Nintendo wins 4.8 million Euro piracy battle

[compl3x]

Nintendo is out to get the pirates in every country, even France. The Paris Court of Appeals issued guilty verdicts on 26th September against several companies for the sale of devices like the R4 and the Magicom. Electronic Theater says that the Court has imposed over 460,000 Euro in criminal fines, damages payable to Nintendo in excess of 4.8 million Euros and, in some instances, ordered suspended prison terms. Woah.

Raids, kicked off back in 2007 and 2008, found several thousand game copiers all over Paris. With this verdict, some of the biggest importers/distributors have been shut down.

"Nintendo supported this criminal action not only for the company's sake, but for the interests of its game developer partners who spend time and money legitimately developing software for Nintendo's game platforms, and customers who expect the highest standards and integrity from products bearing the Nintendo name," said Stephan Bole, Managing Director of Nintendo France.

Nintendo will need to continue this effort with the 3DS, I suspect.

http://www.destructoid.com/nintendo-wins-4-8-million-euro-piracy-battle-212863.phtml

[Solid Knight]

This is terrible, how are consumers going to circumvent paying the right parties now?

[Shiranui]

This may be Nintendo's only revenue stream from now on.

[Glassed Silver]

I know I'm gonna face much flaming for this, but flash cards are good for way more than piracy.

Now I get the issue with the commercial pirating and issuing of copies, however I still stand by my words that flash cards and the like should be/stay legal.

WTF...

Glassed Silver:mac

[The Teej]

I know I'm gonna face much flaming for this, but flash cards are good for way more than piracy.

Now I get the issue with the commercial pirating and issuing of copies, however I still stand by my words that flash cards and the like should be/stay legal.

WTF...

Glassed Silver:mac

As an owner of a flashcard used only for homebrew (both others and my own, a fair few years ago), I totally agree. However, the main problem is that the incredibly large use of FCs is for piracy and piracy alone - and it was getting to the point where people were casually going into stores and asking about them as they had no real idea about that ramifications of such piracy. That's quite a scary thing - FCs were usually an underground thing and your average joe either didn't know about it, or knew exactly where to look - with the DS, I'd say in terms of rampant piracy it was only second to the Dreamcast and the PSP. So, I don't blame them for taking action really, even if it does mean the death of homebrew.

T

[argonite]

I know I'm gonna face much flaming for this, but flash cards are good for way more than piracy.

Now I get the issue with the commercial pirating and issuing of copies, however I still stand by my words that flash cards and the like should be/stay legal.

WTF...

Glassed Silver:mac

The problem is, and I've heard this from many people, "I wouldn't buy a DS if I couldn't load games on a flash card onto it."

Yeah, easy piracy is now a selling point. Nintendo would be happy with this because of hardware sales, if they weren't also a publisher of those same games.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Nintendo could also make their systems region free...

[Blackhearted]

Nintendo could also make their systems region free...

That wouldn't make any difference in the piracy issue. As the DS was region free and piracy was still rampant.

Also, to the vast majority of people, region locking is a complete non-issue.

[Gotenks98]

Well they have just screwed themselves over on hardware sales. All pirates will do now is run the game from an emulator of some sort on the pc or the wii. At least they were getting the hardware sales now they get nothing.

[Glassed Silver]

That wouldn't make any difference in the piracy issue. As the DS was region free and piracy was still rampant.

Also, to the vast majority of people, region locking is a complete non-issue.

That argument is flawed.

If you always just look for what the majority wants, you won't please a lot of people.

EVERYONE has different needs for a console, so if you look at the majority, it's not like ONE person with ONE concept on all matters.

Majority is a per-question differing group of people.

Cram in more features/possibilities that those who don't care can ignore, but those who do, get them.

This way, you will actually start pleasing people.

Region-free-ing doesn't even cost money.

Glassed Silver:mac

[compl3x]

Portable devices should always be region free. They are portable! It's very likely people will want to take them into different region. Making something portable and then locking it to a specific region seems to me to be incredibly stupid.

[c3ntury]

As an owner of a flashcard used only for homebrew (both others and my own, a fair few years ago), I totally agree. However, the main problem is that the incredibly large use of FCs is for piracy and piracy alone - and it was getting to the point where people were casually going into stores and asking about them as they had no real idea about that ramifications of such piracy. That's quite a scary thing - FCs were usually an underground thing and your average joe either didn't know about it, or knew exactly where to look - with the DS, I'd say in terms of rampant piracy it was only second to the Dreamcast and the PSP. So, I don't blame them for taking action really, even if it does mean the death of homebrew.

T

I have to agree.

Yes, homebrew is possible on a NDS, yes, it has been done before. But if you compare it to the use of a flashcart for piracy? You'll fine it's 90% of the latter, and merely 10% of the former.

It's perfectly acceptable that Nintendo did this, and it makes perfect sense.

[Dotdot]

Good show Ninty!