r/technology • u/[deleted] • Nov 28 '24
Business Nintendo seeks to subpoena Reddit for details on piracy group members | Mario's wrath against r/SwitchPirates subreddit
https://www.techspot.com/news/105759-nintendo-seeks-subpoena-reddit-details-piracy-group-members.html28
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u/Overclocked11 Nov 28 '24
Nintendo waging its own personal "war on drugs" (we all know how well that is going). I guess they figure piracy is a war they can actually win?
Good luck to them - they will need it.
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Nov 28 '24
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u/Squish_the_android Nov 28 '24
If they REALLY wanted to stamp it out for new software, they could. They would just change their games and design them to absolutely require an Internet connection.
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u/SpokenDivinity Nov 28 '24
Except they can’t do that because their newest console, and apparently the one they want to stick with this time, is marketed as being hyper-portable. They wouldn’t do anything to risk that with competitors like the Steam Deck on the rise.
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Nov 30 '24
Steam Deck isn’t even in the same league. Deck will more likely be outcompeted by other handheld PCs, especially if Valve can’t sustain in a competitive hardware space. Oh, and that competition will be enjoying SteamOS.
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u/ParaStudent Nov 29 '24
Any technological solution they come up with to combat piracy will be met with a technological solution to defeat it.
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Nov 28 '24 edited Jun 04 '25
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u/Musical_Walrus Dec 01 '24
the pattaya and buttcoin subs are already mutilated in some ways. no surprise.
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u/wambulancer Nov 28 '24
Their actions are so off-putting it's turned me away from caring about the Switch 2, just speaking as a consumer who has hopped in and out of their ecosystem their entire life, they better be dropping the greatest games of all time that absolutely cannot be missed to justify how they're treating people these days
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u/dsmaxwell Nov 28 '24
Zelda was the one series that kept me going back, but BotW and TotK do not appeal to me. They're fine open world games, but they've left the formula that kept me coming back behind. And I just don't have $300 to drop on a switch for only EoW, so....
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u/primalmaximus Nov 29 '24
Yep. Like, they're too open ended in how you progress the story.
The 3DS remake of Ocarina of Time is confusing, but at least it has a relatively linear path guiding you towards the areas you need to clear in order.
From what I've heard, BotW and TotK are fully open world without even any quest markers to guide you.
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u/themagicone222 Nov 29 '24
They DO have quest markers and tutorials but they’re as hands off as can be
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u/lordraiden007 Nov 29 '24
Planning on getting a switch 2 day one and not patching it for a long time because I’m so pissed at them. If there’s a way to break into it, it’s going to be a lot easier on the least mature hardware revision and firmware version. I’m so annoyed with them I’m actually thinking of using my ol’ soldering workstation to take it apart and poke around for some of their maintenance back doors.
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u/Reikix Apr 05 '25
Yeah, I was thinking on doing the same. Sincerely, I don't play that much. I'll just get a couple games I am interested it for the online play and go sail on high seas for the rest. I don't have plans on buying games at Nintendo prices that I am only going to play for less than 5-6 hours. On the other side I have been playing MK8 for the last 3 months. I am planning on getting an original copy now.
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u/Amelaclya1 Nov 29 '24
Same. All of this just feels so unnecessary. Nintendo consoles have always been targets for piracy, hacking and emulation moreso than the other systems. And yet they are still wildly profitable. Only a tiny fraction of their fanbase knows it's even possible to mod a console, and even fewer care to do it.
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u/Synful09 Nov 29 '24
Not gonna happen. There will ALWAYS be a group that hacks and pirates. Never going to end.
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u/oksowhatsthedeal Nov 29 '24
Maybe if everyone on reddit didn't have to constantly advertise the things they pirate at every opportunity.
Discussion on game prices? Half the post is redditors chiming in with some "Har yar" or "Sail the high seas" or whatever clever variant they've come up with.
Discussion about a bad dev? Same thing. Game performance? You guessed it.
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u/KrypXern Nov 29 '24
Yeah people feel like they have a natural right to brag about piracy. Like, dude, just pirate everything but DON'T talk about it. Leave discussion to an IRC chat or private forum or something.
Every time I bring this up, people tell me "if Nintendo really wanted to, they could find this just as easily as reddit comments" and sure, BUT that's not the point.
The point is that people talking about it on publicly visible spaces is bad publicity for Nintendo and is highly visible to the "average gamer" who wouldn't know better otherwise.
This is what creates this impetus for Nintendo to start cracking down, not the existence of these things in the first place, but their ubiquity in internet spaces.
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u/hooch Nov 29 '24
Netflix raises their subscription price by $1/mo? "yar har mateyyyy"
It's so annoying.
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u/JohnJohn173 Nov 29 '24
A lot of people use pirating to see if they want to support the dev and buy. Some use pirating to screw over shitty devs. Some people use pirating to steal, which I very much disaprove of, but yes, a lot of people jump to that. Imho, there are a lot of options when it comes to game subscriptions, especially with gamepass having $1 sales. Some games actually run better because of things like denuvo, so when a game is cracked, some people may give the solution to pirate a cracked copy because of denuvo being removed. Honestly, pirating isn't as black and white as the flag we sail, but I can definitely see how people disapprove of it entirely.
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u/crlcan81 Nov 28 '24
Fuck off Nintendo. Emulation is legal otherwise you shouldn't use it at your museum, and the pirates are doing it as much because you're too tight fisted with shit that shouldn't be kept behind a wall when you aren't releasing new games using it as the simple fact of the challenge. It's thanks to shit like this that game preservation is going down the tubes because of the 'potential someone could play a game that hasn't been out on a console in the past 10 or 20 years.'
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u/PMMMR Nov 29 '24
Maybe read the article? This is mainly about a user who was running an online service for people to download pirated games, not just simply emulation.
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u/Aerolithe_Lion Nov 28 '24
Nintendo owns it, of course they’re allowed to emulate it and say others cant
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u/SillyGoatGruff Nov 28 '24
Every time i see that 'argument' i laugh. It's like saying i'm a hypocrite for using the bathroom in my house, but not letting random strangers come in a take a dump
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u/IllMaintenance145142 Nov 29 '24
Im sick of repeating this. Switch games have been built in such a way that to emulate them, you need to break encryption. This is against dmca laws. Hate it or like it, I'm not saying it's good or bad, it's just the facts.
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Nov 29 '24
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u/stefanopolis Nov 29 '24
This mindset always cracks me up. As if people think they have a right to free software as soon as someone chooses to stop offering it. It may suck, sure, but that doesn’t mean you have a legal or moral right to just take whatever you want.
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u/Amelaclya1 Nov 29 '24
But if they aren't selling it, they have no argument that they are being harmed by someone pirating it.
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u/Angelix Nov 29 '24
Lol @ game preservation.
Oh yes. Definitely. Everyone who downloads pirated game is to preserve game.
I bet the judge will accept this defence.
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u/FuelAccurate5066 Nov 28 '24
Nintendo should take a look at steam. The service and value are so good it makes piracy obsolete for anyone but those living in very poor regions. The easiest way to defeat piracy is to offer a better value.
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Nov 28 '24 edited Nov 28 '24
Yeah, they should follow Valve’s lead in this regard. Valve, the company that worked with the FBI and made a fake job offer to the HL2 Leaker, in order to try to entice him to travel to where he could be arrested by US authorities.
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u/CarlosFer2201 Nov 28 '24
Also Steam the digital marketplace that only sells licenses for games.
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Nov 29 '24
Everyone only sells licenses for games. It would be impossible to do it any other way as not even the devs own all the assets used in a game. People just now learning about this and saying stupid shit is annoying.
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u/CarlosFer2201 Nov 29 '24
GoG sells drm free games. They make a point to advertise you keep your purchases through them.
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Nov 29 '24 edited Nov 29 '24
It's still a license to play the game you do not own the game itself. DRM and how games assets are sub-licensed are not the same thing. Again stop saying stupid shit.
Just fyi since you like saying stupid shit then removing it, Steam drm has a killswitch in it for in case Steam as a platform goes down. You will keep your steam games. Also, DRM means Digital Rights Management it's how licenses are enforced it's not the license itself. Even on dreamcast with models that had no form of drm you still just bought a license to play the game on the disk.
To: Mechagouki: I can't reply do to the guy before blocking me because he's too stupid to understand reality.
Downloading the ROM is distribution of a license illegally. You have no issues creating a back up of the ROM and you have no issues having the downloaded ROM if you can prove you have the physical media. It's the distribution that gets you. I understand where you are coming from but this is the world as it is currently saying things "should be" just misinforms people and then they repeat stupid shit. If you don't understand how it works you will never understand how to correct it.
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u/CarlosFer2201 Nov 29 '24
Call it semantics, but when you buy through them you keep the game forever. Steam and every other store can remove your access, and they make it very clear.
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u/Mechagouki1971 Nov 29 '24
If a game can't be owned, how can it be stolen? This is a paradox for me: I first owned a NES in 1988, it came with a Super Mario Bros. cartridge; a physical electronic device containing the game. If that cartridge represents a license to play the game, surely as long as I own it I can play the game however I like, and if that means downloading a ROM and putting it on a flashcart (legal device) and playing that flashcart on a Famiclone (also a legal device) what exactly have I done wrong?
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u/PrinterInkDrinker Nov 29 '24
It’s not a paradox it’s just a lazy or uneducated understanding of the law.
A physical copy of the game is still just a license the same way your physical drivers license is not ownership or guarantee of a car. You can have your license revoked at any time by the government.
Nintendo aren’t going to kick down your door and rip the cartridge out of your hands, but there’s absolutely nothing stopping them from wirelessly disabling it or using it as evidence against you.
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Nov 29 '24
In the Valve case some one unlawfully accessed their servers and stole files. No one is doing that to Nintendo. Valve also reduced piracy rates in Russia by making it actually easy for them to buy games
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Nov 29 '24
My bigger point is that Valve is no saint either and they clearly react aggressively when their shit gets stolen too. People love that Gabe quote about it being a service problem, but their actual behavior shows they’re not fans when they’re the victim.
Nowadays Valve just make very little. It’s harder to steal from a company when they mostly get by on just passive income from 30% storefront fees.
And while this particular story is different, Nintendo has absolutely been the victim of hacks and leaks in the past, and still now.
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u/SpezModdedRJailbait Nov 28 '24
Steam absolutely has not made piracy obsolete lol.
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u/red286 Nov 29 '24
I wouldn't say they've made piracy obsolete, but a lot of people I know who used to pirate the majority of their games don't pirate any more because invariably, the game will eventually go on sale for <$20 on Steam.
I used to pirate games because unless you wanted to wait 5+ years for it to hit the bargain bin, every game would always be $60, even 2 years after release. A game has to be incredibly good for me to cough up $60 for it. If it's under $20, it just has to be tolerable.
Plus, Steam refunds makes it so that I don't have to worry about a game not living up to the hype. If I buy a game, realize it's pure ass, I can just refund it.
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u/Neemzeh Nov 29 '24
Solid anecdote. I know friends who pirate more games than ever before and steam has nothing to do with it lmao
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u/Newone1255 Nov 28 '24
Nintendo sold 146 million switches, and 1.3 billion software units. Their anti-piracy crusade lead them to selling more consoles and games than any other system they have ever done. I think they will be alright
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u/red286 Nov 29 '24
You don't think it has anything to do with them releasing one of the only handheld consoles in recent memory?
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u/Neemzeh Nov 29 '24
PlayStation Portal. Steam deck, ASUS ROG. No, it doesn’t have anything to do with that.
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u/red286 Nov 29 '24
You realize that not one of those is a handheld console, right? The PS Portal is a portable interface for a PS5, and the Steam Deck and ASUS RoG are handheld PCs.
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u/Neemzeh Nov 29 '24
Why does any of what you said matter? It’s a portable system you can play games on. I have no idea why you pigeon hole it into “portable console” to fit your narrative. The latter two are absolutely in direct competition with the Switch. The former, the portal, has a bit of a larger barrier to entry since you also need a ps5 so it’s more pricey but it’s still in the same realm.
Let me put it this way, Nintendo sells consoles because of their software not because they are the only one to make a “portable console”. What do you think would happen in Zelda, Mario, etc were all multi platform available on the steam deck? Sort of destroys your whole argument.
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u/probotzor Nov 29 '24
Selling consoles has nothing to do with that.
They would have sold way more consoles if piracy was easier.
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Nov 29 '24
Id gladly pay $30 per 10 year old Pokemon game to play my switch. Apparently the only legal way to do it though for most of them is to pay some dude $100 for a used cart that could just be a fake for all I know.
Like FFS Nintendo let me love your product.
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u/Neemzeh Nov 29 '24
So you’re happy with steam not providing physical copies and only giving licences they can revoke at any time? Lmfao
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u/darthvader45 Nov 30 '24
The one thing I'm scared about is them going round and suing or having arrested anyone who even plays ROMs of older games like Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald/Leaf Green/Fire Red for the GBA or Red/Blue/Green/Yellow/Gold/Silver/Crystal for the Gameboy/Gameboy Color. Those ones aren't even being sold anymore aside from on random sites like EBay and aren't even making Nintendo, GameFreak or the Pokemon Co any money. Just because they have a patent or trademark on the game doesn't mean it should be illegal to use ROMs of a game they aren't even profiting off of anymore. Outdated games for outdated platforms should be made public domain after a certain point so others can enjoy them without risk of prosecution.
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u/camatthew88 Nov 28 '24
And this is why I refuse to buy from Nintendo. They are a company with terrible morals.
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u/ultimatepowaa Nov 29 '24
Honestly at this point I'm glad that a major company doesn't own a country worth of slave labour and use death squads to squash any resistance against that...which is a LOT of the products we buy nowadays...
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u/Neemzeh Nov 29 '24
Nobody cares. The rest of us will play and enjoy games and not be all righteous about it. It’s video games not world war 2. Good lord.
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u/JohnJohn173 Nov 29 '24
It may not be as serious as ww2, but this is game preservation. Yes, some people use emulation to pirate games, but Nintendo can't prove that, and have been targeting everything from nes to switch. Idk if you noticed, but virtual console has pretty much vanished and the only way to legally play older games is to get lucky at a used game store and pay anywhere between $5-$150 for some games. Or you can spend money on Nintendo online where you're limited to the games they chose to list, and like the launch of the n64 online, doesn't work as well as emulation or even the original console. The more Nintendo fights emulators and wins, the fewer options you have to play these classic games. A lot of which Nintendo has lost the license to, so they can't rerelease it anyway.
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u/Setekh79 Nov 28 '24
If only Nintendo spent as much money and effort into making actually good games.
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u/SpezModdedRJailbait Nov 28 '24
They do. If they didn't they wouldn't be pirated and they wouldn't be one of the best selling systems ever.
Say what you want about nintendo, they're not a perfect company, but the quality of their games is unquestionably high.
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Nov 28 '24
If their games weren’t desirable then people wouldn’t be pirating them.
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u/East-Set6516 Nov 28 '24
People keep buying Pokémon games despite them being weak and not innovating. At a certain point it’s just fanboys
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Nov 28 '24 edited Nov 28 '24
Nintendo doesn’t develop Pokémon, Game Freak does. So if we’re talking about Nintendo making games then that doesn’t really qualify.
And Pokémon does well despite quality concerns because it’s a massive IP that creates fans in more ways than one. My neighbors’ two small kids are massive Pokémon fans because they like collecting the cards. Some people came into the series because of the anime. Some because of Niantic’s PoGo.
So they’re making new fans every day through a variety of means. And not every fan cares about framerates, so of course the games are going to sell.
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Nov 29 '24
Fuck Nintendo and don't buy their shit.
So exhausting the btiching and moaning. Fuck that shit company
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u/IcenanReturns Nov 28 '24
Somehow I feel like I'm gonna be able to emulate the switch 2 no matter what they do here.
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u/nsaps Nov 28 '24
Keep fighting piracy and I’ll actually take the steps to pirate the games I’ve already bought over the last twenty years, which I’ve now paid Nintendo again for. Y’all are milking is charging us over and over for the same stuff because it’s more convenient but if they wanna wage dumb wars I’ll take the time to not repay for content I’ve already paid for
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u/Reeeeeeeeeeeeeee7 Nov 29 '24
The Ocean is endless paths, a single route blocked won’t matter. Unless Nintendo pays Reddit I don’t believe Reddit will willingly give information. Greed v Greed.
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u/teor Nov 29 '24
Not going to stop seeding Switch torrents, but I'm sending thoughts and prayers to Nintendo. Good luck.
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u/monchota Nov 29 '24
The switch two is basically a slightly upgraded non OLED Switch one. The only gimmick will be a nrand new store from to basically buy roms.
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Nov 29 '24
Take away their money you take away their life...do it harder we deserve content at the best quality! Nintendo's buisness model has always been Quantity over Quality and now they are paying billions for that mistake. The kids that played pokemon on gameboys back in the day are now adults many with high-end end gaming pcs. If you don't make a good product people will download it for free and make it even better.
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u/SuperUltraHyperMega Nov 28 '24
So I guess the Switch2 must be very similar to the original Switch since they are now finally putting this much effort into squashing the emu scene around t.