Members Of A Prominent Video Game Piracy Group Have Been Arrested

Another reason I’m good on the PC jazz…just a different breed of community.. they always gotta be tinkering and f’ing with shit. I don’t want nobody fudging with my favorite games or even ruining my picture of them…would rather wait for some legit new material from the developers…perfectly content with getting the occasional expansion pack etc; then if its got solid multiplayer it has all the replay value I could want.

Still supportive from other angles though…do what you want with other media.

The last time I heard about Team Xecuter was during the Xbox 360 gen. All these guys did was make and sell PCBs. They didn't wire the chips into the consoles themselves. Why is the government messing with them now??

People should be able to mod what they own. Period. It's my device and I should be free to do with it as I please. if they were selling ROMs and such , fine sue them. that's not what they were doing here. they were selling hardware mods and that should not be illegal.

Right to Repair and Right to Tinker should be law.

bond to get caught anyway.

If they were selling stuff, yeah, arrest them. But don't pretend like "protecting intellectual property" is some grand ideal.

Gary Bowser? Are we sure he's not related to Doug Bowser (AKA Nintendo President of American) at all?

Anyone find it hilarious that Brian Rabbitt's last name is Rabbitt?

"Bowser appeared in federal court in New Jersey today"

Was he provided with a Bowser costume at least?

Only took them 20+ years.

The biggest problem with Team Xecuter is that they sell hardware exploits. Releasing software exploits into the wild is bad enough but people usually don't make money off of it. Making and selling PCB's and other devices like modchips, nand kits, probes, SATA to USB mass storage controllers etc. that you can connect to a game system to circumvent its security is a whole other level of piracy. Its also a heck of a lot easier to prove someone is creating hardware and selling it for piracy than it is to prove who is writing software and releasing it because, once the software is out there, its everywhere.

so long Gary Bowser

Give me a fakin break!

"This conduct doesn't just harm billion-dollar companies..."

That... that hits right in the soul, man.

While I do agree that piracy isn’t good for the industry, I also have to point out that a lot of the anti-consumer practices that have been going on in the industry aren’t good for its wellbeing either, thus I’m kinda torn on which side to root for and have settled on staying on the sidelines this time around.

Great. Now fix the gaming industry price fixing issue that is also illegal.

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/dealings-competitors/price-fixing

For instance how for sometime now, several industry "influencers" are trying to convince us that it makes total sense to raise game prices to $70, £70, €70.
It would also be good to investigate why the industry seems to think that $70=£70=€70.

Perhaps it would be good to investigate EU gaming companies and ask them why UK and EU prices are higher than US prices when said companies are actually receiving incentives from several governments.

This is a tricky subject. Hacking a system shouldn't be illegal. It's what you choose to do afterwards with it that's illegal. I mean, I don't see what the issue is with buying Duke Nukem 3D from Steam or Teenagent from GOG and running them on a homebrew enabled Wii and playing them through eduke 32 and SCUMMVM respectively. If it were to get the games from an illegal source, that would be change matters, but the point I'm trying to make is that there's legitimate uses for homebrew.

Edit: I have to wonder if Gary Bowser is related to Doug Bowser.

They need to target the cheat makers who ruin online games.