CFW and Piracy. What do you think about them?

Deleted User · Sep 20, 2020

So. CFW. A lot of people should know already what I'm talking about, but just in case. CFW (Custom Firmware) is an unofficial new or modified version of firmware created by third parties to to provide new features or to unlock hidden functionality. In Video Games consoles, normally is an altered version of the system firmware, also now as OFW (Original Firmware. Also, thanks Wikipedia) And, I suppose that all of you knows what piracy its. This takes me to, a, kinda of a big dilemma.

The problem is that, a lot of times, people thinks that the only reason to get CFW is piracy. This has give a bad image to the homebrew community in general, even if a lot of the members there hate piracy. As we know, CFW can be obtained for a lot of reasons, like for emulation, homebrew, games fixes (Not counting cheats), custom apps, custom themes, etc. But, from the other hand, there is the people that only want CFW to install games without paying. Piracy is a pretty big dilemma in general. There is a lot of different opinions about if it affects or not a company, and depends a lot in your morals. For me, I'm in a grey area. Sometimes the economy of a country is going really bad and you can't buy new games cause they are super expensive. Or sometimes you are going bad economically speaking and you just want to feel better playing a new game. For example, here in Mexico, I have found triple A games at 80 or even 100 dollars. And yeah, I'm not a saint. I had pirated some game because they were super expensive, but when I can, I try to buy them legality. Specially Indie games, cause I know this people or little companies normally don't have the economic security as a company like Nintendo. And no, I'm not saying that cause of my economic situation piracy is automatically good. Like I said before, it depends of your morals to think if its good/acceptable sometimes or its always bad, and that is what I want to hear. So, I will ask a few questions:

- ¿Do you use CFW?
- ¿Do you think CFW is wrong?
- ¿Do you think piracy is wrong?
- ¿Do you think is wrong to automatically relate CFW with piracy?

And please, be as polite as possible and respect each other while debating. Thank You

antiNT · Sep 20, 2020

-Do you use CFW?
Yes
-Do you think CFW is wrong?
No ? It's not illegal to install a custom background lmao
-Do you think piracy is wrong?
Yes it is, unless you really can't afford video games because of your country's economy (ex: Brazil)
-Do you think is wrong to automatically relate CFW with piracy?
Yes. I know some people that would install CFW just to be able to use a PS4 controller with their Nintendo Switch

Alexander1970 · Sep 20, 2020

Hello.

- ¿Do you use CFW?
Yes,I think so.

- ¿Do you think CFW is wrong?
No,I want to do what I like with my Device.

- ¿Do you think piracy is wrong?
Hmm,I have to ask Great Grandfather Jean Laffite.....

- ¿Do you think is wrong to automatically relate CFW with piracy?
Same,I have to ask Great Grandfather.......

Thank you.

Lacius · Sep 20, 2020

Do you use CFW? Yes.
Do you think CFW is wrong? No.
Do you think piracy is wrong? Yes, but I do it anyway.
Do you think is wrong to automatically relate CFW with piracy? Yes.

godreborn · Sep 20, 2020

do you use cfw?

yes, on every system except the switch.

do you think cfw is wrong?

no, as it allows you to do things that should be possible to begin with, such as altering or backing up saved data.

do you think piracy is wrong?

not really. I pirate on every system. the problem with piracy, at least as it relates to me, is that I find no incentive to play those games, so most games remain unplayed.

do you think it is wrong to automatically relate cfw and piracy?

yes, though I'm sure most people on cfw pirate. most doesn't mean all like the big three seem to believe. to get around that belief (was banned on the ps3 three years ago), the companies will include the term "unsupported software" in case you're one of the few who doesn't pirate but uses homebrew.

battlecatsahead · Sep 20, 2020

- ¿Do you use CFW?
yes
- ¿Do you think CFW is wrong?
no, it allows people to learn to code for their favorite consoles
- ¿Do you think piracy is wrong?
yes and no, i think if you have never paid for a game in your entire life, and dont plan to =, yes its wrong, but if you pirate games and buy games as frequently, then i think it isnt that wrong
- ¿Do you think is wrong to automatically relate CFW with piracy?
yes, people who use cfw, dont always support piracy

Darkshadow1997 · Sep 20, 2020

- ¿Do you use CFW?
I was it on my 3DS.
- ¿Do you think CFW is wrong?
No, Because it allowed my 3DS to be region free with in turn helped me play games from other regions.
- ¿Do you think piracy is wrong?
I am mixed on this. I used to pirate games all the time as a kid but nowadays I buy games to support the developers but in rare cases I download pirate games. So I can not give an honest opinion on this.
- ¿Do you think is wrong to automatically relate CFW with piracy?
Yes, I used CFW for region free support and Custom themes. The switch is everything similar to my CFW 3DS but without the option of themes (Just two basic themes.). I do not get why People think CFW = Piracy as I had a non modded PS2 that was capable of playing burned games.

IC_ · Sep 20, 2020

I agree, piracy is just a side effect of CFW existing and it kind of gives a bad image to the homebrew community, in my opinion CFW should be used to run homebrew software (including your own software), mod the OS and games to do nice things that you normally wouldn't be able to do, cheat in your games if you really want to ruin the game for yourself (but please don't ruin it for others), and make backup copies of your legally owned physical games (because who trusts those optical discs to last forever?). But when there is a way to run unsigned code then someone will figure out how to use it for piracy and that's also what most other people will use it for.

Lang_Kasempo said:
- ¿Do you use CFW?
- ¿Do you think CFW is wrong?
- ¿Do you think piracy is wrong?
- ¿Do you think is wrong to automatically relate CFW with piracy?

1 - Yes, except on my stupid Nintendo Switch because I'm not ready to lose access to online services yet.
2 - No.
3 - Yes, but I also think that some companies don't deserve the money so I avoid directly giving money to them by buying used physical copies. Sometimes you have no choice if for example Nintendo is dumb enough to release a game for a limited time or the thing is old and just not available anymore.
4 - Yes, but when most people use it only for piracy then most people will also think that it's meant for piracy.

Nobody_Important4u · Sep 21, 2020

Lang_Kasempo said:
- ¿Do you use CFW?
- ¿Do you think CFW is wrong?
- ¿Do you think piracy is wrong?
- ¿Do you think is wrong to automatically relate CFW with piracy?

1. Yeah i use it on my ds and when i buy a 3ds and Wii i am going to use it too
2. No, there's nothing wrong about that. If you bought something it is yours and you have the RIGHT to do whatever you want with it, it's yours after all.
3. There's no straith answer to that!
3.1 first is the definition of piracy to me it is: if you consciously chose to download the software instead of buying it and you hurt the developer when he doesn't deserve it you in fact pirated something.
3.2 so the most important part is that if i can't buy it legally, i can do whatever i want, it's not piracy if i can't give money do developer, but if the software is rerealised and i can buy it then i am in fact commit piracy when downloading the software (learn your lesson Nintendo).
3.3 when the software is avaible but it has been there for a longer amount of time then it depends:
1. If it is a indie title, DON'T i have a lot of respect for these guys and you should too, making game like that is hard work and those people deserve that money.
2. If it's not indie than it's up too you, if you like what the developer does you should support them but you aren't forced to do anything.
3.3 If the game Has been realised recently you shouldn't download it and you are in fact hurting developers and you are commiting piracy very clearly unless the developer is clearly doing something wrong like doing a half-assed job and being greedy or putting shitty drms in.
Addendum: you get extra pass if you live in a shitty country like brazil or something arabic country or if you are just poor.
4. Yes, majority of people use it for piracy but there are people who don't and i respect that so don't group people like that, ok?

Urbanshadow · Sep 21, 2020

¿Do you use CFW?

Yes.

¿Do you think CFW is wrong?

Yes but not in the common sense. CFW is a natural response of people for being locked down. Every system should have a marketplace where everybody should have the possibility to publish it's home developed applications for free with a reduced SDK and after a probing process. If you want to develop with the full potential of the system, you are entitled to pay for the full SDK. Android does it. IOS does it. It's going fairly well. I should not be using a CFW to get apps from people to run on my system if I chose to do so. In that specific sense, using a CFW is wrong, I should not need to do that to get to do what I want. Jails are bad. Jailbreaks are for jails. Don't put me in a jail, I wont need a jailbreak.

¿Do you think piracy is wrong?

Yes. I will not dwelve with technicalities, but I should be entitled to dump my original games in my system (signed just for my system or whatever floats your boat, idc) so I can preserve the original media: cartridges, optical media or whatever in good shape. And be able to play with my dump whenever I want. The paywall should be obtaining the physical media. If I pay through a store, I should be entitled to recieve the physical media. I'll play when it gets home.

¿Do you think is wrong to automatically relate CFW with piracy?

Yes. A CFW is not a mean to run pirated games for the system. A CFW is a mean to run unsigned software. Again, we should not need to use it, we should be able to ask big N to probe and sign home developed applications FOR FREE. That's how you build a strong community foundation around a system. We should not need to develop CFWs but even if we do, CFW doesn't have to implement ways to enable piracy. Damn, we got some projects running and alive on 3DS of CFW allowing to run homebrew without disabling the system security, even piracy related homebrews like FBI wont work there. So yes, I think relating both is wrong but for the third time in a row, CFW is just a natural response for being locked down. We should not have been locked down in the first place.

Methanoid · Sep 29, 2020

Do you use CFW? Yes.
Do you think CFW is wrong? No.
Do you think piracy is wrong? Yes but buy a game if its good and I do that...
Do you think is wrong to automatically relate CFW with piracy? Yes, there are a few people who don't use CFW for piracy (about 0.0001% of them)

DinohScene · Oct 5, 2020

- ¿Do you use CFW?

Yes, Everything that can have a CFW has a CFW one way or another.

- ¿Do you think CFW is wrong?

No, it significantly improves the normal FW.
Allowing for backups to be made, easy save backups on locked down systems, ability to load testing homebrew to verify everything is working correctly.
There's a lot of upsides to having CFW installed.

- ¿Do you think piracy is wrong?

Yes, pls don't pirate.
It hurts the video game industry and isn't justifiable in any way.

- ¿Do you think is wrong to automatically relate CFW with piracy?

98% of your avarage user associates CFW with piracy so it's natural to relate the two.
I could not care less if I got a device with CFW ability but no piracy.

The Real Jdbye · Oct 5, 2020

I don't feel bad about pirating because I buy the vast majority of the games I actually want to play and the ones I pirate are mostly ones I wasn't sure about and wasn't willing to pay for. Often times I end up buying them anyway on sale on Steam if I like them. Of course, that doesn't justify piracy, but I feel it keeps my morals intact.

I usually buy indie games (they're cheap enough), I'm just not willing to drop much more than $10 on a game I don't even know if I'll like. Might stretch that to $20 if I like what I see from gameplay but feel like I need to try it out to know. I can pretty quickly tell from gameplay if I'm going to love a game, or hate it, or somewhere in the middle, and it's the "somewhere in the middle" part where my purchase decision depends on the price.

I don't think it's a secret to anyone that 90% of CFW users would not bother with it if piracy wasn't possible. Homebrew is a nice bonus, but in the end, that gets used for piracy too (through emulation) as there is little original homebrew made for consoles these days. Still, there is nothing wrong about wanting full access to the hardware you own. That's why most of the homebrew devs do what they do - not for piracy. And why often the first thing we see or hear about running on a new console is Linux (was the case for the 360, and the Wii U, and the Switch, and probably others)

Iamapirate · Oct 5, 2020

CFW is great. I use it and I like it.

I do think piracy is wrong, especially with games you can still purchase legitimately and brand new. When possible, I like to support the developers of the games I like to play. When we are talking about games only available on the used market, I see no issue with piracy.

RedBlueGreen · Oct 5, 2020

- ¿Do you use CFW?
Yes, on a couple of my consoles.
- ¿Do you think CFW is wrong?
No. It's completely possible to make one without signature patches, and they're out there, but they're not popular because it also stops the user from installing homebrew packages.
- ¿Do you think piracy is wrong?
I'm indifferent. But you should support games and developers you like.
- ¿Do you think is wrong to automatically relate CFW with piracy?
Yes. Piracy existed ages before CFW (You could pirate ZX Spectrum games very easily IIRC using tapes, and you could easily burn games for the early Dreamcast models). It's like saying blank CDs and DVDs are bad because they can be used to pirate things. But they also have legitimate uses.

PalomPorom · Oct 5, 2020

- ¿Do you use CFW?
Yea. Often times I won't use a stock system until it's hackable.. Stock software is just boring to me
- ¿Do you think CFW is wrong?
Not at all. It makes OFW better and more customizable.
- ¿Do you think piracy is wrong?
Not really. If I can't afford a game and I'm not going to buy it anyway then it doesn't hurt anyone for me the play the game. I'm a janitor so I don't make much money. $3 a month for vpn beats $65 for the game I'm not even sure I'm going to like.
I buy what I like though. I've just been burned too many times in the past.
- ¿Do you think is wrong to automatically relate CFW with piracy?
Definitely. Atmosphere doesn't include sig patches, NTR didn't have sig patches. CFW often times leads to piracy but that's just a side effect. Look at the ps3 scene. Screenshot functions, temperature and fan speed control, loading all your games from usb or internal straight from the xmb no need for disc swapping, all the Rebug cfw features. The list goes on.
Most of the time I'm only hacking the console to back up my save files or use simple ftp homebrew. Playing a backup copy of your game also prevents wear making your physical copy more valuable.

Can't tell you how many times I've pirated a game that led to me buying it. My switch got banned before the xenoblade dlc came out so I had to pirate it to get the product I already paid for.

Also piracy preserves games as they age. Who can really afford the prices that retro consoles and games go for?
Nintendo didn't offer a 60FPS Xenoblade mod, homebrew devs did thanks to cfw

Sent from my toaster running Rebug

zxr750j · Oct 5, 2020

- ¿Do you use CFW? I do
- ¿Do you think CFW is wrong? I don't
- ¿Do you think piracy is wrong? Yes, you should support the makers of the games and the industry. I own 2 switches, 1 with cfw and a legit one. I like to play pokemon and I buy the games and play them paid online. I might use cfw to hack a save to insert a unobtainable poke you can only get if you preorder a movieticket in japan... I also like the freedom to copy a savegame to a save location of my choice. I also like the whole technical background behind the hacks and to see if I can do it myself.
- ¿Do you think is wrong to automatically relate CFW with piracy? No, without cfw there's no piracy on a switch

AkiraKurusu · Oct 10, 2020

Lang_Kasempo said:
- ¿Do you use CFW?
- ¿Do you think CFW is wrong?
- ¿Do you think piracy is wrong?
- ¿Do you think is wrong to automatically relate CFW with piracy?

Huh, the Spanish upside-down question mark; don't often see those...

- No. It allows me to locally backup my game saves, create a FTP link between my 3DS/Switch and my laptop, and put custom themes on both systems. It also allows me to run modded games (...except for Xenoblade 2; haven't been able to figure out why it rejects edited files).
- Piracy...it really depends. Since games are quite expensive in Australia - costing $70-$80 for Switch games, and on the PlayStation 4 Store I've seen $100 base games like Ghost of Tsushima (with deluxe editions costing more) - I'd like to be able to try shit out before actually buying it. Also, for 3DS games, I've already bought plenty; why shouldn't I be able to convert them into .cia files, copy them onto a different handheld, and have access to them again?
- Yes, because CFW isn't solely about piracy whatsoever; it's got a lot more to offer. 3DS plugins, Luma cheats, EdiZon cheats, save backups, file transfers, being able to browse and move and rename SD card contents directly from the system, LayeredFS...

Spidey_BR · Oct 10, 2020

I do think that piracy is a big driver on the development of CFW, but I don't think CFW development is wrong.
I understand how using software developed by businesses and other people is wrong, they do their work to gain the profit from the selling of such software. But abusing this "right" by selling it only on specific stores, requiring internet connection to use it, hiding multiplayer behind proprietary servers even when the players host the games anyway and specially artificially limiting availability, for instance by shutting down a store or server that either costs basically nothing or has still a big community using it is also wrong.

I can't think of a way to equalize being able to lend a physical game/cd/dvd/bluray with digital purchases, even when going digital is more expensive than physical (can't buy second hand, can't buy on sales from various resellers, only on sales from the one and only reseller who gatekeeps the games). I don't think piracy is wrong per se, I think of it as sharing but using the internet. Maybe if that was a way to lend digital files in communities, but even that would be considered piracy anyway by the big companies.

Deleted User · Oct 13, 2020

-Yeah, on my 3ds
-nope, you paid for the console, you should have whatever FW you want
-nope, most of the time, anyone pirating a product wouldnt buy it if they werent able to pirate it, my morals are that i will buy steam games, because valve has been the only major gaming storefront who has shown interest in my country, i try to avoid pirating games, and will often end up buying them even if i do, i used to buy 3ds games, but they are too much of a hassle in my area, that's all videogame-wise, i could ramble for hours if you asked me about music/series/movies
-yeah, CFW is a comunal effort, everyone has their motives to contribute, some may be against piracy, but its undeniable that some's goals are piracy, without pirate-driven people contributing CFW would take longer to develop, or possibly never come out due to not enough people working on it

CFW and Piracy. What do you think about them?

¿CFW and piracy are related?

Yes

No

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