Nintendo Gets Huge Settlement Against ROM Site Probably Just To Scare Other ROM Sites

from the make-believe dept

A couple of years ago, we first discussed how Nintendo, long-time maximalists on intellectual property concerns, decided to open up a new front against ROM sites. What at first looked like it might be something of a surgical strike mission-creeped this past summer into a full war on ROM sites generally, with Nintendo using a buckshot lawsuit approach. Many sites simply voluntarily shut down, sweeping away decades of video game history to be once again locked up by Nintendo, while others stared down the company's legal guns. All this, of course, as Nintendo was showing how silly this all is given the insane performance of its Nintendo retro consoles.

Well, it looks like the output of this effort is going to be Nintendo playing games with at least one of these suits, getting a settlement that nobody thinks it's actually going to pursue in full just to have a multi-million dollar number to threaten other sites with. The husband and wife operators of LoveROMS.com have agreed to a $12 million settlement they can't pay, and likely won't have to, to have Nintendo call off its dogs.

Today we can report that both sides have indeed reached a deal. They agreed to a consent judgment and a permanent injunction that will resolve all outstanding disputes. Paperwork obtained by TorrentFreak shows that Mathias and his wife admit that their involvement with the websites constituted direct and indirect copyright and trademark infringement, which caused Nintendo irreparable injury.

However, on paper, the married couple won’t be getting off cheaply. On the contrary, they actually agreed to a judgment that exceeds $12 million.

“Plaintiff is hereby awarded judgment against all Defendants, jointly and severally, in the amount of $12,230,000,” the proposed language reads.

To be clear, nobody is saying the settlement is invalid or anything like that. In this case, the couple has admitted to infringing Nintendo's copyright rights, has agreed to hand over any emulators and ROMs it has, and has agreed to the amount in question. On paper at least. But that agreement likely comes with the understanding that after this is all inked with signatures and the blessing of the court, a separate deal will be worked out for the payment of an entirely different amount.

We can only speculate but it’s possible that Nintendo negotiated such a high number, on paper, to act as a deterrent for other site operators. In practice, the defendants could end up paying much less.

It wouldn’t be the first time that a judgment in court is more than what the parties agreed to privately. This happened before in the MPAA’s lawsuit against Hotfile, where a $80 million judgment in court translated to $4 million behind the scenes settlement.

In other words, Nintendo pushed for a settlement amount it wouldn't have gotten at trial not as an act of justice, but to use as a bludgeon against other ROM sites. It will be used either as a way to force voluntary shutdown of those sites, or as a template for settlement demands in the future. Either way, it makes a game out of the legal system, rather than trying to get to a just result.

And it has to be pointed out again that this is all happening as Nintendo competes with these sites perfectly well with its very cool retro consoles. Because control is what matters.

Filed Under: copyright, emulators, roms, video games
Companies: nintendo

And Now Comes The Pushback As One ROMs Site Is Challenging Nintendo's Takedown Of ROM Sites

from the rom-com dept

Over the past few weeks, we've discussed Nintendo's tortured relationship with fans of its retro offerings. As a starting point, after years of pretty much ignoring the demand for retro games offered for earlier versions of its consoles, Nintendo finally produced an offering for retro consoles loaded with some but not all of the games from the eight and sixteen bit eras. Before this official offering, Nintendo's ignoring the market had for years produced a wide range of websites that allowed gamers to engage in their nostalgia by playing old games no longer available via emulators and ROMs of those games. Nintendo's retro consoles successfully competed with these free games by producing a great product. Despite that success, Nintendo has since gone on a campaign against some of the highest profile ROM sites out there, suing some and allowing that lawsuit to serve as enough of a threat to simply get other sites to voluntarily take Nintendo ROMs down. These sites, which had essentially served to compile and record video game history that Nintendo refused to do itself, suddenly began disappearing.

There was always going to be some kind of a backlash to this. And, now, one site is signaling that its ready to fight Nintendo, going so far as to taunt the company with a forthcoming offering for retro game ROMs.

While these decisions are understandable, not everyone is equally impressed by the show of legal force. The niche pirate site ‘Good Old Downloads,’ for example, sees the ROMs controversy as a good opportunity to expand its catalog. With retro games.

The new section is “coming soon” according to the site’s homepage. While no further details are listed, it is now linked to a Tweet which makes it rather clear what motivated ‘Good Old Downloads’ to add retro-titles. The tweet embeds a video showing recent press coverage of the Nintendo lawsuit and the related shutdowns. Towards the end, it shows a clip from “Age of Ultron” where Thanos’ face is replaced by the site’s logo.

“Fine, I’ll do it myself,” he says.

Now, let's be clear about a couple of things. First, Good Old Downloads is absolutely a site for pirating video games. It's unambiguous in that. Nothing in this post is to suggest that what the site is doing is legal, or even morally okay. It isn't. What should be clear is that the site's move comes as the we're still waiting for a settlement between Nintendo and the ROMs site and in the immediate wake of other sites taking their own ROMs down. In other words, this is the first but almost certainly not the last site to dig its heels in and challenge Nintendo's takedown efforts.

Which is ultimately the point of this post: Nintendo's focus on putting a genie back in the bottle when that will never happen is both futile and pointless. Pointless because Nintendo is already successfully competing with these ROM sites. And futile because these files are still available roughly everywhere on the internet.

That said, ROMs haven’t been particularly hard to find through traditional pirate sources. For example, shortly after Nintendo announced its lawsuit, one Demonoid user uploaded torrents featuring thousands of ROMs to the site, including tiles belonging to the Japanese game giant.

This isn't even whac-a-mole. It's more like trying to fill up the ocean with all the grains of sand on the beach. There's a great deal of work to be done to keep you busy, but you'll never achieve your goal. So why bother?

Filed Under: copyright, emulators, enforcement, roms, video games
Companies: good old downloads, nintendo

Nintendo Using Copyright To Erase Video Game History

from the wrong-lesson dept

Just recently, Tim Geigner wrote about how Nintendo's success with the relaunched Nintendo NES Classic showed how the company successfully competed with free, because there are plenty of NES emulators that can play ROMs for free. And yet, the NES Classic comes in a neat, easy to use package. And it's worth buying if only because it looks cool -- just like the original, but... tiny. I should know: I have one and it's great. And my wife can't stop playing Mario Bros. on it, though she keeps complaining about other games from her youth that are missing.

But, of course, this is Nintendo we're talking about, so it's been busy, busy, busy suing a bunch of ROM sites and scaring others into shutting down. The site EmuParadise shut down recently with the following as part of its farewell message after 18 years in operation:

It's not worth it for us to risk potentially disastrous consequences. I cannot in good conscience risk the futures of our team members who have contributed to the site through the years. We run EmuParadise for the love of retro games and for you to be able to revisit those good times. Unfortunately, it's not possible right now to do so in a way that makes everyone happy and keeps us out of trouble.

Motherboard has an excellent article pointing out that while Nintendo may be legally correct, the whole situation is ridiculous and offensive. And also counterproductive. Having emulators and game ROMs around is what has enabled many of these games to live on (there are even some rumors that Nintendo has used the ROMs itself). The Motherboard article has a number of different stories about how the whole thing is tragic, but one area where I think it's important culturally, is the historical aspect of it all:

"As a professor, I very frequently see students spinning their tires trying to solve problems that were already solved in 1985," Bennett Foddy, who teaches at New York University’s Game Center and is the developer of games like QWOP and Getting Over It, told me in an email. "And just as you would if you were teaching painting or music (or math), what you do as a teacher is you send them to the library to study the old classics, to see what they did right and wrong. That’s the only way we can make progress in the sciences, the humanities, or in the creative arts."

The problem is that even though NYU has a good collection of classic console hardware and games, it only covers a minuscule proportion of the total history of games. It doesn't include 8- and 16-bit computer games, which were distributed on magnetic media which has long since been corrupted. It doesn't include coin-operated games, which are prohibitively expensive for a library even today, and which are harder to access than ever now that arcades are practically gone. And, of course, most people who are getting into games don’t have access to NYU’s library at all.

"If I was teaching poetry, I could send a student to read nearly any poem written since the invention of the printing press, but in games my legal options limit me to, I would guess, less than 1 percent of the important games from history," Foddy said.

And while the article insists that Nintendo completely taking down these sites is perfectly within its purview as the copyright holder, I'm not convinced that's fully the case. They certainly have the right to get ROMs of games they hold the copyright on to be taken down, but killing the entire sites, even though they have plenty of non-Nintendo games feels like it's going too far.

And the problem here isn't necessarily Nintendo (though, it partially is). It's really a copyright problem. Any sane copyright policy would have allowed most of these games to enter the public domain by now. The games I played in 1984, which then spent decades completely abandoned, should be in the public domain for anyone to make them useful again. That's what's mostly happened informally, and as the Motherboard article notes, that's likely what has helped create this kind of interest in Nintendo's retro gaming platforms today:

Frank Cifaldi, the founder of the Video Game History Foundation, told me he believes that the popularity of these ROM sites is the only reason Nintendo is selling the Nintendo Super NES Classic Edition and old games on the Switch in the first place.

"I don't think the business I'm in exists without emulation," Cifaldi told me in a phone interview. "I think the video game community would have totally moved on if it wasn't for easy access to old games. I don't think the Nintendo's Virtual Console [the official portal to buy old Nintendo games on Wii U, Wii, and 3DS] would exist. It proved the market was there."

But rather than recognize that community and support them, Nintendo is suing and shutting them all down. And it's truly a shame. Basically, thanks to insanely long copyright, and oppressive copyright holders like Nintendo, we're seeing copyright being used to eat away at our history. I talked about this back when the Internet Archive started putting up historical software (including lots of games) that actually could be played in your browser. It's great that the Internet Archive is able to do this, but at this point, the Archive appears to be the only one able to do such work without the threat of a destructive copyright lawsuit.

I know that some will point out that Nintendo has this copyright and has every right to do what it wants, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't lament the actual way in which this is happening. Fans built the community around emulators and ROMs, and Nintendo abandoned them for decades. And now that the company feels it can cash in on the nostalgia that others helped build and cultivate... it's destroying those sites in the process. That seems like something copyright shouldn't enable.

Filed Under: competition, copyright, culture, games, nes, nes classic, roms
Companies: nintendo

You Can't Compete With Free Meets Its Ultimate Counterexample In The NES Classic

from the the-end dept

Of all the frustration-causing mantras of stupidity we here at Techdirt have combated over the years, none is quite as annoyingly wrong as: "You can't compete with free!" There are many reasons why it's so frustrating, but basic economics essentially shows that this is a loser's argument for an inability to compete. Given that there are many examples of competing with free, and the fact that the response to these counterfactuals is generally, "nuh uh, you doody head!" it's time that the myth of not being able to compete with free be put to rest. For years, we've highlighted folks pretty easily competing with free versions of their products, typically by either connecting with their fans in a way that causes them to want to buy the authentic version, or else competing by offering something free versions can't, be it convenience, authenticity, or included options for purchase. But what we've always needed to finally put this stupid mantra to rest is a completely pure counterexample showing that it is flatly, plainly, painfully not true.

Allow me to paint you a picture of the world as it exists today. You will recognize this world, because it is reality. It's a world in which for thirty years, video gaming has become a staple of our entertainment culture. Those of us that have reached middle age will tell you that gaming has essentially always been a part of our lives. We love it, and we particularly love going back to the olden days of gaming and re-enjoying the games we played in our youth. It's also a world in which emulators of early game systems are widely available, as are ROMs for the games we played long ago. We can get them literally any time we want, on everything from our personal computers, to our mobile devices, or on cheap computer systems that come fully stocked with these emulators and games. This is all insanely cheap or, more commonly, completely free.

And it's also a world in which Nintendo's NES Classic retro console was the best selling console for the month.

That’s the word from retail analyst NPD Group, which reports that “the NES Classic was June 2018's highest unit-selling hardware platform, while the PlayStation 4 led the market in dollar sales” for the period between June 3 and July 7.

The NES Classic, which costs $60 and emulates 30 games from Nintendo’s first home console, launched in November 2016 to mass shortages as Nintendo underestimated demand. Although the publisher announced that it was discontinuing the device, it later committed to bringing the NES Classic back to stores in 2018. Starting on June 29, the system returned. And then it beat up all the other consoles.

We talked about that shortage ourselves as an indication that the kind of convenience and retro-feel Nintendo could offer with its console competed well with the various free versions online. But even this writer read in shock that this NES Classic was outselling the current iteration of gaming consoles.

Let's put this plainly: if the "You can't compete with free!" mantra had even a shred of validity, then we could not live in this reality. It would be impossible. The NES Classic offering from Nintendo is actually in some ways inferior to the free options, given the smaller number of games it offers and its lack of portability and modability. But it offers something the free versions don't. It offers nostalgia in having a console. It offers having that NES Classic sitting in your entertainment center, serving as a conversation piece along with being a gaming console. It lets fans of Nintendo reward the company for serving them well. It offers legitimacy.

It competes with free and is apparently doing so in record numbers. Whenever someone shouts "You can't compete with free!" at you, it should henceforth be a simple matter of replying "But the NES Classic," and walking away. Because this is as good of an example of how dumb that mantra has always been as we could have hoped for.

Filed Under: compete, compete with free, copyright, free, nes, nes classic
Companies: nintendo

Microsoft And Nintendo Team Up To Troll Playstation In Ads For Not Giving Gamers What They Want

from the trolling-as-advertising dept

Buckle up, because this seemingly mildly interesting story has a ton of intersections on topics we typically talk about here at Techdirt. As a preface, you should recall that we firmly believe that content is advertising and advertising is content. By this we mean that every bit of content a producer makes serves to advertise that producer's wider content library and that advertisements, in order to be engaging, must be useful and/or entertaining every bit as much as more traditional content typically is. We've also talked a great deal about how content producers in the digital spaces must connect with their fanbases, treat them well, and provide them what they want, or risk backlash. Add to that, finally, that we think restrictive protectionism in the name of wider profits often achieves the opposite of that goal.

Which brings us to Microsoft and Nintendo somewhat suprisingly teaming up to push out a bunch of ads centered on the ability for users of either to crossplay games across both systems.

For those of you who cannot see the video embed, it's an ad put out by both Nintendo and Microsoft pointing out that gamers on both systems can crossplay with one another on some games, including the example shown in Minecraft. Frankly, it's quite jarring to see these combo-ads (there are more) put out by two rivals in the console space. If you weren't well-tuned to the video game industry, you'd probably be left wondering what the hell was going on here.

The answer is that these ads are rather entertaining trolling attacks targeting Sony's Playstation 4, which has been the subject of some recent backlash coming out of E3 over the platform's lockdown on its system's games. While there is pretty much no such thing as a Playstation user that does not want crossplay enabled, and there are many who want it very much, Sony has gone the protectionist route. This is an attempt to convince friends of friends to buy Playstations so that they can play together, I suppose, but it's stupid and awful.

Some of the world's biggest games, from Fortnite to Minecraft to Rocket League, all support some variety of crossplay, allowing people with PCs, Xbox Ones, mobiles and Nintendo consoles to play on the same servers. Yet Sony continues to refuse to allow PlayStation consoles to get in on the fun when it comes to playing with Microsoft or Nintendo consoles.

In the wake of E3 and the disappointment of Fortnite's account locking, then, two of the companies that do allow crossplay have teamed up to take a swing at the PlayStation 4 with this commercial for Minecraft, a game that's also available on PS4.

A couple of reactions. First, Sony made this shit-sandwich for itself by not giving its customers what they want for no other reason than protectionism, so it's not without fun to see them have to eat it up. Second, the combo-ads put out by Microsoft and Nintendo are both useful and, if you enjoy watching huge companies troll one another, fairly entertaining. And the companies have kept this up as a coordinated effort, rather than just limiting it to a one-off video ad.

And the Xbox Twitter account responded, of course, happily saying they're ready to build something together. While this might have flown right past many gamers, enough will realize that both companies are going out of their way to rub Sony's nose in crap to make this all a bit fun. Whether Sony will respond to the ribbing by finally unlocking its garden remains to be seen.

In the meantime, though, this is a great example of advertising as content.

Filed Under: advertising as content, content as advertising, crossplay, games, openness, ps4, sharing, trolling, xbox
Companies: microsofty, nintendo, sony

Mobile Now Makes Up Majority Of Gaming Sales And Nintendo's New President Wants To Get The Company On Board

from the choo-choo dept

With the advent of the smartphone, these mini-computers that most of us carry around in our pockets, it was only a matter of time before the mobile platform became a dominant player in the gaming business. That said, it will likely still surprise some folks to learn that this will be the year that mobile takes over gaming revenue, with a forecasted majority of all revenue being spent on mobile games.

Newzoo's 2018 Global Games Market Forecast now predicts that mobile games will make up a slim majority (51 percent) of all worldwide gaming revenue this year (including smartphones and tablets, but not dedicated gaming handhelds). That's up from 34 percent in 2015 and just 18 percent in 2012. Console and PC games will split the remainder of the pie relatively evenly in 2018, at 25 percent and 24 percent of worldwide spending, respectively.

The growth of the mobile market doesn't show any signs of stopping, either: by 2021, Newzoo estimates that 59 percent of all gaming spending will go to mobile platforms, with console and PC games dividing up the scraps.

It's been quite interesting to watch gamemakers themselves react to this brand new market over the past five or so years. Indie developers sprung up everywhere, taking advantage of the new platform for revenue, while established game studios and companies embraced mobile in a more mixed fashion. Some studios, such as Bethesda and Square, began dipping their toes in the water fairly early, only to ramp up releases of past and new titles fully optimized for a mobile experience. What should have been immediately apparent is how perfect mobile devices are for any gamemaker's back-catalog, where games that require less graphical power can be offered to satisfy a nostalgia movement that is essentially a market in and of itself.

Nintendo, on the other hand, balked at the mobile marketplace as recently as a few years ago. Nintendo has long favored a walled-garden approach to its games, exerting strict control over both game titles and the hardware that runs them. It was only in 2015, in fact, when Nintendo, then headed by company president Satoru Iwata, followed by Tatsumi Kimishima after Iwata's death, struck a partnership with a mobile developer to begin releasing Nintendo games for mobile. By any measure, the made Nintendo late to the party, with only a tepid public embrace of mobile gaming as a revenue generator.

Well, Nintendo has a new president now, and Shuntaro Furukawa is looking to get the company fully invested in mobile gaming.

Furukawa is taking over from Tatsumi Kimishima, who took the helm temporarily after the tragic and sudden death of the beloved Satoru Iwata in 2015. He’s only 46, and clearly as a member of the younger generation has a different outlook on mobile, which the company completely avoided until very recently.

“The idea that something will emerge that transforms into something big, in the same manner as game consoles, is the defining motive of the Nintendo business,” he told the Nikkei. “From what I can see, smartphone games are the ones I want to expand the most.”

He said he envisions the smartphone side of the game company to become a 100 billion yen business — short of a billion at the present exchange rate, but why not round up? The company did a trillion yen in sales last year, so it’s not like we’re going to run out of zeroes.

While we could spend time kicking at Nintendo for getting into this so late, the more interesting take on this is that it's a signal that mobile game revenue might actually be undervalued by forecasts. After all, if the market forces are so great so as to drag a company like Nintendo along for the ride, it seems likely that gaming on mobile devices is going to be the gaming market of the present, never mind the future.

Filed Under: gaming, mobile, mobile gaming
Companies: nintendo

FTC Calls Out Nintendo, Microsoft, And Sony For Their Illegal 'Warranty Void If Removed' Stickers

from the STICKER-ILLEGAL-IF-DEPLOYED dept

Early last month, the FTC took a small step towards enforcing a decades-old law. The 1975 Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act forbade manufacturers from placing repair restrictions on electronic devices costing over $5. This means the little stickers claiming "warranty void if removed" are not just bullshit. They're also illegal.

Forty years of "void if removed" stickers being plastered on tons of consumer electronics means the law has done little to prevent manufacturers from placing repair restrictions on consumers. The language is so ubiquitous consumers assume tinkering with their purchased products will instantly void warranties. Many also believe taking their electronics to anyone but the manufacturer (or manufacturer-approved repair shops) for service will similarly remove warranty protections.

The fact is that the burden rests on manufacturers to prove any tinkering or third-party repair voided the warranty's coverage. Of course, given the number of restrictions and exceptions contained in electronic device fine print, chances are doing anything to anything is probably gives manufacturers the "evidence" they need to duck out of warranty obligations.

The press release by the FTC did not name the six manufacturers targeted by these cease-and-desist letters. Motherboard has now unmasked these lawbreakers, thanks to an FOIA request. And they're pretty much exactly who you think they are.

Motherboard has obtained copies of the letters via a Freedom of Information Act request and has learned the names of the six companies that were warned. They are Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Hyundai, HTC, and computer hardware manufacturer ASUS.

The letters were sent by Lois Greisman, the FTC’s associate director of marketing practices, on April 9; the FTC has given each company 30 days to change its official warranty policies and says that it may take legal action against the companies.

Conspicuously missing from this list is Apple, which is perhaps the most overbearing in its insistence that anything not specifically performed by Apple techs voids warranties. Apple has taken steps over the years to prevent owners from attempting their own repairs or seeking assistance from third party repair services. It has aggressively fought "right to repair" legislation and sued people for offering non-Apple approved modifications.

Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are the most obvious violators in this list. Every gaming console since the inception of gaming consoles has featured "void if removed" stickers. And every gaming console was put on the market several years after the law was passed.

As Motherboard's Matthew Gault points out, the letters [PDF] are mostly boilerplate. The only differences are callouts of manufacturer-specific language that violates the 1975 law. But they do show the FTC may finally -- years after the fact -- do something about bogus warranty restrictions.

This letter places you on notice that violations of the Warranty and FTC Acts may result in legal action. FTC investigators have copied and preserved the online pages in question, and we plan to review your company's written warranty and promotional materials after 30 days. You should review the Warranty and FTC Act and if necessary, revise your practices to comply with the Acts' requirements. By sending this letter, we do not waive the FTC's right to take law enforcement action and seek appropriate injunctive and monetary remedies against [manufacturer name] based on past or future violations.

Maybe these stickers will finally disappear, if nothing else. The law has only been used to punish a manufacturer once in its 40-year existence. Perhaps another FTC announcement -- hopefully containing some sort of enforcement action -- will come our way later this month after the agency completes its 30-day review.

Filed Under: anti-competitive, freedom to tinker, ftc, void if removed, warranty
Companies: microsoft, nintendo, sony

Nintendo Nixes Live Streams For Its Own Creators Program For Some Reason

from the nintendon't dept

In 2014, following nearly a full year of waging an intellectual property war on YouTubers doing "let's play" videos with its games, Nintendo unleashed upon the world what would eventually become its "Creators Program". Through the program, YouTubers would be allowed to put videos including Nintendo IP on their channels in exchange for revenue sharing between the creator and Nintendo itself. For a company like Nintendo, which had built a reputation for exerting strict control in this arena, it felt like a huge step forward. It took only a few months before the whole thing began devolving into a bureaucratic mess, with: language in the affiliate agreement clearly geared towards garnering positive coverage from YouTubers; a mishandling of the influx of interest in the program by creators themselves; and a strange whitelist and blacklist of what games could be covered, which hurt channels with extensive back catalogs of content that might need to be deleted. Some high profile YouTubers swore off covering Nintendo games in revolt, while everyone else was left wondering why this had to be handled so badly.

It doesn't seem to be getting any better. For some reason, in the past few days, Nintendo suddenly nixed live-streams from channels affiliated with the Creators Program.

As of today, YouTubers who are also registered members of the Nintendo Creators Program are no longer allowed to broadcast content on YouTube Live. Nintendo gives partners two options: they can broadcast content on YouTube Live from a channel that isn't registered to the program, or they can cancel their channel's registration to the program, and instead register their videos to the program separately. The changes were announced in an email sent to content creators yesterday evening, although Nintendo didn't officially publish the changes to the program until today.

Some Twitter users have posted the contents of the email, which announces that changes have been made as to how the Nintendo Creators Program will handle revenue generated from live streams. It adds that live streaming falls “outside the scope” of the program.

If that sounds like a confusing mess to you, you aren't alone. YouTubers themselves, who actually have to navigate these waters as professionals, have expressed reactions ranging from outrage to disappointment to downright confusion. Some are calling the move stupid. Others are pointing out that any random person not in the Creators Program is able to live-stream Nintendo games, yet officially sanctioned creators cannot. Most reactions amount to pointing out that this doesn't make any sense. Even those covering the story, such as Kotaku, seem to be at a complete loss.

It's uncertain as to why Nintendo introduced this policy. It's also unclear if Nintendo has similar rules for those live streaming Nintendo-copyrighted content on other sites such as Twitch. Representatives for Nintendo did not respond by press time.

When the two chief reactions to a policy shift from those affected by it amount to anger and confusion as to why the shift was even necessary, that's not a good look. With Nintendo staring blankly at requests for clarification from the press, both YouTubers and the public are left to speculate as they please. Though it seems most are content to rage at Nintendo for this decision.

Filed Under: let's play, permission, video games, video streams
Companies: nintendo

If 'Everyone Just Wants Free Stuff' Is Responsible For Piracy, Why Can't Nintendo Keep Its Classic Consoles In Stock?

from the goomba-stomp dept

For a long time, we've been trying to debunk the "But people just want stuff for free" myth that purports to explain why the only proper strategy for infringement is heavy enforcement. Everyone should have instantly recognized that this was a dumb meme put forth by the content industries, so simple was the offered explanation for what is a vastly complex issue. Still, the meme persists, even in the face of contrary evidence.

Evidence such as the fact that Nintendo has had trouble keeping its classic consoles in stock to meet consumer demand. Earlier this year, Nintendo hit the brakes on manufacturing the classic NES mini console after selling over two million of them. The result on the secondary market was immediate. Prices for the retro console skyrocketed, with people desperately searching for one. The interest from the public was high enough that, as Nintendo is set to release the SNES mini console as a follow up, the company is going out of its way to assure the public that it is making enough of them to meet demands.

Earlier today, Nintendo announced that it will launch the SNES Classic on Sept. 29 for $79.99. The system will come preloaded with 21 games, and the package will include two SNES Classic Controllers. That’s all well and good, but considering that Nintendo vastly underestimated demand for the NES Classic last year, the question on everyone’s minds right now is this: Will the SNES Classic be just as impossible to find as its 8-bit predecessor was?

“We aren’t providing specific numbers, but we will produce significantly more units of Super NES Classic Edition than we did of NES Classic Edition,” Nintendo said in a statement to Polygon.

So, I have a question: doesn't pretty much everyone who can afford these retro consoles also have a computer and smart phone capable of running emulators? And can't pretty much everyone fairly easily find these same games coming preloaded on these mini systems for free on the internet? The answer to both questions is "yes", except that Nintendo is still having to go out of its way to assure it will meet the paying customer's demand for these retro consoles. Why?

Well, the answer can't be "because everyone just wants free stuff", or there would be zero customer demand and everyone would be emulating. The actual answer is more likely that most people don't simply want everything for free and are happy to pay for something they want when its available. Add to that the nostalgia of actually having a familiar console from the good 'ol days connected to their TV and it's easy to see where all these sales are coming from, particularly when Nintendo's price points on the consoles and the bundles they come with are fairly good. It's worth specifically noting that these consoles come loaded with 20 or so classic games, while the internet comes bundled with all the games for free. Again, you cannot simply say that everyone just wants everything for free.

Leave it to Nintendo of all companies to finally put this one to rest.

Filed Under: classic consoles, emulators, free, piracy, snes
Companies: nintendo

Nintendo Ended Up Creating A Competitor After DMCAing Fan-Game It Decided It Didn't Want To Make Itself

from the real-nice-guys dept

In the wake of the success of Nintendo's Mario Maker game, Nintendo fans almost immediately began clamoring for similar versions of other classic Nintendo properties. The obvious choice for the next franchise to get the treatment was the Zelda series, of course. The desire for a Zelda Maker title reached enough of a pitch that Game Informer asked Nintendo reps in 2015 about whether the company would be producing such a game.

If Super Mario Maker is a success, will it open the door for a comparable Zelda Maker?

Zelda Maker might be a challenge to make I think. Personally, making Super Mario Maker that was a challenge in itself, and we hope that it's a success, so thank you for saying that, but I think that might be a difficult task.

In other words, Zelda Maker would be too difficult to make, no matter the desires of Nintendo fans. Those comments, by the way, are from a producer and director of Mario Maker.

So, fine, Nintendo doesn't want to tackle the task of creating a game that its fans are screaming for. But this herculean task didn't pass by without someone taking it on. Justin Sink, who created games as a hobby, decided to give it a go.

So in 2015, Sink got to work within Game Maker to craft a design suite that anybody could use to make a Zelda game. Just like Mario Maker, you could place elements such as enemies and landscape sprites anywhere on the digital canvas. Sink released an early version of the tool as “Zelda Maker” online, Link included, and the game blew up. People wanted to play something like Zelda Maker, they loved the idea of it.

Because we're talking about Nintendo here, you already know where this is going next. The company sent DMCA notices for all of the videos showing off Sink's creation in action. Then it sent a DMCA notice to MediaFire, which Sink used to make his fan-made game available to the public. That was back in 2015. Nintendo likely thought that the assassination of a game it didn't want to make had been completed.

Not so much, as it turns out.

But Zelda Maker did not die in 2015, not entirely. Instead of shuttering the entire project, Sink decided to rebrand and expand on it to make it his own—that was the plan all along, he claimed. He set out to create his own engine suited for the purposes of easy level design, even if it meant scrapping some of the work he had already done. Beyond the expanded functionality, Sink also had to come up with a new aesthetic for the game that, while still inspired by Zelda, couldn’t be mistaken for it.

Despite those troubles, “Zelda Maker” was eventually reborn as “Legend Maker,” but that, in of itself, was not the product Sink wanted share with the world. Instead, Sink used Legend Maker to create a game of his own, Runiya, an action-RPG.

Sink has set up a Patreon page where people can support his efforts. Runiya comes packaged with Legend Maker, which pretty much everyone knows is actually Zelda Maker slightly modified. In other words, what started off as a single fan and hobbyist looking to prove to fans and Nintendo alike that a Zelda Maker game could indeed be made has now morphed into a competitor for Nintendo. Legend Maker isn't going to run afoul of the intellectual property of Nintendo any longer, yet it still exists, and Sink is now collecting money for his efforts. Meanwhile, if Nintendo does want to try giving Zelda Maker a go, someone basically already was first to market with that kind of product. The company didn't listen to its fans, so another fan did. And the bullying didn't really stop the project, it just made sure that the project -- that, again, Nintendo didn't want to do itself -- no longer gets the brand recognition of having Zelda attached to it.

Nintendo has long been amongst the masters at pissing off its fans, but turning them into competitors is a bold new step for the company.

Filed Under: competition, copyright, dmca, legend maker, mario maker, runiya, zelda maker
Companies: nintendo