So… Almost every single video pre switch besides speed running videos? Where the fuck else are they supposed to play them? By the time “let’s plays” we’re popular on YouTube we were in the time of the Wii or even passed it. And even if they didn’t emulate, they’d have to have bought the console off eBay where Nintendo makes zero money from the discontinued consoles. This is literally just control for the sake of control and it’s why I hate Nintendo.
I don’t like Nintendo’s attack on emulation any more than you do, but video capture cards have existed for a long time. You don’t need an emulator to record footage of console play
It’s more about accessibility. It’s not like they make the games anymore and the emulators they have on the Switch are lackluster. You could buy shit on eBay but if it’s a super niche game it’d probably cost a lot of money. Money that doesn’t go back to Nintendo. It’s not like they’re going to lose money for someone playing a super rare game on an emulator.
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Yeah, N64 speedrunners even went as far as replacing their aging analog sticks with machined steel sticks. Because as the console ages, so do the controllers. And stick drift became a major problem for speed runners who used genuine consoles. There was even a case where an aging controller led to the discovery of a new glitch, when a speedrunner’s NES controller had gotten so old that it allowed him to press button combos that wouldn’t have been possible with a new controller. And that button combo allowed him to perform glitches that would have been otherwise impossible on a console.
The larger issue is accessibility. If speed running requires a genuine console, it severely limits the number of people who can afford to participate. There would be a big financial barrier just to buy the console and game(s), and since no new consoles are being made it will inevitably lead to the death of speedruns as consoles die out and nobody can continue playing.
One of the original goals of emulation was data preservation, since it quickly became evident that game companies wouldn’t bother preserving their own games. And as consoles age, that will only become more and more important. I personally have backups of all of my legitimately purchased Nintendo games. But that’s only because I enjoy data hoarding and have a NAS that can actually store all of it. Not everyone has that luxury, and it means that (again) there will be a big financial barrier to anyone wanting to be able to play the games that they legally purchased and have the right to play.
Then there’s all of the speedrunning videos that were performed on emulators. Including on Nintendo developed emulators. How can Nintendo tell if you’re using NSO or VC instead of BSnes or Mupen64?
I imagine they’re mostly going to target videos and channels that review those devices that you buy pre-loaded with 1TB of ROMs or whatever. Videos about and highlighting products that are blatantly infringing on like a billion copyrights.
If you make money from emulation, you’ll get fucked (and honestly I’m kind of ok with that). However, it is a bit extreme to copyright claim videos that are just talking about said products.
With all that’s said, I would think people doing video essays and shit will be fine. Then again, this is Nintendo so who knows.
If you paid for it then it’s your game - not their game.
(Don’t care if you ripped it yourself or not)
Exactly. This is settled law. Backing up your own games and playing them via emulation is legal and not copyright infringement. DMCA’s should not apply here.
Should is the key word here. You pay a lawyer to find out, which probably isn’t worth it.
Like everything these days, ten bucks says “Naw you licensed it” with all these conditions attached.
Corporate fine print is so out of control in the 21st century.
These days it’s all about the Retroactively Amended Personal Experience: changing the terms after the sale.
I have altered the deal, pray I do not alter it further.
Pretty much. There was something I read the other day about Uber drivers and liability in car accidents. Another wild read.
From the article:
However, there will be some who argue that these emulation handhelds – which often come pre-loaded with hundreds of games without paying the copyright holders a single penny – are legally dubious at the best of times, and Nintendo is well within its rights to try and shut down any outlet which promotes them.
That is absurd. The copyright holders make nothing regardless, as the games are not for sale anymore.
Switch emulation is definitely up for debate. But hardware and games that are no longer made? Come on now…
Guess you can’t even show videos of legitimate Classics Library content on a real Switch since those are being emulated. 🤷🏻♂️
Regardless of the legality of the action or the product itself, a video reviewing, showing or reporting on it shouldn’t be passable of a copyright claim.
Even if the video shows copyrighted material, it still shouldn’t be allowed for Nintendo to claim it, as that would fall under fair use. Just showing a few screenshots of a video game for the purposes of education in an otherwise unrelated video would never fall under copyright infringement.
The piracy argument has nothing to do with Nintendo claiming a video as their own, despite them having no rights to do so.
Boom! That’s the case. But what YouTuber can stand against Nintendo in court?
these emulation handhelds – which often come pre-loaded with hundreds of games
I can only speak for the retroid pocket I have. It’s not far off from a stock android phone, sans camera and modem, plus d-pad and sticks.
It only came preloaded with a few open source emulators available on play store for free in addition to GApps (with official play store support).
Anbernic devices in particular are known to ship with an SD card that’s preloaded with a fairly large game library. I own a RG351M which did indeed include a cheap card loaded with both the OS and a collection of games by Nintendo, Sega, and many others, plus some strange rom hacks. I immediately swapped that card out for a better one with a better CFW and my own files.
Most other notable names in the emulation handhelds space like Retroid, Ayn, and Ayaneo expect users to be able to provide their own files instead, which I’d say makes more sense.
This is getting to the point where it goes to court and rightfully, Nintendo should get slapped and a new bleem-like precedent is set.
I have heard that Nintendo has never lost a lawsuit which is a real shame if true.
It’s not. They’ve definitely lost lawsuits before.
Damn, Alex Navarro from Nextlander let me down then. Or I’m misremembering completely which is entirely possible.
I saw a similar comment in the last week or so (might have been on TikTok?) but it was specifically Japanese court that they’d said they’d never lost in. I don’t know if it’s accurate though, took it at face value and didn’t really think much about it.
Japanese courts have a 99% conviction rate or something. Saying you’ve not lost in a Japanese court is like saying 99% of the time you’ve been to the airport, you got on a plane.
That’s the case for most people
In criminal cases. In civil suits someone always loses, so an average person cannot win more than 50% of cases.
I won’t be buying a single Nintendo product then. Fuck 'em.
I’m going to boycott them the same way I’ve boycotted Sony ever since one of their CDs bricked my PC with their stupid rootkit.
What rootkit? I wasn’t aware of this.
It was a while ago. And it was scummy. Probably their response to Napster or Limewire.
They’re probably talking about the BMG rootkit from the early 2000’s. Basically, when you inserted a Sony CD into your computer, it would automatically and silently install a rootkit on your PC, which introduced a backdoor on your PC that was being actively exploited. It was also notoriously difficult to remove, as it would reinstall itself even if you deleted every visible trace of it (and improperly installing it could disable access to your CD drive entirely.)
Then when shit hit the fan and Sony was making headlines for it, they released a “fix” for it. The fix didn’t actually remove the rootkit, and simply hid files with specific names (the rootkit files) from the users. This only introduced another vulnerability, where hackers could just name any virus the same as the rootkit, and it would automatically be hidden.
It led to several very large lawsuits and state investigations. Sony was raked over the coals by multiple state attorneys general, and the FTC even published warnings urging consumers not to buy Sony CDs.
All in the name of DRM. The rootkit was initially meant to stop you from ripping and copying the CD. Oh, and the rootkit contained sections of improperly credited open source code. So Sony stole from OSS programmers while claiming that they were trying to prevent IP theft.
Wow, that is actually apalling…
Retro Games Corps got hit, even though Russ only does legal emulation and backups. It’s his “2nd strike” on YouTube (3rd is channel deletion). He’s always been mindful of the situation and considerate of not spoiling games or encouraging anything close to piracy from what I’ve seen.
Source: Nerd Nest where he often guests.
A lot of those emulators, specially the SNES ones, make games better if not outright bearable. There’s a lot of games that I could not have completed without spending an absurd amount of time on them without saved states. The Nintendo games out there aren’t even exceptionally good, there are plenty of indie alternatives if people give them a chance. It’s biggest plus is that the brand does act in a way many AAA publishers fail to do, an assurance of a basic degree of quality fun.
UFO 50 has solved my crave for the old Nintendo games, highly recommended
Yep! Feels like going through a rom pack or multi-cart and only finding good games.
The complete opposite of action 52, perfection
This might be the thing that pushes me into not buying Nintendo games anymore. I’ve always liked them despite the legal crap, but god damn.
They’ve been phoning their games in since the WiiU era anyway.
The last real Nintendo release I felt was original and packed with content was 3D World.
Everything since feels like they let interns design things en-masse and half bake most of their releases. Zelda and Mario get sandboxes, one 2D release in years, and remakes. There’s Metroid Prime 4, but… if we’re being real, it should’ve come out half a decade ago, not to mention tossing Gamefreak the BOTW engine and apparently not helping, at all with recent Pokemon games if the bugs are anything to go by, Smash netcode issues and not being taken seriously as a competitive sport, gatekeeping their classics behind worse in-house emulators than what you get for free on GitHub, you could write a book.
It’s fair to hate Nintendo, but “phoning it in” when we got BoTW, TotK, Mario Odyssey, Smash Ultimate, Xenoblade 2 and 3, Pikmin 4, FE three houses, Luigi’s mansion 3, Splatoon 2 and 3, and bayonetta 3 in the last 7 years? All these games can arguably considered the best in their respective series too.
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Super Mario Odyssey is one of the best games ever made. And no, it’s not a “sandbox”. And certainly not phoned in. I enjoyed Super Mario Wonder too.
Also the new Zelda game that just came out the other day is pretty great.
There’s Metroid Prime 4, but… if we’re being real, it should’ve come out half a decade ago
tbf, they were on track to releasing it about 5 years ago, then they cancelled it cause it was not good.
and we have seen what happens when you release a game that should not have seen the light of day (concord lol)
agree with everything else though
Fuck them.
Nintendo doesn’t want you to play their games if you’re not willing to follow their rules. Ok, that’s their prerogative, but that means I will not be playing their games…at least not their new ones.
I prefer playing on my Steam Deck these days, and I really don’t want to buy another handheld just to play Nintendo first party titles. I’m going to play some of my favorite classic Nintendo titles on my Deck using emulators and just not play the new stuff. I’m sure they’re great games, but so what? There are lots of great games. I’ve got a huge backlog of great games already in my Steam library, and 20 more on my wishlist. If Nintendo some day decides to make their titles available for Steam Deck or PC, I’d consider buying them, but since that’s extremely unlikely to happen, I think I’m just done with Nintendo.
Nintendo doesn’t want you to play their games if you’re not willing to follow their rules.
They don’t want you to play their games at all, seeing as they’re not selling them anymore.
That’s not actually their prerogative. Protecting their IP is, so it’s very legal for them to go after ROM sites, but emulation is perfectly legal and isn’t copyright infringement. Legally speaking, sending out DMCAs to channels that feature footage of emulated games is frivolous and should not be taken seriously by Youtube. But it’s Youtube. They hate their own users with a burning passion.
This is kinda like a advertisement that game emulation is at the point where it works as well as the consoles. The more attention this gets the more people will see this. I quit consoles a long time ago but its clear that they are not going to force anyone to purchase their products and its more likely that they will just drive people toward these emulators.
They’re going to have a real big problem with this one because playing the games on an emulator isn’t illegal so first they need to prove they don’t own a legit copy and they need to figure that out before bringing suit.
I wish that I had enough drawing skills to do this, but:
Imagine obese (morbidly so) versions of Mario and Pikachu. Both with blood on their mouths, and faces that strongly remind Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Son”. Mario holds half of the body of a dead Tanzee (a Palworld pal), and is strongly implied to be eating it; Pikachu does it with the Yuzu logo, or something else.
There are only three things written in the whole picture.
- Top right corner: Nintendo’s logo.
- Centre bottom: “we were starving”, followed by “私たち二人は飢えていました。” (ditto; might as well check the grammar as I don’t speak JP, I used a machine translator).
Sounds like a prompt for generative AI to sink its teeth into.
edit: Here’s a starting point if someone with photochop skills wants to bring it to the finish line.
I tried GenAI. It simply doesn’t get the vibe right, as it makes both Mario and Pikachu a bit too cheerful and tries to make the picture a bit too dynamic.
I’m trying to trace the characters over to see if I can output a somewhat decent sketch. At least to give people an idea of what I mean.
Pikachu eating ryujinx (which just got taken down today)
They’re really just gonna Order 66 this whole thing huh
playing nintendo games, on a pc, using a dualshock feels so wrong and yet so right
I’m done with Nintendo.