Earlier this summer, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against Jacob Mathias, otherwise known as the owner of LoveROMS and LoveRETRO, sites that notoriously hosted ROM files of retro Nintendo games. Immediately following the legal suit, both of the aforementioned domains were shut down to prevent further issue. Nintendo's legal action also had effects on other websites that had illegal content hosted on their servers, such as Emuparadise, which removed all download links shortly after the lawsuit was made public. Mathias and his wife, who were both charged on mass copyright infringement, plead guilty to the actions of trademark infringement and damages to Nintendo. They then entered settlement talks in order to find an agreeable amount of money to pay as reparations. Today, the final judgement for the case came in, showing that both Jacob Mathias and Nintendo had agreed for the former to pay $12,230,000 to the latter, over 12 million dollars.

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All copyrighted material owned by the couple must also be forfeited, and ownership of LoveROMs.com and LoveRETRO.co has been signed over to Nintendo of Japan.

Source

 

[Phenj]

Pick any crime which generally goes unreported. They all make your argument look weird.



You don't have the legal right to do that. You can back the cartridges up that you own.



Buy a converter.



And people are free to kill you. Free will is great huh? No need for any laws at all ever.

lol get mad, piracy =\= homicide

 

[CrashMidnick]

If they write their own emulator then it's unlikely they'll be able to make one that works with all games for that price, free emulators are heavily subsidised by peoples day jobs.

This is what they did with NES and SNES classic mini...

If they write their own emulator then it's unlikely they'll be able to make one that works with all games for that price, free emulators are heavily subsidised by peoples day jobs.

Similar arguments are made about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles_(album) & movies like Star Wars.

From your point of view you may have an old VHS copy of Star Wars so it'll be fine to download the 4k version of it. From Disneys point of view, it's not fine. The law has to tread a fine line between the two points of view. What tends to happen is if you download it, then you are generally ok. If you sell it then you're not.

A 4K movie is an improvement from the VHS, SMB3 on the 3DS, NES mini or Switch is not.

 

[Illuminaticy]

Now they'll get the guy who dumped Lets Go this morning. Was so easy to find the guys Facebook and Twitter, hes gonna die lol

 

[smf]

Whether or not this 12 million number is even reasonable is the reasonable question to ask here - seems like something that can be appealed but damn, Nintendo wanting all that money; I guess .

I'm not sure what grounds there are for appeal. He appears to have willingly made the offer of $12 million, down from the $100 million that Nintendo wanted.

Virtual Console games are literally copy and paste except for the emulator which you port / develope once for an entire catalog

You've obviously never developed an emulator. Making one that works with every game is quite hard.

Even the PS2 isn't backward compatible with all PS1 games.

lol get mad, piracy =\= homicide

The analogy was about proof in law, not about the seriousness of the crime.

A 4K movie is an improvement from the VHS, SMB3 on the 3DS, NES mini or Switch is not.

That is subjective. If running it on a switch is not an improvement, then why bother? Just make do with the NES version you already own.

 

[the_randomizer]

Now the fuck everyone for sure buy online for playing their NES shit....

Lol NES games, we haven't played those before. That's cute, Nintendo, give us old school games that are actually fun.

 

[supersonicwaffle]

You've obviously never developed an emulator. Making one that works with every game is quite hard.

Even the PS2 isn't backward compatible with all PS1 games.

That's a fair point, although not all the work goes to waste between console generations as work that's already been done can be ported. Also Virtual Console has a controlled amount of ROMs so there's that.

I'd be very interested in hearing about things in PS2 backward compatibility that had to be emulated. To my knowledge there was legacy hardware built into the PS2 for backward compatability. How much would you say has this lessened the amount of work that was put into emulation?

You also mentioned that Nintendo couldn't sell an emulator for $70 because it wouldn't be enough for emulator development. I'm surprised to hear that. Even if it sells "only" 1 million copies it'd generate a revenue of 70 million dollars. I wouldn't have thought that any emulator had that much money put into it. I also believe that a potential revenue of 70 million dollars is a VERY conservative assumption.

Edit: To put things into perspective. The NES Classic has sold 2.3 million units by April 2017

 

[wiewiec]

That's a fair point, although not all the work goes to waste between console generations as work that's already been done can be ported. Also Virtual Console has a controlled amount of ROMs so there's that.

I'd be very interested in hearing about things in PS2 backward compatibility that had to be emulated. To my knowledge there was legacy hardware built into the PS2 for backward compatability. How much would you say has this lessened the amount of work that was put into emulation?

You also mentioned that Nintendo couldn't sell an emulator for $70 because it wouldn't be enough for emulator development. I'm surprised to hear that. Even if it sells "only" 1 million copies it'd generate a revenue of 70 million dollars. I wouldn't have thought that any emulator had that much money put into it. I also believe that a potential revenue of 70 million dollars is a VERY conservative assumption.

Edit: To put things into perspective. The NES Classic has sold 2.3 million units by April 2017

Sony in PS3 60GB model installed PS2 chip to handle games... but only in this model

 

[CrashMidnick]

That is subjective. If running it on a switch is not an improvement, then why bother? Just make do with the NES version you already own.

No clue, really ?? Maybe because I have not enough room in my house to connect all my retro consoles at the same time... and to be honest a bit lazy to reconnect it to my LCD TV...

 

[Langley911]

aha *searching Google for good games available on Switch cause im gonna buy one next year* fuck i only see bull shit remakes and first party games from them which are not even fun (ok may be Zelda BOTF is somewhat good) and lmao even RE7 is not running on its own hardware,and almost the other third party games i have already played them on my PC so yeah,3ds will be the last thing i buy from them,i dont need a "handheld" that has so fucking short battery life and needs a power bank for longer playtime outdoor with the games that i can play on my PC

 

[DuoForce]

Thanks Nintendo for ruining a Man's life. Seriously fuck Nintendo for doing this

 

[MrMcTiller]

So I guess good ol' Nintendy is cracking down. Or maybe they tried taking out a $12 million loan, but got declined for not making good games.

 

[Kioku]

So I guess good ol' Nintendy is cracking down. Or maybe they tried taking out a $12 million loan, but got declined for not making good games.

Troll game is weak...

 

[SG854]

Nintendo are the victims in this story.

Evil man distributing their creation for free and for profit. Justice prevailed to punish these crooks.

I like stories where the hero wins.

 

[MrMcTiller]

Nintendo are the victims in this story.

Evil man distributing their creation for free and for profit. Justice prevailed to punish these crooks.

I like stories where the hero wins.

The ROMs were like 25 years old. Why would Nintendo care about people playing their old games? It's not like Nintendo would have gained a profit anyway. They don't make these games anymore, therefore they aren't selling them... which means they get no profit.

 

[ShadowOne333]

You don't seem to know how much money a well visited website earns you.

I bet you the money the guy made out of it doesn't even come close to 10k per year.

Because of Nintendos Mini Classic Series?

Really?
Suing for 12 million just because of 40 or so games that they have re-released with both NES/SNES classics combined?
What about 90+% of the library to which they don't own the full rights to? They can't claim rights about those, not even close. if at all less than 5% of the library is done specifically by them alone.
And what about N64, GB/C/A, DS titles which they haven't rereleased at all in current gen?
The same applies for them not owning the copyrights to 90% of the library of said consoles.

It's complete bullshit.
They can protect their property but at least give the fanbase and clients a way to purchase them legally in a digital format.
The ONLY way to get the so called "retro" games from Nintendo is by a rental service today.
You don't even own shit anymore because it's all a rental service, how fucked up is that?

Yet people continue to blindingly pay their bullshit services (which offer nothing new at all compared to what emulators have been doing for decades now), and even more bullshit is the fact that people stupidly keep paying for the same fucking games over and over again with each generation of consoles.

And then Nintendo goes and sues ROM sites left and right?
If they weren't such draconian and greedy assholes, and offered the people what they want for once and a way to get their games/ROMs legit, this wouldn't happen.

Good luck trying to get a copy of EarthBound for less than 150 bucks, because that's the only way you'll get the game now since you don't own a thing with this new rental service of shit.

 

[Exaltys]

What do people who support the removal of these sites say about games that have not been released again? Castlevania Bloodlines is just about the only classic Castlevania game that has never had a rerelease. Not even on the Wii VC was it released, when we saw a large number of older games ported.

Yeah, sure, I can go on Amazon and buy the cart for like 20 bucks but that doesn't put any money in Konami's or Sega's pockets.

aha *searching Google for good games available on Switch cause im gonna buy one next year* fuck i only see bull shit remakes and first party games from them which are not even fun (ok may be Zelda BOTF is somewhat good) and lmao even RE7 is not running on its own hardware,and almost the other third party games i have already played them on my PC so yeah,3ds will be the last thing i buy from them,i dont need a "handheld" that has so fucking short battery life and needs a power bank for longer playtime outdoor with the games that i can play on my PC

Yeah, as it stands right now, the Switch is mostly a port machine.

 

[SG854]

The ROMs were like 25 years old. Why would Nintendo care about people playing their old games? It's not like Nintendo would have gained a profit anyway. They don't make these games anymore, therefore they aren't selling them... which means they get no profit.

Seems like too much legal trouble, time and money to do so. No one goes through that trouble if there is loses and no gain.

Justice never sleeps and always prevails.

 

[phreaksho]

Wow.. Just wow.

 

[PlushBun]

Yeah they can do that, and i understand that they want to protect their property... but come on nintendo its fhacking NES or SNES roms usually. ooooohhhh wait then people will find out that you can play these games with out getting a NS online or buying it under the virtual console...

 

[SG854]

For the people that say there is no benefit on old games, why then does Nintendo go through all this legal trouble fighting it?

Why waste time to create Nes and SNES classic if there is no profit, that’ll be wasted production money to not have them sell. Which is what businesses would avoid.

Does anyone actually know how much profit old games bring? How much overall profit Nintendo makes. How much expenses cost. How much development costs are. And all the other financial earnings and costs.

Or are people just assuming old games are not profitable without any evidence to support what they say. No facts or statistics, just assume. Assume like they assume everything about a business, and complain about something they don’t know about.