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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[iyenal]

It is likely to only be a symbolical move. You don't have to go far to find alternatives to ROM websites, and it would be impossible to just shut down them all.
Looks like Nintendo will never understand that, and what they do is more negative than anything else as more they try to "kill" piracy more people will take the place of the ones that gone, ending in two instead of one initially. This is part of the digital content deal, and that their business should adapt to not try to fight on a war they already lost in advance, like for example how Microsoft with their Xbox Game Pass and recently the PC version.

 

[DSoryu]

Piracy will always find its way as torrents continue to exist.

 

[chrisrlink]

i doubt it no matter how hard they try piracy is here to stay especially in china

 

[Maximilious]

China don't care. China don't give a shit. Or is that the Honey Badger?

Seriously though, good luck to them. Copying and piracy is what China does, and they do it very well, and they have no laws to back up anything from any country outside of themselves to stop it.

 

[Taleweaver]

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

My reaction before I read the second half of the sentence:

So...gbatemp has a sister site in China now, eh? Sweet!

 

[chrisrlink]

what worries me is if they focus on speedyfy for their cheats (remember cheating is now illegal in japan and then theirs "that shop" and other discords like it i have a bad feeling shits gonna hit the fan soon enough where nintendo class actions individual pirates (it happened in the anime piracy scene before)

https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-n...uit-against-869-internet-pirates-of-one-piece

or https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/02/meet-evan-stone-p2p-pirate-hunter/

 

[linuxares]

Guys remember that Tencent is very close with the Chinese government. So this is a pretty big deal to be honest.

 

[Bladexdsl]

NintenDMCA at it again

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Piracy will always find its way as torrents continue to exist.

and usenet

 

[Maximilious]

hey dude, from what u wrote makes u look alike a Orange man 's wshite supporter...are u? So china copied 5G from murica? since 5G technolgy has nno backdoor for NSA, now Murica is so BUTTHURT cauz you can't spy what German chancellor Angela Merker says with UN's secretary anymore hey?

And what I said wasn't factual? China does copy things well, so that makes me racist for claiming a fact? And if you think I support the child we have in office, you're gravely mistaken. But hey, INTERNETZ!!!

 

[chrisrlink]

let's put it in the pc peerspective remember when vik got arrested by denuvo's lapdog police force what happened after hmmmm? cracking groups didn't get scared the oposite effect occured they were churning out cracks like no tomorrow rember RE2 remake got cracked very fast 2-5 days after release

 

[FAST6191]

Any idea if this is the usual "party wants something done so for 30 days/a token effort it gets done before returning to business as usual" or something more fundamental?

 

[Operative]

dude，u should never start to pretend as an english grammar teacher, u r NOT qualified.

He's not trying to be an English grammar teacher, he's just pointing out how moot your point is because no one can effing understand your posting. Kinda hard to understand when you act like a 12 year old.

As for the topic at hand, this leaves me unsurprised it didn't happen any sooner. What with Nintendo having a hateboner for everything related to piracy and having a horrible understanding of how it operates. I'm reminded of what Gabe Newell had said when talking about piracy being a service problem. You can't just "remove" piracy. It's not gonna happen that way.

 

[nine0nine]

If you want to buy a switch, or any console in China for that matter you HAVE to go to back alley stores or dark corners of computer areas, especially since the switch still hasn't had an official release here. If they started pushing legit store fronts supported by the main games publishers etc, then maybe the market for piracy would decrease. At the moment you cant start gaming without first surrounding yourself with cheap, knock off goods.

If Nintendo started shutting down the dodgy, but ONLY methods of buying consoles and games, then they don't make any progress, they just push things deeper underground. They're not gonna win a moral battle here, people don't see any downsides to paying almost nothing for things which usually cost $50 and changing that mindset isn't gonna be easy.

 

[NoNAND]

I didn't expect Nintendo to team up with Tencent. I digress, but could this hint towards a possible future release of PUBG on the switch?
China has been the cradle of gaming piracy for as long as the gaming industry itself. With gaming being something not cared about there allowed pirates to conduct their illegal activities therefore resulting in an increase in pirate and bootleg things hence stereotyping China as the land of fake stuff.

 

[Jiehfeng]

The games store I go to in China literally hacks your 3DS for you and gives you games for a small price. The store owner helps me with all sorts of things, recently he got me a PS4 with an early firmware for hacking, love that dude. Piracy will always prevail in some form.

 

[NoNAND]

Guys remember that Tencent is very close with the Chinese government. So this is a pretty big deal to be honest.

do you think this could explain and justify their immense success?

 

[CallmeBerto]

Seems like a good thing to me. The problem is that privacy SHOULDN'T be the first thing that the average user thinks of when it comes to buying a video game or any piece of software for that matter. Yes it will always exist but it shouldn't be mainstream (damn near 70% or so fro the article)

 

[Lazyboss]

Long live the piracy.

 

[IncredulousP]

Didn't China say "no more new videogames" or something like that? Or do they just allow Tencent games only?