Nintendo are going after anyone hosting Switch roms now. I have issues with their handling of rom sites before but when they're charging $30 and hosting games for actively sold consoles, it's a lot more understandable compared to previous cases.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Nintendo files multimillion-dollar lawsuit against ROM website, RomUniverse
- Thread starter delete12345
- Start date
Don't misunderstand me.
I'm not saying it's a good argument.
I'm saying someone can make the point without being ridiculously transparent.
But here that's quite clearly not the case.
And seriously there's no reason to have any fear of Nintendo games being lost.
they do their archival well and proved it times and again.
Yeah stupid Nintendo going after sites hosting ROMs for old systems like *checks notes* the 3DS and Switch.
Oh ok. Yeah Im mainly talking for games of long past generations. Im not down with modern game piracy at all.
yeah. the argument for preservation fails when you go to these websites and see the most downloaded games are always super popular stuff that never in a million years would be in danger of being lost. it's not like these rom sites are exclusively offering obscure roms of games by companies no one ever heard of.
It's scummy to be profiting off of piracy for sure, but paying to pirate doesn't entirely defeat the point... it could still be cheaper, more convenient and offer a better selection than legit channels, and safer/more convenient than other illicit channels.
(Note: This isn't a defense of piracy, just listing a few reasons why a pirate might pay)
Paid memberships? Fuck 'em... dug their own grave here.
Harder to disagree with than Nintendo's usual punching down against rom sites at least.
Harder to disagree with than Nintendo's usual punching down against rom sites at least.
eh, I'd wager the bulk of 'customers' are folks who aren't very internet savvy but want an easy way to download games. I'd assume people who run rom sites know where to get these things for free and downloading games one by one from a crappy file host sounds less than ideal.
It was always a smokescreen if you ask me.
Under the pretense of trying to archive old game they're really just providing SMB, SMW and other uber popular games for free.
It's certainly convenient to use but let's not kid ourselves in what it really is.
i'd say any website offering roms (new/old) for piracy should be taken down regardless of the servicer being free/paid/or donation optional.
GabeN famously said that piracy is a service problem. And he was right.
Still not cool especially when offering current system games.
There are Nintendo Switch games on that site, not just "old roms"
If preservation was the issue, people would be creating museums en masse to cover that problem.
And I'm talking like a museum per city bigger than 1000 people.
And even the "old roms" excuse doesn't fly anymore when the "old roms" are actively part of their strategy now.
It's not like they're left to rot in a cellar somewhere, they're actively distributed.
yeah, saying rom sites help preservation is actually disrespectful to people who care about and work towards preserving old video games. those people don't feel the need to offer the games for free.
Presumably it's cheaper than the legal way
For example, I belong to one. We preserved Sonic Xtreme. One condition of our ability to preserve the project is that the source code could never be publicly released. But it's preserved, it's in no danger of ever being lost again, multiple backups exist, no longer sitting on rotting harddrives.
Preservation is not putting ROMs on a public server for download. Preservation is taking steps to ensure that data won't be lost due to a single harddrive crash.
precisely. it's so disappointing seeing people equate what rom sites do with what people like you are doing.
$30 for unlimited games probably sounds sweet af if you don't know how to find them for free.
not much better if the money is going into the owner's pocket. I know a lot of torrent sites (etc.) are run by volunteers who take donations for hosting costs but feel it's taboo and legally dangerous (I should say, more legally dangerous) to personally profit from it.
These sites charge money to download ROMs? Lol who the fuck would pay a membership if you're going to pirate stuff? That's... wow. Yeah bring them down for playing stupid games lol.
Will you give it a rest? The thread wasn't about that until you decided to continuously reply to the same user again and again. "I see where the thread is going now", well, if you keep turning it in that direction, what would you expect?
Exactly, that's real preservation, not putting a Sonic 1 rom on a website and calling it preservation
Pirated material
Official Staff Communication
Just as a reminder: admitting to or discussing ways to pirate material is against ResetEra's terms of service. Any member doing such will be banned.
The same kind of people who call rom sites, "presevation," are the same kind of people who sent death threats for not releasing the Sonic Xtreme source code.
OP
OP
Probably about 95% of the $150,000 for each copyright infringement is paid to the lawyers.
This is the legalese way of saying "Suing them into literal oblivion."
pictures of my house, names of my family members, etc.
No love at all for the ROM scene
I'm that other user, neither or us are advocating for piracy or something.
If you can't handle people having a conversation in a discussion forum....
I won't lie, I'd really like to see the source code but it's not my choice to make and there's a lot of commercial games I'd like to see the code but it doesn't mean that I get to see it too.
I'm very sorry you had to deal with that.
Also you did a great job of trying to save that code, I wish I did anything for that.
That is disgusting.
I really don't see rom sites as pro preservation. I view personal rom libraries that groups perhaps put together as a way of preservation but leaving it out there for anyone to just dip seems more like piracy to me.
That's not the only point. Often it's also the only or most convenient way to get the thing you want, like if you want to play Switch or 3DS games on your PC, or if you want to be able to cheat or copy save files, etc
Game of Thrones in its early years wasn't so heavily pirated JUST because people wanted it for free, but because they didn't offer any reasnable alternative for people who didn't subscribe to cable TV
Yup they are asking for something like this with something like that. Stupid.
But what good is preservation if the public can never see it? Like yeah it's sitting in a basement safe somewhere but its as good as lost to us if its not accessible.
Hence why rom sites are a necessary evil. Yeah it sucks people use it to download Super Mario Bros but at least Little Samson and for a time Earthbound was accessible to the public outside of insane collectors.
Art is meaningless without people to appreciate it. You should always pay artists for their work if you can but sometimes we can't.