Japan's Unfair Competition Law Amended. Save Editing now illegal.

SkittleDash

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Some of you may have heard of the "Unfair Competition Prevention Act" in Japan. If you haven't, I think you should read up on it and those who live in Japan may have to read the new lines on this law.

Japan has now made it illegal to save edit any game. No matter how little the edit may be, you could face 5 years in prison or fined ¥5,000,000. That's roughly $46,360. Maybe both if you're caught and found guilty.

This law applies to everything. Be that the Switch, PS1 or your PC games. So be careful what you do with your games, Japan. It may just come back and bite you for just changing that one byte in your save.

What do you guys think of this? Was it wise of them to implement such law? Or will this go down in smoke? Who knows!

:arrow:SOURCE
 

gamesquest1

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wow, this world never seems to struggle to find new sharks to jump, i could kinda understand online games where the editing gives people a competitive advantage, but even then, that is not something the government needs to get involved in, let the companies ban people for sure

have to wonder how specific it is, does it only count if you edit the save itself, whereas editing the game to produce the output you require then the game deals with saving those changes, technically you didn't edit the save, does it extend to using glitches to produce arbitrary results, either way it seems like something governments should stay the hell out of

as much as i dislike online cheaters unless they are doing some monetary damage such as causing servers to crash or making saves that corrupt other people progress i wouldn't want anyone to be facing a criminal case over, most of the time its just stupid kids who get a kick out of being trolls, kick them, ban them, deletes their progress etc i think that's a just enough punishment
 
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SkittleDash

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That’s insane.

If it’s purely a crime for using online, it makes a little more sense but it’s a bit freaking harsh!

Offline for personal use should be allowed regardless... crazy.

Yep... I find it stupid too. Though I don't know how they'd enforce this.
 

gamesquest1

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tbh i think its most likely just to shut down save modding services/companies like datel etc and game modding sites, depending on how strictly they enforce these rules it could essentially cripple pretty much any/all game mod sites

i mean even things like skyrim mods effectively result in "edited saves" this is why it really should be down to the companies to enforce if they decide they want to
 
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Sakitoshi

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I think that is kinda harsh, but if you want people to stop doing things there is no better way.
It doesn't specify if this applies to competitive games only or not, but seems like it (hence the "unfair competition" name of the law).
One of the worst things in the competitive world is that save editing, while discouraged, is completely possible. Thanks to the hacking tools you can create a perfect team of pokemons and go to a competition without anyone noticing.
 
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TheMCNerd2017

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Wow, this is very harsh. This should only extend to any online competitive games, not singleplayer games that have no online functionality at all. That's like saying it's highly illegal to give yourself infinite continues in an old Sega Genesis game.
 

The Catboy

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This shouldn't be a law and it's just needlessly harsh. Cheaters should be punished, but that's what bans are for and there's no reason to make an entire law to punish cheaters. I can see where something like someone editing money into their online game should be handled with the law, that's actually fraud and a crime. But punishing people with legal action for cheating is just harsh, plus punishing them for cheating offline? How are they going to enforce such a ruling? I feel like enforcing such a law would require actually violating someone's privacy to do so.
 

MikaDubbz

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That is crazy. Like I can understand it for multiplayer games, especially online ones with heavy competition scenes. But why in the world would they care if I edited my save file for say an old single player game like Link's Awakening on my Gameboy Color? I have to imagine they wouldn't be going after such people, but the wording of the law would definitely apply to them. As such, they really need someone that knows what they're talking about writing up such laws, make the purpose of the law apply specifically for what they're after.
 
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