Nintendo Wins Injunction Against California Man Selling Switch Mods And Pirated Games

Who is this, California man, you speak of? I only know Florida man.

Yep, not that I'm shocked. Good on them for being able to win this though.

There's always a debate about the moral ambiguity of hacking/pirating vs rom preservation and homebrew content. But selling modded systems for a profit is illegal no matter how you slice it. No grey areas there.

@Bobb Maybe this was a classic case of "Show us how you did this, and we won't sue you into oblivion"

Yarrrr mateys

One down, another targets to go.

Goes to show even when everyone tries to argue that exploits and hacking are simply just for homebrew and/or personal projects, there are people would still use it for piracy. Homebrew is just an indirect path to it. There's no argument since it all leads to the same thing.

Although I did delve into homebrew and coded some small apps myself back in the Wii days, I personally just stopped since piracy was becoming more and more prominent on the system.

Homebrew is great! But if it would just lead to people pirating games then I'd settle just making apps on my phone and tablet.

The Nintendo Ninja aren't ones to mess around. He's lucky they didn't sue him for millions or execute him to prison time.

I'm sorry but this is just a slap on the wrist. The guy knowingly knew the stuff was pirated and modded, so he should've been fined or sent to jail for a little bit. If someone else wants to sell this stuff, they might think they will get a slap on their wrist but still make profit for anything sold previously.

So long as we support devs/publishers by legitimately purchasing games we should be free to do whatever we wish with our hardware and software, provided we don’t profit from it. Some games have massively benefited from rom hacks to fix/improve things. No different to mods with PC games. I own more than 500 physical games for various consoles and if I want to rip them to a HDD or modded classic console for convenience then I should be able to, after all I’ve paid my money for them.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Nintendo's lawyers need to chill.

@TheAwesomeBowser Why?

@LzWinky They keep doing crap like this in the digital era and soon, when the servers shut, there'll be no way to play digital exclusives.

@Desrever Surprisingly you see it all the time in the modding community as well, consoles being sold pre-loaded with games.

I can understand hard modding a console for profit, which I believe is legal (could be wrong).. but putting the games on there yourself and then selling? yeah thats kinda asking for trouble but a lot of people do actually do it

@TheAwesomeBowser This person wasn't just taking measures to preserve the games though

He was making a profit off them.

If all the person cared about was preservation, they can just upload the games onto the internet for people to download for free

@TheAwesomeBowser That's a bit of a personal problem though. They can choose to do what they want with their property.

@Kalmaro One thing that kinda irks me with Nintendo tbh though, they don't just go after their own property, sometimes they just go after rom sites and stuff in general, which includes the more obscure games that aren't as available.

I mean we're always going to have ways to legally play our super mario worlds and such, its the rarer games I worry for.

I hope whatever comes after switch, we'll be able to use our switch cartirdges as well.. One thing that comes as a bummer for me in the console space is having to rebuy my games, re-released and such.. And these days nintendo aren't selling their classics but keeping them behind the subscription service (which makes me even more greatful for my classic mini consoles lol)

I think that, as long as so thing belongs to someone else, the OW er should have the final say in what happens to their property.

I'd like for all games to be preserved but we have to respect the owner first.

Also, yes, I REALLY hope the next console is backwards compatible.

@Doktor-Mandrake Ah, I see.

This guy is now employed as Nintendo's anti-theft/hacking advisor.

it's idiots like this that give rom sites & modders a bad name.

that being said, you would think nintendo would realize the futility of going after ROM sites at this point, i mean pirate bay's continued existence alone subverts nintendo's every effort & every time pirate bay got hit with a lawsuits, government attempts to get rid of it, hackers, ect it just got more deeply embedded and even started a religion along the way.
and if the disney overlords & governments the world over can't get rid of it, nintendo throwing a law suit at it would be like flicking a dead fly at someone.

@Shadowmoon522 No, the ROM sites and modders/hackers give themselves a bad name, not just the guy selling it for profit. What everyone here is forgetting is that you own absolutely nothing but the disc/cartridge the game is loaded onto if you've purchased it physically, or nothing if digitally. The game itself isn't yours AT ALL. You merely own the plastic. You have no authority whatsoever to do anything with the game code aside from play it.

What you're all doing is defending theft of another's hard work, time, and money. Simple as that. Preservation is a great thing, but you're not allowed that privilege because it's not your property. 2020 and people still don't understand this, or is it the entitlement has grown too much and you demand it?

Theft is never okay, stop defending it. Absolutely repulsive...

Very good. Game piracy is illegal (hence the term piracy) and should be stopped.

@DockEllisD meanwhile in countries with the death penalty for drugs, their use still occurs.

Punisment dorsnt always deter

@sanderev illegal =/= bad.

@Noid I disagree. If you love / play Nintendo games, you should pay for the games you play. If you don't, Nintendo doesn't make any money and can't develop new games for you to play.

In the end it's really simple.

they should sue nintendo life for advertising products that use nintendo ips illegally for profit along with affiliate links

@MasterJay florida man? Dont you mean florida animal

@Desrever agreed. I use emulation and homebrew but only for consoles that arent being produced and I only emulate games that haven't been on virtual console, or being sold today as a remake.

One has to be brain dead to think they can just sell pirated things in the open...

I also use emulators, but only for games i actually own and don't want to plug in my consoles for. Sometimes i'd play a game before buying, just to make sure it fits my taste. But f-me, being stupid enough to sell that stuff... lucky nintendo didn't break the man.

@Kalmaro Not quite easy though if said people don't even know WHO owns it.

There was even on article here on Nintendolife why we don't see some games get re-released by companies. Hell, things like Daytona USA for example is based off a real track, there's games with sponers and advertisements in the game and stuff like that.

It would be incredibly ignorant, look at how people failed to preserve old films of the past, and how much a lot of them regretted it.

This is why companies like Sega do what Nintendon't

Hell, the Sega Mega Drive Collection on Steam comes with rom files that can even run on retroarch ect.. That's how it's done

I mean lets be real, some of these "owners" are long since dead, if we want to talk about real classic gaming, and the history of Video Games.

Protesting the idea of preserving said things, and their history, is like denying the preservation of any other form of Art.

If I was Nintendo I would have messed him up financially to teach him a lesson ( insert evil laugh )

@Nintyfan You merely own the plastic. You have no authority whatsoever to do anything with the game code aside from play it.

This idea that you don't own your copy of a game and you only own the media it's stored on is just anti-consumer nonsense. Stop spreading it.

I own my copy of Ocarina of Time and I can sell it, play it, loan it out and destroy it and there is nothing Nintendo can do about it.

Keep in mind that if I sell it, play it or loan it out I am not loaning out a piece of plastic but rather a piece of plastic with a game on it. Without that game on it there would be very little (if any) value. Yet, with the game on there i can still sell it, loan it out or play it.

@sanderev Well actually it's called Copyright Infringement.

@sanderev If you love / play Nintendo games, you should pay for the games you play.

How many times should I pay for Super Mario World?

@Averagewriter

Yes, I pay for the copies I buy and I don't pay for the copies I don't buy. What's interesting is the words "the owner". Who is the owner of an SNES copy of Super Mario World, is it Nintendo?

I'm not surprised.

@Zyph Would just like to let you know your comment has 5+ dislikes. Honestly just funny how sensitive people can be when you disagree with them

@Doofenshmirtz I stand by it though. The truth can hurt. Opinions can hurt. Can't blame the passionate homebrew community but they gotta realize the end simply justifies the means for a lot of people. Oh well...

@Averagewriter It's insane that some people believe that Nintendo owns all your physical games even though they can't prevent you from selling it at will, loaning it out at will, playing it at will and even destroying it at will.

I think you might want to tell all those sellers on ebay and all the retro shops that they don't own their inventory and therefore shouldn't be selling those games.

@strider100x Some of these people just love shooting themselves and other consumers in the foot for the benefit of corporations. They must think that one day Nintendo will come door to door to collect those old game cartridges or atleast they believe that Nintendo has the legal right to do so. Worst kind of consumers.

@Averagewriter I see, you think that EULA's are laws. LOL

@Averagewriter No one believes that when they buy a game that they own the copyright so that's just a strawman on your part.

When you buy a physical game you own that copy. You do not own the copyright but you own your copy and since you own your copy you can do what you want with that copy as long as you don't violate the copyright (which is to say, you can't make illegal copies).

An EULA doesn't override consumer rights so if an EULA says that you can't resell your SNES game, then it isn't enforcable because consumers (atleast in the US) have the First Sale Doctrine.

I don't know why people like you want to convince others that they don't own the copies of retro games that they have had for years. No one is going to come take their games and there would no legal basis for them to do so.

@Averagewriter Blocking me doesn’t make you right.

@rjc-32 Facts! Funnily enough, all the visual issues in Xenoblade 2 in handheld mode that are common complaints are a non-issue with a modded config file. The game looks better in handheld mode than docked with a modded system, to be honest.

I hope such measures aren't needed for Xenoblade: Definitive Edition.

@Doktor-Mandrake Don't worry about ROM sites and preservation; when it comes to ROMs we're fine. Any place Nintendo takes down isn't ultimately important, and just makes general piracy a bit more difficult. It won't affect preservation.
Something like the recent closure of the FFShrine forums is far worse. Regardless of your stance on music piracy, there was a lot of content there that simply isn't available anywhere else, both community works (eg. gamerips) and published albums that aren't available legally anymore. Most of the old content on the website was archived but a lot was still lost.

@Zyph I 100% agree with you man. I don't have much to add to that, just that

@Braok Damn that sucks about that music, thank god theres people out there that work to save such things as much as possible.

I'm trying to find a copy of Thrill Kill atm, a never released game for PS1 but its pretty much complete, just never got released.. Always find it harder to find now since emuparadise got shut down

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrill_Kill

Edit: Vib Ribbon is one I really need to find as well, even on the internet it's hard to find Vib Ribbon, though just looked on ebay and a 2nd hand copy isn't actually too expensive