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, 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.
What IP does Sony hang its hat on?
Ratchet and Clank, Uncharted, Killzone, Sackboy, inFamous, God of War, The Last of Us, and if you want to go older, SOCOM, Syphon Filter, Spyro, Sly Cooper, I could go on.
I mean, I get what you’re saying, they don’t have something as iconic as Mario, but to say you’re hard pressed I think is a bit of hyperbole. Sony has had a really well rounded line of exclusives for decades. Sure, some are on PC now, but they’re expressly “PlayStation ports” not console ports.
There are other platforms and franchises to mod on
I personally disagree with that attitude. If every consumer went along with that set of ideals, every studio, firm and corporation would be free to jerk us around willy nilly because we’d just move on to the next thing. There are people out there who really don’t care about modding Skyrim, they want to mod BOTW.
Ratchet and Clank, Uncharted, Killzone, Sackboy, inFamous, God of War, The Last of Us, and if you want to go older, SOCOM, Syphon Filter, Spyro, Sly Cooper, I could go on.
They’ve all got their own boutique developers and were simply published by Sony at one point or another (not even exclusively). Insomniac Games seems to be the real owner of the IP for a bunch of them. Hell, most of these are just knock offs of other franchises. Sackboy is a very obvious Mario/Sonic analog that simply never got popular in the same way.
If every consumer went along with that set of ideals, every studio, firm and corporation would be free to jerk us around willy nilly
There are definitely some publishers more open to modding than others. Early on, you could accuse Nintendo of being a sleeping giant who failed to give modders warning or opportunity to compromise. But now modders are just trying to hug a very large hedgehog with it’s spikes out.
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.
American IP law
IP and copyright are two entirely different things.
IP stands for “intellectual property” as far as I know, and copyright is one form of that
Right, but when companies go after pirated games, they are going after them because of copyright, not patents or trademarks. The way copyrights are enforced and the way the law works is a lot different than how it works with patents and trademarks.
There is no “use it or lose it” clause for copyrights. If somebody is breaking copyright, you still have the right to enforce it for a long as the copyright is still valid, and don’t have to vigorously defend it to keep it.
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.
There are people commenting on that article that are saying they don’t even think modding games is “right”. Talk about a bootlicker 😅
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.
You know what they say; if buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing.
It’s not stealing in any case, it’s copyright infringement. Which I will happily do!
I just downloaded the entire GameCube library on my seedbox yesterday, SNES, NES, N64, etc are next.
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.
Pirated copies of old ROMs that Nintendo doesn’t sell anymore cannot be counted as “lost sales,” so that really only applies to their latest releases.
You’re right. I wasn’t sure if you were talking about new or old games. I’ll always encourage owning ROMs as opposed to paying monthly to access them for the few years they’ll be available on [current device]. And with such a tiny library, too.
Then there are other factors, like not being able to access certain versions (Nintendo offers only the Shindou version of SM64 because breaking an ancient single player game for fun is verboten).
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.
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.
I’ve got 500gb of games on my switch, about 10 of them were bought…
Good for you mate. I have about 20 and I hardly ever play the damn thing. There hasn’t been enough exclusives on it that has made buying it worthwhile and I don’t play handheld ever so I just buy multiplat on pc or ps5.
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.
I do get the Ubisoft hate, but at the very very least, they don’t shut mods down. There are still mods being actively developed for games like Ghost Recon 1 and Rainbow Six 3.
They can still get all the way fucked for pulling The Crew.
I am getting really tired of these all these chucklefucks being in charge of things they patently do not understand. Modders are the modern lifeline of gaming. They work for free, fix your fuck-ups, and breath life into games that are years and sometimes decades old. Rimworld and Factorio both started their crowd funding campaigns in 2013, and both are wildly popular 11 years later, still selling copies. Factorio is just now coming out with their first expansion, and Rimworld just came out with their 4th. Neither Ludeon Studios (Rimworld) nor Wube Software (Factorio) have had ANY financial need to produce any other projects besides these games. Why are they so wildly profitable and evergreen? They both have rabid modding communities that have been supported and cultivated by the developers constantly fixing and expanding modding support to allow for an infinite variety of new content to be created for their games. Hell, the Vanilla Expanded team of Rimworld modders have actually turned it into a primary income source via Patreon.
AAA devs need to just sit down and thank these modders for tirelessly working on their games after release for free. Ever since DoTA became more popular than Warcraft 3, they all have their panties in a bunch and keep trying to claim ownership over all mods. No, bad developers smacks on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. God, it pisses me off to no end.
Stop playing Nintendo games and buying Nintendo consoles. Why support a company that is so hostile to its own fanbase?
Because their games are so good. There is no denying that Mario games are incredible platformers with super tight controls and any Zelda game is going to be a good adventure at the very least.
That’s why pirate then, anyways.
The latest Mario games have seemed to been quite meh for me, like out of watching gameplay of them anyway. Legend of Zelda though I’m not a Zelda fan but dang was tears of the Kingdom fun to watch, almost made me break my boycott on their products, thankfully though they’ve issued like three rounds of dmca since which has firmly solidified my decision.
Have they? IMO Super Mario Odyssey is the #1 Mario game ever made (Super Mario World being #2). And Wonder is pretty good. Heck, even tbr 3d remake collection thing was pretty nice, as far as “remastered” releases go.
ahh Nintendo. don’t like our game our way? fuck you.
Yikes
uBlock stopped at 53 blocks.
Went on to that modder’s profile and I can only see comments on randomizer mods? How is that infringing lol. That’s a shame since I loved replaying the original Breath of the Wild with the Linkle mod that even changed dialogue.
