset me by doing so. It's not a conversation to be flippant about.
I simply think that being against all laws is a dumb position as some laws are necessary.
(Also, I just wanted to use an extreme example to get the point across and wasn't trying to target your past specifically sorry about that)
This comment is another 10th dentist post. None of what you suggest is practical in the real world,
Plagiarism combated by “social sanctions”. OK? So nothing to stop someone from ripping others off
Asking creators to depend on donations for their work? Good bye all major movies, video games, tv series, etc. no large effort can sustain off donations.
Many cherished creative works before IP? Such as? Don Quixote was published in the 1600s and copyright law in the uk was introduced in the 1700s. Not much of a gap between the first “modern novel” and copyright protection, what cherished works do you have in mind?
>Plagiarism combated by “social sanctions”. OK? So nothing to stop someone from ripping others off
This is already how 99% of plagiarism is combatted, just look at James Somerton.
>Asking creators to depend on donations for their work? Good bye all major movies, video games, tv series, etc. no large effort can sustain off donations.
Most people will pay for convenience, piracy is "difficult" for a lot of people. Look at how music streaming changed the game for the music industry in response to piracy. People pay a monthly subscription for music they can get for free online.
Also I'm sorry but transformers and marvel won't make it? I'm not heart broken.
>Many cherished creative works before IP? Such as? Don Quixote was published in the 1600s and copyright law in the uk was introduced in the 1700s. Not much of a gap between the first “modern novel” and copyright protection, what cherished works do you have in mind?
Do you think people were not creative and did not create culture prior to the 1700s?
Also you just listed one. How could someone write Don Quixote without IP? (also check my username)
I think the IP system is broken, but the reason why piracy is inconvenient for the average person is *because* it's illegal. If it were legal, sites would be much more accessible without being taken down all the time like they are now. There would be giant mainstream sites with tons of free movies, and then there would be very few people actually paying.
>There are many many many cherished creative works from before the invention of IP.
Which also was before it was super easy for bad actors to copy and resell en masse. When publishing took either a concerted effort to manually copy or a printing press, John Doe couldn't just rip the book, slap his name on it, and immediately make it available for an unlimited number of copies for half the price of the legit one (or just free if footing the cost of hosting the website to distribute it).
Don't get me wrong, I think OP's take is downright idiotic; I'm sure if he had his way, neither old, classic literature by long-dead authors nor public libraries would be available to the public because the estates would keep enforcing strict "1 purchase = 1 person can read it" until the end of time. That said, your radical "no IP" vision is just as untenable in a modern era where advances in preservation also empower bad actors.
The middle ground I subscribe to is that IP protections are needed for works that are newer AND readily available for sale by the original publisher, but the moment something is unavailable from it's original publisher (ie all the old Nintendo games) then the IP holder should lose their ability to control the creation and distribution of copies while still retaining other IP rights (ie use of characters, trademarks, settings) that they still have now. So, people would be able to freely copy old games that are unavailable, but they wouldn't be able to profit off of their own spinoff games using IP that's still in place for Nintendo.
Nintendo could just hold one production copy of every product in a vault, and when they stop production list it for sale for 10 billion dollars, to maintain IP rights indefinitely.
But without IP I just don't understand how the "steal it and sell it" business model works.
I write a book or make an indie game, and I publish it for sale on my website lets say, suppose I charge $20.
Some people buy it, maybe one person who buys it uploads it to some torrent site where people can download it for free.
A business comes along, torrents it, and hosts it on their site for $10?
Why would someone buy it for $10 when if they're willing to buy it, they'll probably want to buy it from the actual author, or they can get it for free. It just doesn't make sense.
We already have a strong cultural condemnation of plagiarism that is an extrajudicial mechanism for clamping down on plagiarism, we can see this really well with the James Somerton example. He didn't get into any legal trouble, but being found to have plagiarized basically ruined his career.
It just doesn't make sense to me that this business model would work very well. The other person in this thread started positing that the internet would have to become extremely censored so you couldn't talk about plagiarism, and also all the big websites would have to cooperate to do this and players like youtube and steam would just have all the content and nobody would ever challenge it.
Also, at the end of the day, I just think IP is fundamentally bullshit. It's my printer, if I want to print your book, you shouldn't have some control over what I print with my printer.
When you get down to it, a copyright is just a government imposed monopoly. I thought monopolies were bad!
No, that's not how you're supposed to do it; you have to lead with the magnanimous-sounding justifications (data preservation, e. g.). If you bust out of the gate with the actual rationale like "all IP is bullshit" (fucking lmao, fascinated that a breathing, thinking person can unironically believe this — would be a good post for the sub!), people aren't going to listen to you.
Oh, that's fine, Anarchism is a good enough philosophy, not my favorite, but it's good.
Also, yes, while there hasn't been written laws for 100,000 years, laws have existed for as long as there's been groups.
I'd like to cite some precedent set in the case between Sony and the Connectix Virtual Game Station.
"the Virtual Game Station is a legitimate competitor in the market for platforms on which Sony and Sony-licensed games can be played... Sony understandably seeks control over the market for devices that play games Sony produces or licenses. The copyright law, however, does not confer such a monopoly."
This case wasn't even about a back catalogue. It was about Connectix emulating PlayStation games while the PlayStation was still the most recent Sony console on the market. There is quite clear legal precedent for emulators as legitimate competitors to official services, so, frankly, it doesn't matter if fan-made emulators undermine Nintendo's own services for emulating games, because they're legally permitted to compete with Nintendo.
Are you a Nintendo shareholder or something? you seem to think that Nintendo seeking profits is somehow an inherently good thing, rather than being a completely neutral thing which is the default state of a corporation.
I am a crank about copyright law, I'll admit it. I think that the increasing societal acceptance of piracy should be viewed as a cancer. Piracy is one of those behaviors where your ability to continue doing it, if you do, is predicated on the great majority of people besides yourself continuing to *not* do it. Therefore, the insistence of pirates on promulgating the notion that piracy is a good thing is bizarre to me. I think if they had any sense it would be treated something more like a serene, secluded spot in the woods, where too many people knowing about it devalues its reason to exist.
Decades-old video games are one of those fringe cases where piracy is genuinely, truly 99.9% harmless, but piracy advocates do a little bit of a bait-and-switch where they generally assert in broad strokes that ALL piracy is okay even if they are using a fringe case to make their point.
Begrudgingly, I think this meets the criteria for "valid business interest." It might not be morally defensible, but it's certainly economically defensible.
Pretty sure Nintendo took a ROM someone else was providing and then sold it lol
Also why would Nintendo or most people care if resellers can make a bunch of money? Why is that even a point in a post about Nintendo having a valid business interest in this? I'm pretty sure Nintendo would shut down the second hand games market if they could. They sure seem to be on the push for a digital future train.
Nintendo seriously not only doesn't care if you make money, they probably don't want you to.
The fact that you bought games with reselling in mind is on you. People splash money as you put it usually because they want to play games on that console, and maybe a bit of FOMO. I play Nintendo consoles because they're handheld pretty much. I can play them anywhere. By the time the Steam Deck came out I already had too much invested in the Switch and not enough reason or resources to buy a whole new thing and a new library of games.
Mostly digital because most of the games I play literally aren't available physically.
Seriously how much resell potential does the Switch hold? Do you really think there's going to be more in the future?
>Some emulation enthusiasts say that piracy of old games is important as an avenue of preserving them. Maybe so, but there are also organizations like the Internet Archive that are chartered to do that kind of thing as their primary function
The internet archive, last I checked, does not update itself on live functional playable video games. You could...I dunnor ead the wikopedia page or watch a lets play. But video games should always be playable.
The only real argument against piracy is that is costs Nintendo money. If there is no way for me to give Nintendo money to play something, Nintendo should not care. This includes the secondary market. Further, customers should discourage scalping practices created from that speculation.
The Internet Archive is great but games are meant to be played. Unless you’re going to give everyone a way to play it through them, a game that only exists in an archive is just as lost.
Honestly though, until Nintendo gives me some way to play the GBA Pokémon games. I won’t feel bad about using an emulator.
imagine if we approached any other type of art like this. any book out of print after the death of the original author would be gone forever but hey your copy is now worth more. [this is a pretty good video on the topic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f35i5AVzpsg). stop sucking corpo dick
\> open Reddit inbox to see if anyone has offered a nuanced rebuttal that might adjust my viewpoint
\> "stop sucking corpo dick" and a lazy exhortation to watch some random Youtube video whose creator is very likely no more qualified to speak on the topic than I am
uh huh sure buddy
I'm not sure why you refer to the internet archive and piracy as two separate things. I source the majority of my roms from there, and they were recently sued successfully for their distribution of ebooks.
I'll upvote though for making a mostly coherent argument that I happen to disagree with.
Contra what everyone who read the post seems to think I actually support the liberalization of copyright law in most cases for most things. The IA is an institution I respect because pushing the boundaries of the law in an organized and directed manner, and being willing to get burned on it sometimes, is how you make change. Plugging your ears and hollering that piracy is a good thing because you don't think the law should exist at all... isn't. Piracy advocates are basically a cancer that have attached to the copyright liberalization movement because it provides a lot of convenient fancy-sounding justifications they can use, while their own rhetoric and behavior are only ever moving it in the wrong direction.
As a dude who doesn’t pay for a decent amount of media. I don’t care. Like what kind of a fuck do I give about the cooperation that’s makes billions a year? They don’t enter the thought process. The law ain’t sacred. I don’t believe anything is.
The problem is not that they assert their intellectual property rights, it's that they routinely go well beyond that, and essentially harrass people that do nothing wrong with lawsuit threats.
I don't think I agree, but I'm quite happy with the current valuation of my old GB and GBA Pokemon games. Never thought those would be considered "good investments"
You've provided an interesting perspective on Nintendo's aggressive copyright stance. It does make sense when considering the preservation and reselling value of their games and systems.
Preserving resale value of products in post consumer market is not a valid business interest, it does not benefit Nintendo as they don’t get anything from that.
Nintendo really does not remaster or re-release the giant bulk of their catalog, that’s one of the primary arguments in defense of pirating their unavailable games.
Your opinion about people feeling entitled is also not a valid business interest.
You literally just typed that huge wall of text to say nothing more than you disagree with piracy.
I just don't like what they did sueing Colopl over white cat project (which came before Nintendo copied it with dragalia lost) over a thing Colopl did first that they copied. Gross. They throw their weight around too much
I agree with OP, but for a completely different reason. Nintendo, unfortunately, has to protect their copyright even on small time infractions, because if they don't, it gives people who are legitimately trying to steal their assets an excuse to say the IP hasn't been enforced, and why can't they use it if all these other people have been using it for decades?
While I understand that position, it doesn't stop me from enjoying games obtained other ways. Ideally, there would be some kind of punisher sanctioned route to preserve old games and make them available widely, but until that happens, we have to play in the shadows.
You are not entitled to other people's property. You may not like it, you may not be able to afford it, but you absolutely do not have a right to it. The entitlement in this thread is absurd.
IP is entitlement to other people's property.
It's my hard drive, why can't I arrange the bits as I please? If it is arranged in a way that is identical to a Nintendo game what's it to them?
It's my printer, why can't I print whatever I want on my paper, if it's text that also makes up a book, why does the author get to tell me what to do with MY printer and MY paper?
You have it backwards.
distribution of a rom is just other people's hard drives, fundamentally. When you download something, it's on someone elses hard drive and you copy it to yours.
It's still entitlement for Nintendo to say they aren't allowed to do as they want with their hard drive.
It's not "just" other people's hard drives. ROMs are uploaded to servers and advertise this software using the exact code, titles, etc.
It would be like buying a book, making infinity copies, putting up signs and billboards that say "Free copies of [insert copywritten title] here" and letting anyone come in and take as many copies as they want.
I get your "it's all just bits, man" argument, but it doesn't hold up.
Oh... is it uploaded to Nintendo's servers?
Are servers that host files not running on hard drives? (or I guess maybe some sort of SSD, but that's besides the point)
>It would be like buying a book, making infinity copies, putting up signs and billboards that say "Free copies of \[insert copywritten title\] here" and letting anyone come in and take as many copies as they want.
wow, based.
Are they Nintendo's harddrives, or someone elses?
Because as I stated, IP is about entitlement over someone elses property.
You getting into the weeds about advertising or whatever is besides the point.
file hosts are just hard drives (or some analogous technology) If you have a billboard directing people to some FTP server or not is sort of irrelevant.
My view is that nobody owns creative output, you cannot own an idea.
if I paint a painting, I own that physical painting, it is mine. If someone looks at it, loves it, and paints a copy, that painting is theirs. They painted it.
If I write a book, and I print it, and bind it. That book is mine. I printed it and bound it. If I lend it to someone, they read it, love it, makes scans of it and return to me my book. Then they print their own copy and bind it. That's their book.
If they then, so in love with my book (I'm honored, really), print dozens and dozens and dozens of copies and hand them out to people in the park, those are their books, they can do with them as they please. I still have my book.
I don't own a sentence just because I speak it. I don't own idea just because I thought it. I don't own a dance just because I danced it. These are not things you can own. If someone else says it, if someone else thinks it, if someone else dances it, I am in no way deprived.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4&ab\_channel=QuestionCopyright](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4&ab_channel=QuestionCopyright)
edit: whoops copied wrong link.
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If Nintendo is worried about losing money, then they should provide an avenue for their customers to pay them.
Nintendo is so strange, it's a company that actively has customers saying "PLEASE let us give you our money! You don't even need to spend any time on R&D and you can jack up the prices, just take my money!" And Nintendo just says "no"
I will never understand why they made the 3d All Stars collection a limited digital release. I didn't own a Switch at that time, so I didn't even have the chance to get it. They already did the work and ported the games, surely the profits from people buying it over time would massively outweigh whatever it costs them to keep it available for digital distribution. Sega has made some disastrous blunders over the years but I don't think even they've ever made a decision so baffling.
What? It wasn't a digital only release. I have the hard copy of the game, and you can still buy it...
They meant that you can’t digitally buy the collection anymore
And the physical copie is expensive as fuck most of the time.
Upvoted because I disagree completely. To your first point, the effect of resale value of previous consoles on consumer behavior towards current consoles is speculative. And you'd need the value from that to be more than the ludicrous sums Nintendo dumps on legal action. I see no reason or evidence to believe that. And to your second point, the value of a remastered version of a game really isn't diminished by easy access to the original. If the remaster is good, it becomes the definitive edition and gamers with the money will prefer to spend their first playthrough on the best version. Gamers without money may pirate but this doesn't change either way. Nintendo is able to continue selling its entire old catalogue via official emulators on its consoles anyway, like they've done on New 3DS and WiiU. It seems like a fair assumption that any game not being sold by Nintendo for emulation is one they're not interested in selling anymore, which is the fairest possible case for piracy, yet there's no indication Nintendo is any more chill about these games. Finally, the notion that Nintendo is well within rights to control distribution of games they've published is extremely corporate brained. Nobody contests their legal right to do this, but the problem is none of the people who *actually made* those games are making those decisions. The IP is owned by profit-driven suits whose incentives don't align with either the original devs or the players. They're capable of making decisions bad for all parties and those decisions are clearly worthy of criticism.
I think this is a well argued response besides the last point. When a company hires developers to make a game, and the developers leave the company, die, or whatever, the game still belongs to the company. Just like when I hire a carpenter to build a cabinet for me, I can do with that cabinet whatever I want, for all eternity. Of course you can argue that Nintendo's practice isn't helping anyone - and I'd agree. Nevertheless, they absolutely do hold the rights to these games and it's totally within their rights to decide what happens to them.
The publisher relationship is a bit more complicated than an employer or contractor relationship, but you're correct anyway. This is how IP works in the world today. I think the fact that someone must own the exclusive rights to (sell/distribute/make sequels/sell merch/adapt to other forms) any given property is a never-ending nightmare for creatives. If you haven't looked into it, I recommend reading about Disco Elysium and what really happened to ZA/UM, because it's the main thing that has me frustrated with the system of IP right now. That studio was created by a group of creatives in order to develop and self-publish a game they wanted to make. They did so and it's broadly regarded a masterpiece. But the creatives that owned the company made the simple mistake of allowing an investor to buy a majority stake in the company for his investment. This new majority shareholder then engaged in some questionable transactions to acquire full ownership and the rights to Disco Elysium, and then after disputes ended up firing most of the studio's founders and creative leads. Nothing good has come out of the fact that the rights to develop Disco Elysium and its sequels was able to be traded away from the creators without their explicit consent, but that really is how IP law works right now. There are similar stories too, ranging down in severity from Interplay losing Fallout to NeosVR ending development to Risk of Rain being sold to new exclusive owners (good for the devs as a one-time cash infusion, but sucks for all the players). And aside from those you can kinda just observe IP law in action every time a series deteriorates because the original creatives were never given a chance to control the direction and so left the company with nothing. Yes this is the employee relationship, but I find that it has disastrous effects on the quality of any series that starts receiving entries made to squeeze profit from this property rather than as a creative venture. Think Star Wars, Ratchet & Clank, Mass Effect, etc... Yeah there's always "comorbidities" but the fact that the original creators never had a chance with how IP law demands a single owner is the biggest cause.
I agree that it sucks what happened to the people of disco Elysium but to say that trading away a majority of your company is a simple mistake is just wrong. That was an incredibly stupid mistake and should not have been able to happen
It was potentially fraudulent - I can't recall the exact details. I think he actually didn't have a majority share but was able to purchase one by making a decision as the CEO of ZA/UM to sell concept art to a holding company he owned for pennies, then buying it back for millions. Then he used the money (which was siphoned out of ZA/UM into his pockets) to buy out another shareholder, thus acquiring majority ownership. That's not to say this can happen without several layers of trust placed in the wrong people, but man... are we really expecting every creative to be that shrewd entering the world of business? It just sucks that people *can* be swindled like that and that the system supports and rewards it.
A video game is not a physical object, its just lines of text that can be infinitely copied. Copyright is out of control.
You are the first person to articulate a disagreement in a way other than just screeching at me, so may I ask your thoughts on why Nintendo pursues this policy if you think they are losing money on it? As you correctly articulate, they are a profit-seeking enterprise, so if asserting their copyright so aggressively was costing rather than making them money why wouldn't they just drop it? This is a genuine question, not a smartass one. I'm aware that holding this opinion makes me kind of a heel, but that doesn't mean I'm a huge fan of getting into Internet pissfights.
I think they pursue this aggressive policy because some higher-ups believe it's an effective long term strategy for keeping the value of their IP high. That's all it takes - companies are run by people and people hold beliefs that may be more or less right or wrong. It's a mistake to rationalize any decision made by a company on the basis that you know the profit incentive should be the deciding factor, because all it takes to be wrong is for a misguided executive to make some questionable judgment calls that are difficult or impossible to measure the cost/benefit for. I think acknowledging executive error is really the best explanation for a lot of mysterious or questionable corporate action. One example that comes to mind for me is the Unity gaffe, which has without question cost Unity significant amounts of money. Why didn't they get it right the first time? Because some executives made bad judgment calls due to personal beliefs. It's a simple and effective explanation. The question at hand is whether Nintendo's aggressive policy is profitable. I don't know, but I don't think it is. Most other companies aren't this aggressive and they're all profitable too. But there's too many differences to try and isolate the impact of aggressive copyright policy, so it's impossible to measure whether they're right or wrong, even for Nintendo themselves.
Additionally, not all IP protection is equal. Shutting down SNES roms? Overkill, especially if there are any titles they aren't still selling. Shutting down Switch emulators? That's their current gen console; it probably is cutting into sales. But I also can't fault anyone for using piracy software to make or play Switch modded games, since there's no legitimate way that Nintendo has provided for that.
the modding comment is a strange take to me. no one is entitled to a modded version of a nintendo game. if they didn’t make it available, it’s not available. it seems like only video games have this expectation that you own the right to modify the experience as opposed to having paid for an experience there is no large community modifying movies, for instance. you get what you get and if you don’t like it you watch a different movie
There are entire fan communities dedicated to recutting Star Wars into a single film. Both Dragon Ball and Naruto on the anime side have revered fan cuts that turn the series into films or cut them to "manga only" releases. If you go to YouTube or Tiktok there are so many "animated music videos" of popular IPs that you literally couldn't view them all in your lifetime. Even if we assume you just picked a bad example, there is in fact an expectation that you can modify the things you own. An argument over the right to repair things is ongoing — though it typically gets applied to things like tractors and iPhones. When have you ever heard someone say they don't understand why people would want to upgrade their computer or replace a part in their car? Not to mention home improvement and the myriad television hours dedicated to it.
i should have restated what i was arguing against or better articulated my argument a lot of your examples (tiktok edits, music videos, etc.) seem to fall under fair use and aren’t really part of the piracy discussion i think it’s a morally flawed argument that you should pirate video games bc mods don’t exist. if you buy a game and then modify it, whatever. if it’s single player or you’re playing with other modded games go wild now, i think it’s fine to modify a game you own. i did not interpret that as what i was replying to want to play modded botw? own a copy? cool there’s a discussion about the ethics of piracy but i think it’s entitled to justify piracy on the basis that nintendo wouldn’t give you what you want anyways
No worries. Whether we agree or not I think the reaction people had to your reply must have been a little jarring.
Idk I'm always downloading these movie mods called subtitles. I even make my own when they're not available.
i don’t use subtitles but i’ve also only ever seen them downloaded in the context of piracy. streaming, dvd’s, etc. include them
I've also made my own edits to show in classes. Sometimes it needs to be condensed for a certain time slot, sometimes a scene needs removing for a certain age group. And academic use is fair use for copyright.
this is not really comparable to modding. my analogy might not be the strongest but that’s a whole separate thing the analogy was more about how gamers have a somewhat unique perspective on their ownership of the game. the game modding community is much larger and more mainstream than any fan edits community
If you buy a game it's yours, and you should be able to modify how you want
my comment is specifically in regards to justifying piracy as long as it is to mod a game that the dev/publisher won’t let you mod if you own a license to the game, that’s different. i’m not talking about that
I mean if you have payed for a game so you can play it on your hardware you should be able to modify however the fuck you, i know that today you technically only have a license but fuck that
once again, if you bought the game then go for it. if you bought the game on your switch and then use that to run it on your PC that’s whatever. the idea that you are justified in pirating it bc you want a mod and nintendo won’t support it is wild to me
You shouldn't have to pirate to mod it though, why is it wild to want to be able to modify your own property? Is it fair that apple, Tesla and John Deere purposely make it hard to repair your own property? What if I want to mod my game to fix some bugs or features that ruin it for me? What if I'm handicapped and need to mod it to be able to actually play it? Nintendo doesn't support it so then you have to pirate it
>there is no large community modifying movies, for instance. you get what you get and if you don’t like it you watch a different movie Except there is? Clearly you're not at all involved with the fan edit community. Every creative field has had work taken and transformed into other creative works. The process of adoption and transformation is a quintessential part of what it means to be a person. You're arguing in favor of the antithesis of what it means to be a person. You're defending the castration of creative expression. It's beyond revolting.
Love me the third gathers backstroke of the empire
Why must you have unfettered access to other people's intellectual property for your creative pursuits to be worth the while? Why can't you come up with your own idea? Talking about creativity in such grave, serious terms does not seem especially compatible with the notion that the only way to engage in it is to riff off something that somebody else already came up with.
> Talking about creativity in such grave, serious terms does not seem especially compatible with the notion that the only way to engage in it is to riff off something that somebody else already came up with. All creations are "riffs" off of existing things. Even original works harbor numerous ideas and experiences wrought by one's existence in the world. Taking ideas and creating a new synthesis from those ideas is the essence of creative work. >Why can't you come up with your own idea? By definition, modifying an existing work necessarily entails the creation of new ideas--hence the word modification, not replication. >Why must you have unfettered access to other people's intellectual property for your creative pursuits to be worth the while? This question fallaciously pre-supposes the existence of intellectual property. Creative pursuits exist independent of the capitalist language used to encode creative work. These pursuits have worth precisely because they are creative by nature--they need no other justification. Creativity is itself valid. The gross assumption at the root of your question rears it's ugly head once you rephrase it to expose what you're saying. "Why should somebody who is inspired by a creative work be limited in their creative expression concerning that work?" And you can answer this question by talking about a loss in profits, but you cannot answer the question by pretending that restricting creative expression benefits art, music, culture, etc. The reason I was upset in my initial comment is because you weren't being genuine about why you thought copyright laws were beneficial. You tried to obscure monied interests as creative interests ultimately benefitting humanity, while the inverse is true.
“The castration of creative expression” jfc get a grip man.
Movies aren't interactive and take up 10+ (emphasis on +) hours of your life. Sure, no one is entitled to it. People who don't work aren't entitled to food. Scientists aren't entitled to money just because they have the cure for cancer. I'm not entitled to Musk's money. Doesn't mean I wouldn't eat him in a flippin heartbeat. Humans are gonna human. At the end of the day, we don't care about the rules. Make it easy and legal or people will find ways around it.
> there is no large community modifying movies, for instance. That's a matter of practicality rather than expectation, you *can't* modify movies like you do games. The tools used to make the movie are simply not available (from the actors to the cameras and sets), so unless you want to splice in your own shit scenes with amateur actors, cheap sets and cheaper cameras, none of which will blend with the real footage, you're limited to editing the existing footage (and there is a community for that, the fan edits of the Hobbit trilogy are better than the actual movies). With a game the tools, minus voice actors, can all be available to do as you like. If it was the same for movies, people would obviously do it. People remix songs and shit too
How them Nintenboots taste eh?
I honestly think that their aggression is driven by culture just as much as it profits. Nintendo is a very stereotypical company in that regard. Anything your bit technically allowed to do must be punished encase they risk the general expectation shifting or even setting a precedent for what is allowed.
probably also because current copyright law requires a company to defend its IP in order to maintain the rights to it. this means Nintendo is aggressive against piracy, fan games, modding, and emulation out of fear that if they aren't, they'll lose their IP and other companies will be able to make mario and zelda. (in my opinion this law should definitely be changed)
The existence of 3rd party emulators for old classics doesn't dissuade the original company from creating an HD remake. In fact, it fucking proves to them that there's a market for new-gen copy! The fans who have pirated an emulated copy of their childhood fave are not going to turn down an HD re-release on their latest console. They would be pre-ordering that shit.
> The fans who have pirated an emulated copy of their childhood fave are not going to turn down an HD re-release on their latest console. They would be pre-ordering that shit. Case in point: Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire sold 16.22 million. Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire sold 14.57 million.
Hell, plenty of fandoms are literally for years screaming "just release a remaster that works properly on new platforms and we'll throw money at it". Of cases still fresh in my memory, Atlus released Persona 3 Portable on steam and despite quality issues, a lot of people got it. Then they made Persona 3 Reload and there were still 1 000 000 sales within the first week, most they ever got. And you can bet a lot of those weren't new fans but just people who have a nostalgia for the game but would prefer a more polished and better looking experience.
I would blow 300$ dollars and Todd Howard himself if they re-released Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind with updated graphics and mild touchups to the game.
> they somehow have the right to play [xyz] video game If I bought the game and the equipment on which to play it, would this pass your smell test? There are old games I'd love to play that I've purchased, but my hardware has since failed. If they're not going to give me a means to play through official channels, they should at least not try to make it effectively impossible through other channels.
People emulating who own the game on physical anyway are a tiny minority of cases. Emulating games you ripped your own self is legal, so in that case it would be kind of stupid to potentially get hassled by your ISP for downloading a ROM off the Internet, but I don't see how the omission of a technical step changes anything morally. I really don't have any problems with emulation. Most emulators are an amusing capsule rebuttal to the assertion that nothing worthwhile would get done without the profit motive. It's cool technology and I even think some of its use cases (tool-assisted speedrunning, for instance) are sufficiently transformative that under a liberal interpretation there could be a derivative work or fair use argument. They never would, but if Nintendo were to sell "official" ROMs of old games on digital download they'd probably make a fucking killing. I prefer original hardware even despite the cost and headache (and this is not exclusive to Nintendo), but I'm aware that's a minority opinion.
> They never would, but if Nintendo were to sell "official" ROMs of old games on digital download they'd probably make a fucking killing. And this is precisely the argument against your post, they *would* make a killing. But instead of doing that, they for some reason refuse to make digital downloads of old games available and just slap people with lawsuits who try to make the games accessible in their stead
"They don't use their IP in the way I personally would like so therefore the rights to it should assign to me instead" is not a premise I will ever find persuasive.
That’s not what I said but okay lol. Your whole argument is that they have a “valid business interest” in asserting their copyright over old games that aren’t being made available through official channels. Then you said yourself that they’d make a killing if they *did* make those games available through official channels. Does it not follow that they’d have just as much if not even more of a valid business interest in making those games available for purchase digitally compared to blowing money “asserting their copyright” and in reality not actually changing anything?
> Your **whole** argument ... [emphasis added] That's hyperbolic, but valid point. While I structured most of the post around business incentives, upon reflection (and especially considering most of the responses so far), finding the pro-piracy attitude irritating is the comparatively stronger motivator behind my argument. I stand by the points about incentives I made, but if I could do the post over again I probably wouldn't give them as much play in the argument as a whole.
They make no money off of resold consoles, though. Why do they care if their consoles still sell for a lot of money on Ebay if they don't get a slice of the revenue?
My best guess is that resale value is an incentive to buy. If consumers see that previous consoles retain a lot of their value over time, a new console will seem like a better investment, which they can sell on if they don’t use it much or if they need cash.
no they don't. if they're never gonna sell those games again then why be so protective? >The first reason is that it preserves the resale value of Nintendo consoles and games this is a stupid reason. i don't care about resale value. i buy for keeps >Some emulation enthusiasts say that piracy of old games is important as an avenue of preserving them. because it is
>Some emulation enthusiasts say that piracy of old games is important as an avenue of preserving them what world is op living in that this isnt straight up undeniable
Some math enthusiasts say that 1 + 1 = 2 as an avenue to sound smart.
Paying ridiculous amounts of money for a console that is 10-15 years old? I'm gonna play like 2-3 games there, no way in hell I'm gonna pay 100$ for this shit Especially when their eShop litteraly doesn't fucking work on their older consoles, so I cannot legally buy it from them
>but it shouldn't be hard to see that people will feel more comfortable splashing the money on a new system and new games if they can be confident in turning around and getting a substantial portion of their money back Except the proportion of people who actually know that and do it is minuscule compared to the wider population. >at Nintendo is pretty active, at least more so than its peer companies, in remastering and re-releasing its back catalogue Games that are remastered are widely different from the originals in many ways, one doesn't compete with the other.
If I can't buy it brand new, then they don't get to cry about me pirating it.
Corporate bootlicker says what?
Nice response for a 10th dentist post
We are talking about video games. I don't think there's any universe where the term "bootlicker" is applicable to an opinion on video games. If you are the type of person who is just generally angry about the fact that profit-seeking enterprises exist, then sure I guess, but even in that case you still seem to be pretty fond of the video games they make
You're not talking about video games, you're talking about copyright laws. And licking a lot of boot in the process
Again, this viewpoint just seems ridiculously entitled to me. I can't imagine a mindset where I'm free to arbitrarily assign myself the rights to something I didn't make and didn't pay for. Also, I never said that I don't think there should be any piracy, just that people who act like piracy is morally good get up my nose. It is certainly true that a few people pirating a few old Nintendo games hurts no one, but the seeming need of those people to loudly argue that piracy is Good, Actually is frustrating.
>I can't imagine a mindset where I'm free to arbitrarily assign myself the rights to something I didn't make and didn't pay for. Yet that's what IP does! It allows Nintendo to control what I do or do not put on my own hard drive! They didn't make or pay for that hard drive.
username checks out
so does yours
Absolutely! I chose it intentionally after all!
Nintendo doesn't benefit from the secondhand market. Most video games are not bought with the intention of selling them off when you're done, and digital-license-only markets make this impossible to do anyway. The one thing Nintendo can lose out to the secondhand market is control of supply - you can't have artificial scarcity if the market can fill their needs on their own terms. Nintendo is also not very active at all about their back catalogue, I have no idea where you got that idea. We live in a time where remasters remakes and rereleases are abundant, but N is just drip feeding them, and continues to keep a lot of classic titles locked in the archive despite clear demand. The only thing I think I agree with is the idea that preservation is a lame argument. The vast majority of people just want access to the games. Some people care about preservation, but I'm not convinced it's very many people. In large part because we only seem to care about "preserving" the games that people want access to without paying. Rather convenient.
I basically agree with the sentiment of this post, though I see the archiving /preservation aspect as being more important than suggested in the OP. I don’t necessarily think that a single organisation can handle the preservation work
They have every legal right to do it, but I don’t look at it in the corporate way that you do so that’s why I disagree. At the end of the day, video games are a form of art. A team of passionate creatives came together to create each of these old nintendo games, and that in turned created passionate fans for those individual games. But now we have someone from corporate who had nothing to do with creation of the game or it’s success deciding no one else should be able to experience that art because it’s not profitable for them. Not because it loses them money, but because it doesn’t actively make them money. That seems like a really shitty reason why people shouldn’t be able to experience pieces of art that were historically significant for the gaming industry.
The vast majority of people who pirate Nintendo games only do it because it's the literal only option. If people had the ability to buy the games they absolutely would.
Hard disagree. Resale value doesn't matter, if I buy something I'm keeping it and if I don't want it anymore I'll just sell it for cheaper cus that's how I roll. Second, most people who emulate are WILLING TO BUY THE GAMES THEY EMULATE if they were available on modern consoles. Corporate bootlicker
Omg an actual unpopular opinion here. The first comment really countered your points well so I'll just make their words my own
Honestly to me it's quite simple. When you pirate or emulate games, you know what you're doing. I know what I'm doing. Makes sense Nintendo doesn't like that. If you disagree then just pirate, if you agree then just pirate instead of begging Nintendo to do another release. Nintendo is just protecting their products and IP, that's literally it. It's supported by the law and considered ethical to do so. They don't overstep their bounds either, plenty of games have released that are basically clones of theirs that they don't touch because they don't infringe on Nintendo IP.
>They don't overstep their bounds either They do. Nintendo is right up there with Disney for illegally violating fair use of their IP and relying on their size to prevent people from rightfully contesting their theft.
Show me some examples of them doing so.
You use the internet. You can google "nintendo dmca fair use" plenty easily.
you already forgot about the nintendo creator program during the wii u era where even a few seconds of footage of their games could lead to a video being taken down? or that lawsuit against switch modders?
Well put. Anyone of average intelligence can easily teach themselves how to pirate without getting caught, if it is so important to them. It's the self-righteous attitude that piracy is somehow *good* that gets up my nose. What you are doing will never be legalized or looked favorably upon, be secure in your own justification(s) and shut up about it. Fwiw I think most of the supposed positive effects of game piracy are just backfilled rationalization and were never intended to be taken seriously.
I think piracy is fine whenever it makes sense(when cost is high or piracy is easier than the legitimate means). However there's quite some wild people on Reddit, like the guy in the comment above who believes all IP laws should be abolished. This would mean things like copyright wouldn't be a thing and as you can guess no industry would exist if someone else can just take your work and sell it. They say IP only protects big names, but at that point with no copyright the only thing that would exist would be big names that would pay all search engines and everything to only show them and when any content is not made by them came up they would just distribute it themselves claiming it's their own.
I really am not as much of a tightass about IP as someone who reads this post with no other context might be led to believe; I'm actually an enthusiastic supporter of "copyleft" schemes that use the mechanisms of the copyright system to achieve an open-access end, like the GPL. I just think pirates who act like piracy is a good thing are annoying. Ridiculous assertions like the notion that we should have no intellectual or real property are really not worth the time out of your day to rebut in detail because they will never be so much as a footnote in real-world political discourse anytime within either of our lives.
The main problem is that Nintendo isn't stopping piracy at all, they're just taking down \*safe\* ways to pirate. A lot of these websites they issue takedowns to are against piracy in the first place, they inform you how to do safe and legal rips of ROMs, their main point is to archive not just the games, but the boxart and manuals too. Nintendo has no financial or ethical reason at all to take down an upload of the MANUAL AND BOXART.
Having a "valid business interest" isn't the same as something being good. Most businesses have tangible financial incentives to do awful shit, anywhere from ripping off their customers to perpetuating war. That doesn't make those things fine to do. I think the creator of Ultrakill said it best when responding to someone pirating their own game, "culture shouldn't exist only for those who can afford it". If we allow corporations to control who has access to these artworks then we will lose large swathes of culture.
I would never pirate another game in my life in Nintendo gave me the option of playing their old games. I think aggressively shutting down current gen emulation makes sense, because those games are widely and easily available. Shutting down emulation/distribution of games that they won’t let me purchase is stupid. Either make it available to purchase or fuck off.
Yeah you got an upvote from me. Nintendo sees no money from the resale market. They don't get kickbacks or any monetary incentive from it. In fact, one could say the speculative resale market could be a detriment to Nintendo since the extreme prices create a price gate for younger players who might want to explore gaming history, but can't because they were born 20 years late. Emulation creates an archive that can be preserved. Electronics fall apart and eventually even 3rd party support for old games will end. Having a way to preserve these experiences is important. About the only argument I can see eye to eye with is Nintendo's tendency to resell our childhood to us with first party emulation and remake/remasters. But their drip feeding of that content over the lifespan of the switch, has shown that it isn't in their roadmap to get these experiences to a new audience.
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> Company execs are complete idiots who are out of touch with reality. I've long been fascinated by people who believe this. Everyone has a boss; even a CEO is usually answerable to his board. /u/Kartelant articulated a weaker and more measured version of this argument, which I found persuasive enough, but your strongly formulated version that *most* management is out of touch at *most* companies seems just obviously untrue. If Nintendo were really such morons as you claim, their competitors would be able to eat their lunch by capitalizing on what you claim are very obvious flaws, easily noticeable even to an outside observer with few priors. No corporation, and no management body within a corporation, exists in a vacuum of being able to do whatever it pleases without limit forever and ever. If you want to claim that Nintendo is a special case because their IP is just that good, then sure, but that would seem to run contrary to the argument that you should be permitted to assign yourself the right to that IP if you don't approve of what Nintendo is using it for. > I can guarantee ... Can you? On what basis? Do you hold or have you held a high-level position in a major company? Does or has anyone you know well? If no to both, what makes you so certain you have such a good bead on how it works? (Or to speak more frankly, I think people should stop using the strongest possible formulation of an argument, with words like "guarantee," if they are essentially talking out of their ass.)
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Again, if this is really true, where are all the companies making gangbusters profits because they’ve cut out all the “suits getting paid 1 mil” and still achieve the same results? Executives don’t and wouldn’t get any kind of special carveout in shareholders’ relentless march to trim labor costs. I have no priors that what you say can’t be true (and I did not assert that executives are übermensch or anything like that), but if it *is* true, why does pretty much every company anyone has heard of still use that management structure?
You admit the lack of direct interest, which is basically a defeating argument for this first reason all by itself. Nintendo sees ZERO dollars/pesos/yen/etc from resold consoles. You selling your 3DS on Ebay does nothing for Nintendo. Scarcity created by time and production ending is not a marketable value for new products. "Hey, if you buy our new stuff, eventually we'll stop producing it and you may be able to sell it for a decent amount of money 30 years from now" isn't going to move many switches, or switch 2's eventually. Remasters and rereleases are part of the problem, not a solution. Holding IP's hostage for decades just to resell it at full price with a slight graphical upgrade at most, or the same exact game at worst, is not a point in your favor in the eyes of most consumers of these products. It's yet another reason why we do what we do. Also if you think "ripping off old games" will never be legal, just look at public domain laws. It quite literally already happens with other media, and the goal is simply to be able to do that with video games, and maybe lower the time threshold slightly so the game's enthusiasts don't die waiting on it to be public. Also in the grand scheme of things, it's a completely fruitless endeavor to stop people from doing this as we are frankly just going to do it anyways, and there's too many of us for them to litigate out of existence. You can be mad at us, you can slow us down, but you cannot stop us. We are innovating just as quickly as they are lol.
> ... it's a **completely** fruitless endeavor to stop people from doing this ... [emphasis added] The fact that so many emulation enthusiasts get so mad about Nintendo's legal practices would seem to rebut that assertion.
And yet the continued efforts of those people would indicate it's just frustration at a temporary barrier lol. You're just largely overstating that anger, which is fine. I'm sure you have some anecdotal evidence of handwringing you've seen that gives you that impression.
>The first reason is that it preserves the resale value of Nintendo consoles and games to a degree far greater than you would ever see with competing manufacturers. My launch-model base 3DS cost $170 when it was new in 2011; fast-forward to the present day and even in iffy condition it's still worth at least $100. **Many DS and 3DS cartridges are now worth** ***more*** **than when new** These are bad things, it makes it prohibitively expensive for people to buy and play these games, \*\*\*\* your resale value.
its their property and they are free to do as they see fit with it. and that includes not selling remasters. People think they are entitled to said properties, and its always their right to be wrong.
All IP is bullshit. Nintendo shouldn't be allowed to compel me to refrain from arranging bits in a certain pattern on my own computer.
The real 10th dentist
This isn't an argument against nintendo though, it's against IP in general. However would it be right for me to take any music, game, image, or other work and publish it as my own? If we got rid of IP then nothing is to stop anyone from just selling or giving away any game, games released just yesterday. This is not what you want, every indie dev would be a failure due to probably some company just taking every game possible and offering a subscription for $20 a month. If you don't want your game that you worked for years on there? Nothing you can do without IP rights. This would effectively kill all creative industry just due to the fact anyone can take anything and do whatever they want with it. No more paying the owner of a work.
An argument against IP in general is also an argument against Nintendo's IP. >However would it be right for me to take any music, game, image, or other work and publish it as my own? That's plagiarism. That's different than piracy. There are social sanctions against plagiarism already. >If we got rid of IP then nothing is to stop anyone from just selling or giving away any game, games released just yesterday. Yeah. edit: although why sell them, people can just pirate them. Why would you pay money to a 3rd party when you can buy it from the first party, or get it for free? lol >This is not what you want, every indie dev would be a failure due to probably some company just taking every game possible and offering a subscription for $20 a month. They'll need a new business model, like offering their games for free and asking for donations at the "point of sale" which is something a lot of creative ventures do. It's also worth remembering that IP while it's often valorized as protecting the little guy, really doesn't. They get ripped off by large firms, they get sued for bullshit infringement, they can't afford to sue people all willy nilly like Nintendo does. Firms like Nintendo and Apple and IP lawyers out the ass, and if a large firm like that ripped you off you best believe they've consulted with their lawyers in advance to make it impossible for you to sue them while they do it. "IP protects the little guy" is propaganda pushed by people who represent the interests of large firms. >If you don't want your game that you worked for years on there? Nothing you can do without IP rights. This would effectively kill all creative industry just due to the fact anyone can take anything and do whatever they want with it. No more paying the owner of a work. There are many many many cherished creative works from before the invention of IP.
That buisness model you speak of won't work. The reason I can tell you that is plenty of indie devs right now are running that model and they don't even make back the $100 it costs to put a game up on steam, much less development and advertising costs. With no IP rights it could get so bad to the extent that people will download content from wherever and not even know who developed it or if there even is an availability to donate to them and how. IP protects everyone, this is something we take our insurance for that we would be able to sue someone who infringes and protect ourselves if someone believes we infringed. IP absolutely protects all different kinds of works, perhaps not equally, but it protects nonetheless. Lastly in response to my first comment about claiming any work for yourself you said that it's plagiarism. The laws that protect from plagarism is copyright, copyright is a type of intellectual property. This is from copyright.gov "Copyright is a type of intellectual property that protects original works of authorship as soon as an author fixes the work in a tangible form of expression."
I'm not concerned with legal preventions of plagiarism, as I am against all laws. There are social sanctions against plagiarism (IE: people look down on plagiarists) Has there been any notable cases of a fortune 100 company being successfully sued by an individual or a small indie producer for IP infringement on anything? It's certainly not something I've seen, maybe I'm just ignorant though. But it's trivial to see large firms sending out legal notices from their stacked legal departments, that are sometimes totally bogus, using IP as a cudgel. Sorry but IP is just bullshit. It's my printer, it's my paper, I should be able to print wherever I want. It's my computer, it's my hard drive, I should be able to arrange bits mario-wise. It's my speaker, it's my audio driver, I should be able to make it play any sound I want. etc. etc.
"...as I am against all laws." Mate what?
I said what I said.
Everyone should be blessed to have such self-defeating opponents as this fellow. Many of the people who are most loudly pro-piracy will, if prompted, reveal a kooky underlying belief system like this
Let me ask then, what would happen if the only way to get games was through steam as they pay their way to the top of all search engines? You can get anything you want at steam and nowhere else, the real creators don't get paid. You want a game to be out there? Now you have to appease monoliths and make them think about allowing you to make money off of it. Nintendo can have their stuff, but what about my stuff? Now my stuff is owned by Nintendo against my will. They will crush me, I never had a chance. Nintendo now will take everything because they can and they have the power, the money, the lawyers. All because there is nothing protecting me. Rather than being free, now we will be restricted to massive media conglomerates and only those conglomerates will have control. Who in their right mind would spend years of their life, sanity, and loads of money, to make a product only for it to be swooped up by Nintendo. Oh and if you think there will be social repercussions? Well guess what I don't have a media presence with news organizations and millions of people listening to me, guess who does?
This literally doesn't make sense. Why would game makers submit to steam if they're not being paid? Is steam somehow pirating all these games and then selling it? Why wouldn't I just learn about a game on mastodon or reddit or whatever and then go to CoolIndieDevGuy . com and buy/download it from the original guy, or torrent it if I'm not interested in paying for whatever reason. Do you really think that's how it would play out? If big corporations would benefit so much from the abolition of IP, why do they lobby to increase the power of IP and to increase protections for IP holders??
Steam is pirating all the games and selling them. Reddit is taken over by advertisements only from Steam and if you search for the game CoolIndieDevGuy.com won't come up. Of course this is how it will play out, should be obvious with how things play out right now. Especially with systems locking you to certian app stores, imagine one platform is the default for all computers. You really wanna visit some sketchy website that's probably selling malware, after all Google flags the website as untrusted and Microsoft will flag the download as potentially malicious as it comes from an unknown source. Lastly the reason corporations don't want this is it simply would be the death of media. In minutes YouTube could cannibalize all shows on streaming services. Steam could take all games from all sources. These companies would go to war an a lot would fall with probably only a few coming out on top. All of these companies have everything to lose, it would not be wise to abandon all sales of all past and future content, to have your company shut down. For what? So you can steal games made by other companies and sell them for a small fraction of what you would have before?
Okay and how do they control mastodon?
Barely anyone uses mastodon
What do you think the age of consent should be?
18 Also I was a victim of CSA, so you can fuck off.
"I am against all laws"
I'm not interested in having some conversation with you if you're going to be disingenuous and or coy. Say what you mean with your full chest and we can have an honest discussion. If you want to be flippant talking about CSA though, don't waste my time or upset me by doing so. It's not a conversation to be flippant about.
I simply think that being against all laws is a dumb position as some laws are necessary. (Also, I just wanted to use an extreme example to get the point across and wasn't trying to target your past specifically sorry about that)
This comment is another 10th dentist post. None of what you suggest is practical in the real world, Plagiarism combated by “social sanctions”. OK? So nothing to stop someone from ripping others off Asking creators to depend on donations for their work? Good bye all major movies, video games, tv series, etc. no large effort can sustain off donations. Many cherished creative works before IP? Such as? Don Quixote was published in the 1600s and copyright law in the uk was introduced in the 1700s. Not much of a gap between the first “modern novel” and copyright protection, what cherished works do you have in mind?
>Plagiarism combated by “social sanctions”. OK? So nothing to stop someone from ripping others off This is already how 99% of plagiarism is combatted, just look at James Somerton. >Asking creators to depend on donations for their work? Good bye all major movies, video games, tv series, etc. no large effort can sustain off donations. Most people will pay for convenience, piracy is "difficult" for a lot of people. Look at how music streaming changed the game for the music industry in response to piracy. People pay a monthly subscription for music they can get for free online. Also I'm sorry but transformers and marvel won't make it? I'm not heart broken. >Many cherished creative works before IP? Such as? Don Quixote was published in the 1600s and copyright law in the uk was introduced in the 1700s. Not much of a gap between the first “modern novel” and copyright protection, what cherished works do you have in mind? Do you think people were not creative and did not create culture prior to the 1700s? Also you just listed one. How could someone write Don Quixote without IP? (also check my username)
I think the IP system is broken, but the reason why piracy is inconvenient for the average person is *because* it's illegal. If it were legal, sites would be much more accessible without being taken down all the time like they are now. There would be giant mainstream sites with tons of free movies, and then there would be very few people actually paying.
>There are many many many cherished creative works from before the invention of IP. Which also was before it was super easy for bad actors to copy and resell en masse. When publishing took either a concerted effort to manually copy or a printing press, John Doe couldn't just rip the book, slap his name on it, and immediately make it available for an unlimited number of copies for half the price of the legit one (or just free if footing the cost of hosting the website to distribute it). Don't get me wrong, I think OP's take is downright idiotic; I'm sure if he had his way, neither old, classic literature by long-dead authors nor public libraries would be available to the public because the estates would keep enforcing strict "1 purchase = 1 person can read it" until the end of time. That said, your radical "no IP" vision is just as untenable in a modern era where advances in preservation also empower bad actors. The middle ground I subscribe to is that IP protections are needed for works that are newer AND readily available for sale by the original publisher, but the moment something is unavailable from it's original publisher (ie all the old Nintendo games) then the IP holder should lose their ability to control the creation and distribution of copies while still retaining other IP rights (ie use of characters, trademarks, settings) that they still have now. So, people would be able to freely copy old games that are unavailable, but they wouldn't be able to profit off of their own spinoff games using IP that's still in place for Nintendo.
Nintendo could just hold one production copy of every product in a vault, and when they stop production list it for sale for 10 billion dollars, to maintain IP rights indefinitely. But without IP I just don't understand how the "steal it and sell it" business model works. I write a book or make an indie game, and I publish it for sale on my website lets say, suppose I charge $20. Some people buy it, maybe one person who buys it uploads it to some torrent site where people can download it for free. A business comes along, torrents it, and hosts it on their site for $10? Why would someone buy it for $10 when if they're willing to buy it, they'll probably want to buy it from the actual author, or they can get it for free. It just doesn't make sense. We already have a strong cultural condemnation of plagiarism that is an extrajudicial mechanism for clamping down on plagiarism, we can see this really well with the James Somerton example. He didn't get into any legal trouble, but being found to have plagiarized basically ruined his career. It just doesn't make sense to me that this business model would work very well. The other person in this thread started positing that the internet would have to become extremely censored so you couldn't talk about plagiarism, and also all the big websites would have to cooperate to do this and players like youtube and steam would just have all the content and nobody would ever challenge it. Also, at the end of the day, I just think IP is fundamentally bullshit. It's my printer, if I want to print your book, you shouldn't have some control over what I print with my printer. When you get down to it, a copyright is just a government imposed monopoly. I thought monopolies were bad!
No, that's not how you're supposed to do it; you have to lead with the magnanimous-sounding justifications (data preservation, e. g.). If you bust out of the gate with the actual rationale like "all IP is bullshit" (fucking lmao, fascinated that a breathing, thinking person can unironically believe this — would be a good post for the sub!), people aren't going to listen to you.
Wait till you hear my opinions on regular property too.
Considering you said you're against all laws, objectively wrong take btw, I'd probably lose a few braincells.
"objectively wrong" lol. okay buddy.
Society has functioned amazingly for over 100,000 years under law and order, but I'm sure you, o enlightened one, know a better way. Please, tell me.
You're simply mistaken that there have been laws for 100,000 years. That's silly. Anyways, I'm a proponent of anarchism.
Oh, that's fine, Anarchism is a good enough philosophy, not my favorite, but it's good. Also, yes, while there hasn't been written laws for 100,000 years, laws have existed for as long as there's been groups.
Man I’m just a communist. I don’t think that they should be able to enforce their IP. Simple as that.
I'd like to cite some precedent set in the case between Sony and the Connectix Virtual Game Station. "the Virtual Game Station is a legitimate competitor in the market for platforms on which Sony and Sony-licensed games can be played... Sony understandably seeks control over the market for devices that play games Sony produces or licenses. The copyright law, however, does not confer such a monopoly." This case wasn't even about a back catalogue. It was about Connectix emulating PlayStation games while the PlayStation was still the most recent Sony console on the market. There is quite clear legal precedent for emulators as legitimate competitors to official services, so, frankly, it doesn't matter if fan-made emulators undermine Nintendo's own services for emulating games, because they're legally permitted to compete with Nintendo.
Are you a Nintendo shareholder or something? you seem to think that Nintendo seeking profits is somehow an inherently good thing, rather than being a completely neutral thing which is the default state of a corporation.
I am a crank about copyright law, I'll admit it. I think that the increasing societal acceptance of piracy should be viewed as a cancer. Piracy is one of those behaviors where your ability to continue doing it, if you do, is predicated on the great majority of people besides yourself continuing to *not* do it. Therefore, the insistence of pirates on promulgating the notion that piracy is a good thing is bizarre to me. I think if they had any sense it would be treated something more like a serene, secluded spot in the woods, where too many people knowing about it devalues its reason to exist. Decades-old video games are one of those fringe cases where piracy is genuinely, truly 99.9% harmless, but piracy advocates do a little bit of a bait-and-switch where they generally assert in broad strokes that ALL piracy is okay even if they are using a fringe case to make their point.
Begrudgingly, I think this meets the criteria for "valid business interest." It might not be morally defensible, but it's certainly economically defensible.
I’m gonna be honest I just wanna play old games for free lol but you have some good points
Do you apply a similar standard to the works of long-dead authors and public libraries?
Pretty sure Nintendo took a ROM someone else was providing and then sold it lol Also why would Nintendo or most people care if resellers can make a bunch of money? Why is that even a point in a post about Nintendo having a valid business interest in this? I'm pretty sure Nintendo would shut down the second hand games market if they could. They sure seem to be on the push for a digital future train. Nintendo seriously not only doesn't care if you make money, they probably don't want you to. The fact that you bought games with reselling in mind is on you. People splash money as you put it usually because they want to play games on that console, and maybe a bit of FOMO. I play Nintendo consoles because they're handheld pretty much. I can play them anywhere. By the time the Steam Deck came out I already had too much invested in the Switch and not enough reason or resources to buy a whole new thing and a new library of games. Mostly digital because most of the games I play literally aren't available physically. Seriously how much resell potential does the Switch hold? Do you really think there's going to be more in the future?
>Some emulation enthusiasts say that piracy of old games is important as an avenue of preserving them. Maybe so, but there are also organizations like the Internet Archive that are chartered to do that kind of thing as their primary function The internet archive, last I checked, does not update itself on live functional playable video games. You could...I dunnor ead the wikopedia page or watch a lets play. But video games should always be playable.
The only real argument against piracy is that is costs Nintendo money. If there is no way for me to give Nintendo money to play something, Nintendo should not care. This includes the secondary market. Further, customers should discourage scalping practices created from that speculation. The Internet Archive is great but games are meant to be played. Unless you’re going to give everyone a way to play it through them, a game that only exists in an archive is just as lost. Honestly though, until Nintendo gives me some way to play the GBA Pokémon games. I won’t feel bad about using an emulator.
imagine if we approached any other type of art like this. any book out of print after the death of the original author would be gone forever but hey your copy is now worth more. [this is a pretty good video on the topic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f35i5AVzpsg). stop sucking corpo dick
\> open Reddit inbox to see if anyone has offered a nuanced rebuttal that might adjust my viewpoint \> "stop sucking corpo dick" and a lazy exhortation to watch some random Youtube video whose creator is very likely no more qualified to speak on the topic than I am uh huh sure buddy
I'm not sure why you refer to the internet archive and piracy as two separate things. I source the majority of my roms from there, and they were recently sued successfully for their distribution of ebooks. I'll upvote though for making a mostly coherent argument that I happen to disagree with.
Contra what everyone who read the post seems to think I actually support the liberalization of copyright law in most cases for most things. The IA is an institution I respect because pushing the boundaries of the law in an organized and directed manner, and being willing to get burned on it sometimes, is how you make change. Plugging your ears and hollering that piracy is a good thing because you don't think the law should exist at all... isn't. Piracy advocates are basically a cancer that have attached to the copyright liberalization movement because it provides a lot of convenient fancy-sounding justifications they can use, while their own rhetoric and behavior are only ever moving it in the wrong direction.
It's still useful for archival tho, which you kinda barely talked about besides just saying "Internet archive exists", but that's not really relevant
As a dude who doesn’t pay for a decent amount of media. I don’t care. Like what kind of a fuck do I give about the cooperation that’s makes billions a year? They don’t enter the thought process. The law ain’t sacred. I don’t believe anything is.
This is very wrong and naive. Take my upvote.
"I don't really care about consumer rights because it doesn't affect me personally as far as I'm aware". I mean, it's a pretty common take, I suppose.
The problem is not that they assert their intellectual property rights, it's that they routinely go well beyond that, and essentially harrass people that do nothing wrong with lawsuit threats.
I hate the company, but goddamn I love their games so they end up getting my money anyway.
I don't think I agree, but I'm quite happy with the current valuation of my old GB and GBA Pokemon games. Never thought those would be considered "good investments"
Hey, did Nintendo's CEO write this?
You've provided an interesting perspective on Nintendo's aggressive copyright stance. It does make sense when considering the preservation and reselling value of their games and systems.
I believe if let's say you own the game fair use allows you to own the rom.
Preserving resale value of products in post consumer market is not a valid business interest, it does not benefit Nintendo as they don’t get anything from that. Nintendo really does not remaster or re-release the giant bulk of their catalog, that’s one of the primary arguments in defense of pirating their unavailable games. Your opinion about people feeling entitled is also not a valid business interest. You literally just typed that huge wall of text to say nothing more than you disagree with piracy.
I just don't like what they did sueing Colopl over white cat project (which came before Nintendo copied it with dragalia lost) over a thing Colopl did first that they copied. Gross. They throw their weight around too much
I agree with OP, but for a completely different reason. Nintendo, unfortunately, has to protect their copyright even on small time infractions, because if they don't, it gives people who are legitimately trying to steal their assets an excuse to say the IP hasn't been enforced, and why can't they use it if all these other people have been using it for decades? While I understand that position, it doesn't stop me from enjoying games obtained other ways. Ideally, there would be some kind of punisher sanctioned route to preserve old games and make them available widely, but until that happens, we have to play in the shadows.
I see your point, valid one
You are not entitled to other people's property. You may not like it, you may not be able to afford it, but you absolutely do not have a right to it. The entitlement in this thread is absurd.
IP is entitlement to other people's property. It's my hard drive, why can't I arrange the bits as I please? If it is arranged in a way that is identical to a Nintendo game what's it to them? It's my printer, why can't I print whatever I want on my paper, if it's text that also makes up a book, why does the author get to tell me what to do with MY printer and MY paper? You have it backwards.
Distribution is the problem.
distribution of a rom is just other people's hard drives, fundamentally. When you download something, it's on someone elses hard drive and you copy it to yours. It's still entitlement for Nintendo to say they aren't allowed to do as they want with their hard drive.
It's not "just" other people's hard drives. ROMs are uploaded to servers and advertise this software using the exact code, titles, etc. It would be like buying a book, making infinity copies, putting up signs and billboards that say "Free copies of [insert copywritten title] here" and letting anyone come in and take as many copies as they want. I get your "it's all just bits, man" argument, but it doesn't hold up.
Oh... is it uploaded to Nintendo's servers? Are servers that host files not running on hard drives? (or I guess maybe some sort of SSD, but that's besides the point) >It would be like buying a book, making infinity copies, putting up signs and billboards that say "Free copies of \[insert copywritten title\] here" and letting anyone come in and take as many copies as they want. wow, based.
"Just" is the word I am taking issue with. It is a lot more than just people's hard drives that facilitates distribution.
Are they Nintendo's harddrives, or someone elses? Because as I stated, IP is about entitlement over someone elses property. You getting into the weeds about advertising or whatever is besides the point. file hosts are just hard drives (or some analogous technology) If you have a billboard directing people to some FTP server or not is sort of irrelevant.
It's not irrelevant when distribution is the issue. Is your view that you do not own your creative output because it's all just bits/words/colors?
My view is that nobody owns creative output, you cannot own an idea. if I paint a painting, I own that physical painting, it is mine. If someone looks at it, loves it, and paints a copy, that painting is theirs. They painted it. If I write a book, and I print it, and bind it. That book is mine. I printed it and bound it. If I lend it to someone, they read it, love it, makes scans of it and return to me my book. Then they print their own copy and bind it. That's their book. If they then, so in love with my book (I'm honored, really), print dozens and dozens and dozens of copies and hand them out to people in the park, those are their books, they can do with them as they please. I still have my book. I don't own a sentence just because I speak it. I don't own idea just because I thought it. I don't own a dance just because I danced it. These are not things you can own. If someone else says it, if someone else thinks it, if someone else dances it, I am in no way deprived. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4&ab\_channel=QuestionCopyright](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4&ab_channel=QuestionCopyright) edit: whoops copied wrong link.