This is Nintendo trying to enforce Japanese law on a global scale, again.
Nintendo, I used to love you. Now I hate you. Stop it.
Nintendo was never reading my comment to begin with. Its merely an expression of disappointment and frustration. I never expected it to ever actually do anything.
Why is Nintendo such a gigantic piece of shit about fucking everything
Some of it is pure hubris. But some of it is American IP law, which will punish you if you don’t zealously prosecute people in defense of your patents. Its sort of like laws on squatting. If someone is openly and notoriously using your IP and you don’t try to sue them for a long enough time, they can claim the property as functionally abandoned.
For Nintendo, which hasn’t had a particularly good new idea in 20 years, the idea of losing Mario or Link or Pikachu to a legal loophole like this would be devastating.
I’d agree with you, except Sony, another massive Japanese company operating in the same industry as Nintendo, doesn’t lash out this aggressively at their own community that is just desperately trying to enjoy games in their own way.
Sony has left basically all emulation projects alone as well as modding projects like 60FPS patches (there was one emulator that they took to court in the 90s, Bleem, but Bleem was charging money for the emulator. Funnily enough, Bleem won the case and was allowed to continue existing, but the company went under due to the cost of the legal battle) .
Nintendo doesn’t have to act out like this. They actively choose to stifle such products so that they themselves can offer tightly curated versions on their own schedule and at their own price. This isn’t an IP protection strategy, it’s an agressive cornering of their own market.
Sony probably just learned their lesson when they lost their case against the Bleem! emulator back in the late 90’s/early 2000’s. They were, originally, just as rabid as Nintendo against emulation. And perhaps they also learned that you attract more flies with honey than with vinegar.
Then again, while Sony isn’t as aggressive as Nintendo, they are a bit slow on the up take and sometimes do really dumb things. Like their current strategy of releasing the first thing of a series on PC but the followups only on the PS5 to try and get PC gamers to buy PS5s. Why would I do that if my save isn’t on that platform and there’s no way to convert them?
Sony, another massive Japanese company operating in the same industry as Nintendo, doesn’t lash out this aggressively at their own community
What IP does Sony hang its hat on? I’m hard pressed to name a uniquely Sony-esque title or franchise. They partner with Square Enix on the reg, but Square is also horrifyingly litigious.
Nintendo doesn’t have to act out like this.
No. There are proven effective ways to monetizing the modding community and exploit them for their free labor. And that’s not part of the Nintendo business strategy, possibly because their creative directors’ egos can’t handle it or possibly because some bean counter thinks it’ll hurt profits long term or maybe possibly even because Nintendo has a better-than-average work culture and the staff doesn’t like the idea of being undercut at their jobs by hobbyists.
Idk. But I also just don’t get the desire to bang your heads against this wall over and over again, on the modder side of the equation. There are other franchises and platforms to mod on. At this point, it feels more like a battle of wills than a rational strategy on either end.
It’s not patents, it’s trademarks. Kleenex is the best example: Overuse of it as a generic term leads the company to call it “Kleenex brand”. Lego has fought this for years, with the boxes promoting calling them “Lego bricks”, lest all building bricks become generic “Legos”.
Patents expire after 17 years regardless of usage, trademarks can last forever.
IP stands for “intellectual property” as far as I know, and copyright is one form of that
There are people commenting on that article that are saying they don’t even think modding games is “right”. Talk about a bootlicker 😅
A lot of that seemingly came from when modder = cheater in GTAV. Saw a huge swing to that at the height of that game’s popularity.
Edit: Read through the comments and it’s related to GTA but in a different way. The guy was comparing bootlegging to modding because someone in his country, Indonesia, was modding GTA:SA to add children’s show characters to it, changing the packaging to make it more appealing to children, and then is selling the discs to people. Which is a whole other can of worms.
Anyone else that mentioned they didn’t like modding didn’t really elaborate.
and because of an attitude like this, my family wil never buy anything from nintendo again.
Just buy used. You get all the goodies without supporting their shitty practices, while not even having to deal with the ethics of piracy. It’s all win.
Honestly, pirating Nintendo products should be considered an ethical obligation at this point, just to spite them.
I have been since 1998, but I ramped it up recently since they went after Yuzu.
Not even just out of spite. In a way its another form of “voting with one’s wallet”. It will affect their sales, and if their heads aren’t too far up their assess (like, sitting on their own shoulders), they’ll finally get a clue.
But I’m not holding my breath.
Personally, I think I’d rather not even give them the word of mouth of having played their game. There’s so much out there to play, and plenty of it doesn’t come from a company doing lousy stuff like this, even if it’s second hand.
plenty of it doesn’t come from a company doing lousy stuff like this
So you only play indie games? Because that’s basically the only way you avoid “companies doing lousy stuff.”
Why bother? Paid, non-transferable cloud backups, low-spec hardware that wears out in a few months, over-hyped/half-finished games (assuming they’re ever released), back catalogs that aren’t available if you don’t subscribe or repurchase every generation… Just skip em.
If you want AAA games, there’s plenty you can play mobile or on PC (or both), or if you specifically want indie, there’s plenty of them too on Itch.io , individual websites, and steam (among many others; GoG, HumbleBundle, etc). You frequently don’t even need to pay for these games, since a lot of them are free or via user-decided donations (mostly re: indies).
Hardware that can run them range everywhere from GPD handhelds to Steam Deck to any number of either’s competitors, and they also function as more than just game machines since they run either Linux or Windows.
Nintendo who?
Nope. I’d still have to buy games somehow and I’m fucked if I’m paying a tenner less for second hand because Nintendo games rarely drop in price. Also not paying full price. If anything I’d buy a hacked switch and pirate the games.
This has been my stance for decades. They’re worse than Ubisoft when it comes to immoral and unethical treatment of their fans and customers.
GameBanana mods have saved me so much wasted time while playing animal crossing nh with my daughter.
The game is cute but it’s so slow with many long loading screens and has one if the worst UIs of any game I’ve ever played. Mods were able to help a bit atleast.
Fuck Nintendo.
