Nintendo and Tencent are targeting Switch piracy websites in China
It's no secret that gaming in China has seen a huge rise in popularity after the government's restrictions around the matter became progressively looser. Since then, many foreign industries have tried to take a slice of this already huge and rapidly expanding market, but there's one big issue that they need to tackle when considering to do so: piracy is rampant inside the country. With so many people opting "to go unlicensed" (70% of all software installs in the country weren't legit according to a survey made in 2015 by Statista), some businesses outright gave up trying to sell their digital goods in China when faced with the seemingly unstoppable piracy problem (like Microsoft). However, one company is trying to stand up and fight where the others fell.
After teaming up with the local tech giant Tencent as an effort to officially market the Switch inside the country, Nintendo is now taking advantage of this partnership to target Chinese Switch piracy websites. Two have been already affected by this move and amongst them was one of the top ROM sites in China. This last one has deleted its Switch downloads subforum, leaving only the discussion boards open, but other console's ROMs are still available and ready to be downloaded as usual. Even more interestingly, banners advertising Switch modding and piracy tools are still up on its home page and the forums are filled with hacking & homebrew discussions - that also includes threads linking to a certain unofficial, definitely not legal Shop replacement application.
Will Nintendo be able to defeat websites infringing their intellectual property in China? Will pirates prevail instead? Leave your comments below!
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