Aryon

@N64-ROX I think multiplayer here is kind of a mixed bag, much more than in Journey, where (at least when I played) players had one common goal and about as much of an idea of what was happening and how to get there than each other. In this case I agree this is distracting to a point. But also, there are some levels where the multiplayer really shines in my opinion (for instance, the very last level of the game, the Eye of Eden).

@JasmineDragon @ViewtifulJohtun there are ways to directly chat: benches that let two players chat for a limited time, and actual chat that is unlocked with friends (but is pretty costly, haven't used it yet). From what I have read elsewhere I believe there are filters to block slurs and invitation to reveal personal details.

@Dragonslacker1 unfortunately not, it's basically a MMO game, it requires constant internet connectivity

@RobotReptile there are many ways to support the developers for different prices: in addition to the “starter pack” described in the article, there is an “adventure pass” priced at 11€, from what I understand, it gives you access to one exclusive “seasonal” (the upcoming one is Le Petit Prince season) item along with more of the seasonal currency. There's also way to buy candles starting from 6€ (for 15 candles, which I don't think is good value at all since you can get approximately the same number in one day just by playing).

Furthermore there is physical merchandising, most of which has some minor in-game effect, in a way similar to amiibo (it's expensive though).

@Dirty0814 it's under the MPL-2.0, this means endrift allows people (including companies) to use it and redistribute it free of charge (even for commercial purposes) as long as some conditions are respected, those conditions are, to put it simply, to properly credit the authors and to make the source code (of the emulator, not the emulated games) available along with any modification they might have done. It doesn't look like Imagineer did any of those things.

Emulators in themselves are not illegal in any way. In this specific case, mGBA is available free of charge to anyone under the MPL 2.0 license. This means anyone, including gaming companies, to simplify a bit, can use and distribute it, even for commercial purposes, as long as the authors are credited and the source and any modification to it are made available.

In this case, Imagineer has apparently distributed (and maybe modified) mGBA without making any mention of it, which is totally an infringement on endrift's copyright. She would be completely justified in requesting that Imagineer stops selling and distributing the games, changes them to respect the license, or failing that, sue them and ask for damages.

By distributing their collection this way, Imagineer is breaching endrift's copyright (this does not have anything to do with patents). Imagineer being a japanese company doesn't change much of anything in this respect, as Japan's copyright laws are very similar to most of the world's.

As for endrift reaching out to Nintendo of America rather than Nintendo of Japan or Imagineer themselves, I guess she might have tried reaching out to the latter two already, but aside from actually starting legal action, I doubt she'd get much attention from Imagineer unless she got the attention of another interlocutor such as NoA first, so that totally makes sense to me.

Are those comments really serious? From what I've seen, there's been no real “controversy”, just some people noting that the main character would deadname (talk about/to a trans person using the name they had before transitioning) and misgender (refer to a trans person using different genders/pronouns than the one the person uses) a transgender character in the game. Things that most trans people would find offensive and that should be avoided in general. Given that apparently the character doing that has expressed support for transgender people, and that SWERY previously did a mostly-good, mostly-respectful game about a transgender person, it seems pretty obvious that he did want his writing to be respectful of trans people. He kinda failed at that, people told him so (and I've seen noone “cancel” him, it's simply not the subject), he acknowledged it, and said he'd fix it. So basically he's going to do a somewhat minor edit to better fit his original intentions.

It has absolutely nothing to do about censorship. It has absolutely nothing to do with altering the script from his original vision. It has absolutely nothing to do with caving in to any influence group. It's just listening and owning up to a mistake he did when writing the script the way he wanted to do.

Anyone bringing up censorship or whatnot would just have preferred the game to espouse their transphobic views, which I assume, given his past games, are not SWERY's.

Honestly this comment section is pretty appalling.

It definitely is short and does not feature a lot of actual gameplay, so I can understand it's not for everyone.
Still, I thought the game was very well-written, and I largely disagree with the review. Granted, I played it on a phone, not on a Switch, but I doubt it changes much.

@rjejr there's nothing free for me apart from the starting pack, can anyone else confirm?
I don't understand the two most expensive packs, don't they have a lot in common? Do the limit expansions add?

@Crimzonlogic we are not talking about a ban, but about the game not starting (on purpose) on “not-official-enough” systems. The difference is subtle, but it means that if you ever get a compatible, non-tinkered phone, you can play.

@XCWarrior While using custom ROMs or rooted devices makes it a lot easier to cheat, it's probably not necessary. Nor is everyone using a rooted phone cheating, far from it (I am using a custom ROM, with root, and a very unusual system, on my phone, but I haven't ever cheated nor have I ever planned to do so). Cheating or not, 0.37.0 won't care. If the phone is rooted or otherwise too different from a stock pre-installed Android with Google Apps, the game will refuse to start.

@Crimzonlogic You probably are safe. If you can use Google Pay or Snapchat, you are safe.
But it's indeed a terrible move for them, and I'm done playing Pokémon GO as I like having control over my computers (also, my phone isn't officially compatible, so a custom ROM is the only way to play for me, but now that's out).

@DizziParadise The 2GB requirement for the game is here since about forever. I don't think PGO+ would use any significant amount of additional RAM.

Better error handling in the client (no freezes when the connection drops at an inappropriate time for instance)?

@BLPs, it does make sense. If you read the video's description, you get a link to the loader's code, along with a technical explanation of how it works.
@Kirk, simply because they don't want to sort it out.

@jos, yup, same thing here (got it yesterday, a few minutes after ordering). We will see...

Hm, did any non-UK customer get a shipment email? I've ordered mine yesterday (6€ delivery, that was the only option), and I did get a confirmation, but no shipping information.

Can't get past "Verified by Visa", it probably times out, or mixes up orders like the time I was asked some spanish dude's code.

Haha, their website mixed my oreder with someone else's. It asked me to confirm some spanish number while my bank indeed send me a text message with a code (of course, it didn't match the expected code).

@AndyCarolan, thanks, I managed to get a little further, but it still failed, and now it's back to the earlier error. I guess it's not really reliable...

Has someone not from UK or DE managed to actually order one? The payment thing either errors out completely, or refuse my VISA card with no explanation. Weird.

Haha! Good thing I guessed right and ordered it back before the New 3DS
announcement!

With regards to patching, as far as I know, several exploits are used in
order for the Homebrew Channel to work, Cubic Ninja is just the entry point.
So there's room to patch the firmware to prevent one of those exploits.
Which they'll probably do within a few days after the release, I guess...

Again, this exploit cannot directly lead to piracy. It certainly exposes
a greater attack surface (now that you can actually execute code on the
system) but it is not enough to run ROMs of retail games. It's not "locked
down" to prevent it, it just can't. Unless someone finds new huge bugs and
write new exploits on top of it, which would probably amount to at least
the same amount of work that was needed to get homebrew in the first place.
If piracy is your goal, there are other ways that are much more likely to
work with less effort (I can think of two products that allegedly already
work and take two very different approaches: one gets full access on the
system, the other emulates cartridges).

Regarding emulation... emulating something you've backed up yourself is
perfectly legal in most places... although I doubt many people actually do
that (it's easy with Wii/GC, but hm, it's a bit more invovled for SNES and
stuff). Emulating games you haven't backed up yourself is clearly illegal,
and causes some harm to Nintendo, indeed.

Well well well… as it is, it can't play ROMs, at all, and can't help you cheat in retail games either. Of course it opens up a bigger attack surface, but you'd still need to find additional exploits to ever hope doing piracy with it.
So, some may eventually find a way to load ROMs based on this exploit, but if piracy is your goal, it's already possible using different exploits (or, you know, actually emulating legit 3DS cartridges).

To people claiming that EULA is law: no, that is not true. EULAs are some forms of contracts, which terms might actually be illegal, stripping them, or even the whole EULA from any legal value. And even if the EULA does not contain anything like this (and this EULA definitely contains such clauses), breaching a contract is not illegal per se.

Putting homebrew aside (and obviously piracy, which is illegal and harmful no matter how you look at it), there are legitimate reasons to not agree with an EULA. Like not wanting to grant Nintendo the rights to use your user-generated data how they see fit. Or automatically update your console.

Again, without considering homebrew (or piracy), there are legitimates reasons to not want your software automatically updated without your consent. That includes, for instance, modified user interfaces you might not appreciate as much, loss of functionnality (e.g., Playstation 3's Other OS), or new bugs.

By the way, they already did this kind of things with Swapnote (and I actually believe they breached their own Terms of Service by not announcing it beforehand: if I remember correctly, they can cancel services without you breaching the contract, but they have to announce it beforehand).

Edit: Also, one of the issues here (in addition to the EULA itself), is that if Nintendo updates its EULA, you are forced to agree with it, or you lose everything you had previously. Even if you agreed to the previous terms, but not the new ones.

@eza, I do not believe running homebrew is (or should be) illegal. However, that really depends on how, and where you do it. Law is incredibly complicated and widely dependent on the country you live in.

@TheGZeus, I beg to differ. You can't do anything with a FC unless the person has also added you. That is hugely different from a phone number. This is still personal information, but not really more than your Nintendo Network ID itself.

Regarding the NNID restrictions, yeah, your guess is probably a correct technical explanation for some (one 3DS by NNID) of them, but not all (country/currency locking, etc.).

Wrt. NNID replacing Friend Codes, I don't see that happening anytime soon, to be honest. Games most probably rely on those codes without any abstraction, so they would still be needed... they could possibly associate FC and NNID, but it brings other issues...

@Einherjar because complaining about stupid restrictions is going to prove them right? Because not agreeing with them is an abuse, right? On the other hand, silently agree, and they'll go out of their way to lift the restrictions you've implicitly agreed with?
Anyway, I'm not that annoyed with the non-NNID sharing clause (but it's in complete contradiction with how Pokémon X/Y encourages you to befriend strangers and let you do so), I'm more annoyed about the shutdown of a service (Swapnote) without any prior notice, the absence of private messaging on 3DS, and the insane restrictions that come with the whole NNID thing (only one 3DS, only way to dissociate is to transfer, or delete the whole NNID, bound to one region, etc) which are more a regression than anything else.

@TheGZeus, wrt Pokémon, it has a feature that enables you to catch more Pokémon (with higher stats and special abilities, by the way) based on the friends you have. So, the more friends, the more Pokémon.
Also, it has a feature to defy or exchange with random players, and to add such a player as a friend as soon as the combat/exchange ends.

Yet, you can add perfect strangers just after a fight in Pokémon, right?

Hm, doesn't the “1.11 Transfer, Expiration and Termination of Agreement” only allow them to terminate a portion of the agreement (including “2.6 Correspondance Application”) if they give “reasonable advance notice”? (which they didn't do)
http://microsite.nintendo-europe.com/terms/3ds/3DS_Shop_EULA/Shop_EULA_GB.html

Btw, the same document declines responsability over user-created content and urges parents to supervise their children's usage of the console. Just saying.

@Memeboy3, I said Streetpass for Swapnote is completely useless. It only works for people in your friend list (that kind of make sense, considering the issue at hand would be even worse if that wasn't the case). And you can only send one note at a time (to an unspecified person).

@Memeboy3, I don't get what you're trying to say. Is meeting players in online game something to make fun of?

@Memeboy3, Are you serious? Streetpass is utterly useless. I'm talking about people in other countries, here. I have friends I can actually talk to, thanks.

I used it quite frequently, and it's my main means of communication with some people (especially AC:NL players met during online play). I'm pretty pissed off by this decision...

@0-172 If they have free access to the files, then what? Pokémon X & Y saved games will be (hopefully?) stored on the SD, this doesn't change anything.
Wrt weeding out hacked and illegitimate Pokemon, this can be done in the app itself. Although I guess the cloud approach allows for more flexibility.

@MadAdam81 Return 3k pokemon to your 20-box game? That doesn't sound likely

@SphericalCrusher, Anyway, I'm not saying that they shouldn't charge money for such a service, nor that $5/year is too expensive (although I do think it's overpriced), I was only reacting to your “20MB not enough for the visuals” assertion.

However, I trust my own backup/storage capacity more than some third party's service which might get discontinued earlier than I wish, and I absolutely hate the need to use such a thing to transfer from Black & White. I hope there is another way, like directly from the game.

20MB costs nothing to store. 20MB times millions of customers do cost quite a bit. I acknowledge I phrased it quite poorly. But the point was, if you take into account that those millions of customers did pay the game... well... I think it doesn't cost quite a lot...

And yes, I did make a Nintendo Life account 40 minutes ago. Not to troll, but to react at what nonsense you've talked about. Storing visuals makes absolutely no sense.

@SphericalCrusher The 1.7GB has only to be stored once. You don't store a copy of the game for each client, since it's byte-to-byte identical. You store it once, like on the eShop. Storage costs are close to zero. Well, not really, since there's potentially a lot of customers. But they are also a lot to have bought the game, which is money for Nintendo. Storing locally for each player would cost absolutely nothing.

Anyway, they should offer the same functionality locally, for no fee. I mean, I'm pretty confident my SD card can hold save data for 3k pokémon, and I don't need to rely on Nintendo for this...

@mumof3kids82, except it's needed to transfer pokémon from Black & White... (well, maybe it's not, and I hope it's not... but so far, it is heavily implied)

@SphericalCrusher Sorry, but storing the visuals would make no sense (and it would be 1.7GB total max, as it supposedly is the size of X & Y).
Let me explain. You are not storing the game, but save data. Which is useless without a Pokémon game (or application, such as the Pokémon Bank app), which already contains the models. Furthermore, visuals will probably not stay unchanged in the next (after X & Y) pokémon games, and the stored visuals would be useless.
If the company you work for really do this kind of stuff, please tell its name, so that I can make sure not having business with them.

@SphericalCrusher
“20MB wouldn't even hold the visuals for 3000 Pokemon in X and Y”
Are you insane? It probably isn't enough, but save data shouldn't contain the visuals for the pokemon! And even if they did, it could (should) be reduced to the number of different visuals, and shared across users!