Nintendo goes after the pirates

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/nintendo-is-targeting-members-of-a-popular-switch-piracy-subreddit/

Nintendo is pursuing the ability to subpoena business records from several domains, including Reddit, in an effort to crack down on Switch piracy, with one target being a hugely popular Switch piracy subreddit.

Earlier this year, Nintendo sued James Williams, who Nintendo claimed was the “operator, overseer, and driving force behind several Pirate Shops, through which Defendant has offered massive libraries of pirated Nintendo Switch games”.

Williams was also one of the moderators of the popular r/SwitchPiracy subreddit, and now, according to GameFile, Nintendo is seeking the business records of several platforms, including Reddit, in order to track other users.

“Reddit, Inc. operates a social media platform where users, often using pseudonyms, may post to different forums known as communities or ‘subreddits’,” says Nintendo in a filing.

“Defendant was a primary moderator of the SwitchPirates community, under the name ‘Archbox’, which boasted more than 190,000 members. Nintendo has reason to believe that other accounts active in the SwitchPirates community may also have been controlled by Defendant, or else reflect other individuals who have worked alongside Defendant.”

The filing goes on to say that, “the purpose of all of the requested subpoenas is to seek relevant information that is necessary for NOA to pursue infringement claims.”

Thoughts, SW? Is this good or bad for the industry? I personally am against piracy. When I was I kid, I did play pirated games. But now I prefer to support developers with my money!

Rightfully so. Those who pirate games don't deserve any patience or sympathy from me.

In before pirates start doing mental gymnastics claiming they are not thieves.

I've always thought that piracy is not as bad as companies claim it to be, but yeah, from time to time it is good that they put an example by punishing some people that go to far.

I don't support piracy, but I also don't support the anti-consumer practices used by multinational companies to fight piracy.

And, given my natural inclination for progress and sticking up for "the little guy", my attitude is "**** Nintendo" and damn them to hell if they somehow manage to ruin Reddit in this pursuit.

Oh, they're thieves, I just don't think they're potential buyers. Which is how the bean counters in corporate view them. They sit there and see every stolen copy as a copy they would have otherwise sold, and that's just simply not true. They think pirates steal games for simple financial reasons, and they don't.

Well, some do, but most can afford the games. They pirate the games simply because they can and they're pricks.

Point is, anti-piracy measures up to a certain point are kind of pointless, and only hurt the legit consumer.

Nintendo has the rights to protect its IP's, so I don't really have an issue with this.

Dude used the same email for his pirate reddit account as he used when sending in hardware for repair to Nintendo, and that's why they found him. He was also selling Nintendo games, according to someone in the comments.

This guy seems to have been an idiot.

Nintendo just needs to put their games on PC or stop complaining. Enough with the bullshit. PC gamers do not want to play games on shit Nintendo hardware. They can make money by selling their games on PC as opposed to now where they don't make money through emulators.

Nintendo wants to sell hardware. Maybe even needs to. Locking their games, that many wants, to their hardware makes that a thing.

I get wanting Nintendo to sell their games on PC, but then Nintendo has to live with not selling as much hardware, they must adapt to PC gaming and do a lot of shit that comes with PC support, shit they probably currently can't do, and they must live with the possibility that people will stop buying their hardware. You want Nintendo, the most metathesiophobian gaming company in existance, to completely change how they operate? Can wish all you want, but it's futile dude.

It's nice that piracy exists though so more people can enjoy their games. It's not like Nintendo isn't extremely profitable with piracy around, so I'm ok with piracy existing.

I was told piracy was a PC thing.🙃

Irrelevant.

@mrbojangles25: Way more purchases would be made if piracy were not an option. I'm proof. Whenever I find a free alternative, my spending is reduced significantly, be it movies or games. "Not a lost sale" is a fantasy, is cope.

@warm_gun: But that’s you, I think a lot of people wouldn’t have paid. A lot of people might. I don’t think pirates are a monolith.

Me, I wait for sales.

Also, who is going to these websites and talking about their nefarious activities. It’s dumb.

And if there wasn't a free option, you would buy?

The question isn't whether or not you pirate; the question is whether or not you buy.

Well if you want to play pirated Switch games on your Switch, you do still need a PC to make it happen :)

(assume most just play pirated switch games on PC with emus)

Piracy is bankrupting the industry and we need to stop this bleeding of billions for these poor companies.

@mrbojangles25: I just said yes. I bought until I found the free option that gave me 1:1 quality. Stop coping.

Honestly I could care less if people pirate games and honestly I doubt most grown ups do, personally I haven’t pirated a game I 20 years because I got a job and money isn’t the thing stopping me playing games! When I was a kid I played a lot of pirated games because I was broke!

Personally any sympathy I have with pirates stop the second they start profiting on it though, that is such a scumbag move!

Who is coping?

Just trying to understand is all 👍

I am curious why you are coming off so aggressive/defensive, though.

@mrbojangles25: Because too many people can't just stop at "I like pirating because it's free and I don't care about the studio/publisher's profits," they always have to stretch it to this obvious BS of "They wouldn't have purchased it anyway." I don't play shit just because it's free. Have GOG and Epic accounts full of (for a short period) free games I've not played. These companies ARE losing many sales to piracy.

Man they really are stepping it up big time. Will probably push to sue any platform that contains any possible information that may aid in piracy. None of this is new in terms of sources but they really are on a mission.

I suspect (and this is just speculation) Nintendo are really clamping down because, from a technical perspective, it's going to be relatively straightforward to take a Switch Emulator an get it upgraded to run Switch 2 games. It's not really a battle they can win on the technical side to they are trying to fight it on the legal side.

All right, fair enough lol.

I guess I was just speaking from my own experiences and others that I've read, the general consensus being "I pirate because I can't afford games". I haven't pirated a game in like 20 years, which is about the time I more or less entered the work force and had disposable income; many others are like me, so it's not entirely untrue to say this. I maybe underestimated the amount of people that can afford it, and are just scumbag pirates (as opposed to broke pirates) 😋

Game companies do not deserve any empathy.

It would be hilarious if the Switch 2 is a direct upgrade making existing emulators compatible.😂

I mean....it probably will be 😬.

Hell whatever BC system they implement into the Switch 2 will probably be an attack vector too.

.....Wait no..NO! Nintendo! No, I was kidding (Kinda)! I was......damn Switch 2 BC looks like is gone. Sorry everyone. That's my bad 😢.

You shall be missed. 😂

Aww god dammit...not again 😋.

How do YOU define piracy?

Saying you haven't pirated a game in twenty years isn't some kind of red badge of courage but being realistic, you were most likely a stupid kid at that time.

As long as I have been alive, there has always been some sort of pirating with varying degrees of technology.

@BassMan: Port begging again I see, and you call yourselves a master race 🤣🤣🤣

@BassMan: I just call it the way it is. You think that you should get all games on your PC because you're somehow special, and port beg when you don't.

If I wanted to troll you and the other Hermits I would point out that you guys aren't getting the biggest release next year. Actually that's R* trolling you guys 🤣

@last_lap: What you view as port begging, I view as doing the right thing. I want to free games of their console shackles and allow them to be played the best way possible and by as many people as possible. Fuk exclusives.

So, call it port begging or whatever you like, but I will continue to fight the good fight.

@BassMan: Nintendo putting the games they pay for to make on their device is the right thing.

You as a hermit have no right to port beg for their games. If you want them then go buy their hardware and play them, otherwise you just come across as an entitled brat, but there's a LOT of that in your community.

Not trying to redefine or justify it, just trying to understand it and maybe categorize it. See why people pirate, and what % do it for x, y, and z reasons.

People tend to get sort of defensive about this subject for some reason and I'm not trying to stir the pot, just trying to talk about it plainly is all.

Piracy is wrong, but so are draconic anti-piracy measures. Two wrongs don't make a right.

I am genuinely curious how you define it since people seem to have definitions which vary. Is it merely copying software or other copyrighted property? Selling a copy and making money? Something over a certain value?

Nintendo seems to take this to levels I don't recall seeing in the past from other industries. I could name five things people "pirated" as I grew up and it just seemed accepted.

You are a console fanboy and you are not about the games or doing what is best for gamers. So, your opinion is shit. You want exclusives on your platform and you get butthurt when they go to other platforms. Phil Spencer is doing the right thing by expanding the Xbox platform, but you view him as the devil because you are still stuck in your archaic console fanboy mindset.

All games on all devices that can support them.

Although I completely agree Last Last opinions are terrible and as a human being I find him risible. In this case he is completely correct.

Pc gamers are overwhelmingly thieves, they like to pretend they aren't or that it's some Robin Hood "against da system maaan" type shit to justify it.

But really just stealing shit because it's extremely easy to do with little chance of being caught.

@mrbojangles25: Thanks for calling me a scumbag. Many of those broke pirates are lying. Impossible to tell who's truthful, who really wouldn't pay for it if they couldn't get it freely, so doubt all of them.

@BassMan: Again with the righteous spoilt brat mentality.

Spencer only put games on PC because he's a complete failure of a gaming ceo, you know this and I know this.

If the Xbox sales were at 100 million he wouldn't piss on PC gamers if they were on fire., and not a single game would be on PC, now thats the reality of the situation, anything else from you is just BS.

Well, there's piracy, and then there's piracy lol.

Textbook piracy to me is basically "downloading something for free you'd otherwise have to pay for, with exceptions".

However, there's also piracy which is sort of the spirit of pro-consumer sentiment and freedom of choice. For example:

I believe once you have purchased the software (or the rights to use that software, as publishers are phrasing it now), then the medium of that software doesn't really matter, and you should be able to download it from wherever you want, and onto whatever device you want, regardless of what the EULA says about it. On the condition that you are not profiting from it.

So, for example, if you bought a game in Country A but then moved to Country F, and there was some weird thing where the game was region locked or you couldn't authorize it, I think it'd be OK to download that game for Country F authorization. Not sure if that's a realistic example, but you can probably catch my drift.

Likewise, if you own a game for Nintendo Switch, but you want to play it on PC or something, I think it's fine to download a "cracked" or emulated version of that game for your PC if you already own it on Switch.

Additionally, if I bought a game, but it came with anti-piracy software known for breaking computers or slowing them down or whatever, I think it is OK to download a version of that game that is cracked and removes that anti-piracy software.

Basically, so long as the publisher and developer got their money, and you're not making any money, that's more or less where their say in their product ends.

This is true. It's also important to note that games are luxury items, not necessities.

You can sympathize with a thief stealing bread to feed his family; much harder to do so with a thief stealing video games.

@uninspiredcup: Maybe, just maybe there's hope for you yet.

You don't like it/me because you know I'm right and it probably eats away at you for some strange reason.

I agree but I think it extends beyond games whether taping something on a paid network, dubbing a VHS tape (owned or rented), etc.., as long as it isn't being sold.

... and yet Sony is now doing the same thing. Your boy Phil is a pioneer and you should praise him for making games accessible to more gamers. He even cut a deal to bring your beloved Remnant 2 to Game Pass so more gamers could play it. What a nice guy.

No, they're not doing the same thing, you're not getting games day 1 unless their trash live service games from Sony. Sony are least smart enough to know they will make more money by selling games on their device and with subscription and the like then they will by throwing games on PC day 1 and alienating their fanbase even further than they have already, but they will have a big choice to make sooner or later.

You can thank Phil all you want, but we both know why you are and that's because he' a failure at his job.

Sony's single player PC port wait times are getting shorter and shorter. Also, Sony just released Lego Horizon Adventures multiplat on day one and it is not live service. They are definitely following after your boy Phil, but it takes a while to catch up.

As for alienating the fanbase...

How dare he keep letting Xbox players play the games they know and love and allow others to enjoy them as well?!

LOL

Let's get one thing straight, Phil is your boy not mine.

Secondly Sony are going to have to make a big decision to either continue down the trail they're heading now and eventually give hermits ALL games day 1 and risk their fanbase abandoning him like what's now with your boy Phil and Xbox or continue to stagger the releases a year(s) afterwards. Because Sony can't keep walking with one foot in each field because they're only going to come up against barbed wire and cut their balls off.

@last_lap: It should be noted, even though acknowledge you are right, publishers are trash themselves and deserve 0 empathy.

Trash stealing from trash. Cancels itself out.