I'm really worried that Nintendo is going to sue them to protect their virtual console/nintendo online revenue on Switch. Hopefully they don't, but the Yuzu/Citra precedent is worrying.
> Like can't you just host the site anonymously in Russia or something?
They can, but most of these fan projects are monetized in some way, either by simply asking for donations at every opportunity, or by straight up selling access to certain versions of the software via a Patreon subscription (as was the case with yuzu/citra) and they can't do that while remaining anonymous.
This is not a popular opinion but I've become more sympathetic to the idea that Nintendo has some obligations to defend their intellectual property, and that "vigorous" legal defense is partly why they're still around and still very profitable. If yuzu didn't want to get a takedown notice, they shouldn't have included software for breaking encryption. That's the specific illegal thing they did, and to be fair to Nintendo, they did have people playing pirated copies of Tears of the Kingdom on day 0. There's clearly damages here.
I think there should be some kind of compromise here where people are allowed to preserve older games (by rom dumping and archiving them) that have reached a certain age and enter the public domain. It's obviously a bad faith argument to say you should be able to play a pirated copy of a game on the day it came out. Nintendo should have an enforced monopoly on their ip for a fixed amount of time. But I should also be allowed to do whatever I want with my 3ds and the games I own for it after they end long term support. If I can't realistically purchase a game at retail from Nintendo, I should be allowed to access the game through other means.
The Gen Z hyperbolic "this is the worst ever in gaming" betrays a lack of knowing Nintendo's history. They're conservative (business-wise) to a fault and this has served them well.
Nintendo fan projects do exist, hell Dolphin has existed for decades now. If you saw the Yuzu situation play out and immediately lept to Yuzu's defense, hopefully Nintendo's request for discovery in that case disabused any notions that Yuzu is somehow "the good guys fighting against corporate tyranny."
We also have real world examples of piracy harming systems (Dreamcast, PlayStation Portable). Software is a console's lifeblood and it has to make sense as an investment. It's like fraud: you can never achieve 0.0% and must accept that reality, but you shouldn't let the situation go hog-wild either.
And yes, whether it's a small indie or Nintendo, if I lend my creative voice to a company I expect that company to protect what we make. This is why so many got pissed at WB disappearing Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme. Creatives are protective of their work and may factor that into employment considerations.
As someone following that project for a long time: they just took too long to finish it. The only reason it got targeted is Samus Returns was releasing on 3DS soon after IIRC.
Edit- First demo released in 2011, DMCA was in 2016. As they say, timing is everything. Five years of undisturbed development isn't bad for de facto copyright infringement.
Pokémon prism was DMCA’d right when it was about to release because there was a bunch of press about it coming out soon so Nintendo DMCA’d it. Although it mostly survived unscathed because a late beta leaked and another dev team took over it
Well said. I totally agree with the need/desire to preserve games, but I think people misrepresent how much of Wii U/Switch emulation was PC gamers wanting to play BOTW and TOTK on their PC because it's convenient and free.
There's another big aspect which is performance. I do believe that if you buy software and hardware, you should be able to do whatever you want with it including dumping the rom and/or bios, but obviously it's very easy to distribute and illegal to break encryption due to dmca.
Yuzu was specifically encouraging emulating current, pirated games (and even charging money for it) which is a lot different than just “virtual console revenue”.
Close to 40(!) years later the original NES I grew up with still works and if you can find a cartridge and a TV that will play it, it will fire right up and work.
In a sense we are very lucky these days these companies even extend support as long as they did for this particular case - in the future I think the window between "next gen version release" and the deprecation of the previous version will get smaller and smaller.
There is no financial incentive for them to keep the servers alive, so they don't. Thusly video game manufacturers should avoid making being online a necessity to play the game - but that's unlikely to get better either.
Not sure the solution, other than to provide "offline mode" for most games that really really do not need to be online other than to force players into some microtransaction/tracking hell.
This is also unfortunate for software in general, not just games. If I want to relive the 90s, it’s possible to set up an old computer with Windows 98 and Office.
But skip forward a decade — you cann’t run Facebook as it was in 2005; it’s gone forever. Same goes for any apps you installed on your iPhone; those are gone from the store and are never coming back.
You’re on the first steps to enlightenment. All material things are impermanent and imperfect. Facebook in 2005 is never coming back. It was always just a digital mandala created by you and your friends.
Indeed. It requires a shift in mental attitude from video games as things you can keep forever, to video games as events, like concerts. Enjoy it while it lasts, and when it is gone, be glad you got to experience it.
Rather than edit my parent I’d like to expand on this -
the reason this feels particularly shitty, especially when compared to the reaction of microsoft shutting down halo servers -
halo was mostly a purely online game competitively, and single player could be played offline. There are a dizzying number of titles these days that cannot be played offline no matter how much you want to, or unless you come up with some ingenius hack.
Games that are purchased with the expectation that they won’t be around forever (like some sports franchise games that are discarded every year) are far less insulting to the consumer when support is yanked vs ones like Nintendo where you subconsciously just sort of expect to be able to play it forever.
It may seem bad for their bottom line to keep legacy server support (or enforce every game to support offline mode), but I think in the long run it builds brand loyalty and confidence. It’s a shame very few companies these days care or consider that.
> Thusly video game manufacturers should avoid making being online a necessity to play the game - but that's unlikely to get better either.
This is the biggest issue and I wonder what can be done to fix this, short of government regulation.
I regularly play Gran Turismo 7.
It should almost entirely be playable offline but any time they do server maintenance the entire game is shut down bar a small 'arcade' mode. Even worse: the saves are entirely online. So if you happen to be racing in 'normal' mode just as the server goes offline, it will allow you to finish the race but the progress will not save anywhere and is lost.
I own the physical disc for this game but what happens when those servers inevitably get shut down?
It seems like we are at a point where it's impossible to actually 'own' games anymore.
> This is the biggest issue and I wonder what can be done to fix this, short of government regulation.
The market is failing to solve this problem, so our best shot is a regulatory fix. I know, I know, government solutions are always the wrong way, says HN. But how else can The People solve a problem that nobody is economically incentivized to solve?
Time to intercept and reverse engineer the traffic between your game and the servers, build up a local server and store your saves where you control them.
Regulatory action is the only way that this will change, hopefully the EU puts their foot down soon. At least they seem willing to fight the software companies.
Related fun story: there was a group trying to beat every Super Mario maker level. After years of effort, they had 1 level left. They were down to the wire to get it done before the services shutdown. They got it done 3 days ago.
33 comments
[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 105 ms ] threadNintendo’s Wii U and 3DS online services will shut down in April
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37765313
Like can't you just host the site anonymously in Russia or something?
They can, but most of these fan projects are monetized in some way, either by simply asking for donations at every opportunity, or by straight up selling access to certain versions of the software via a Patreon subscription (as was the case with yuzu/citra) and they can't do that while remaining anonymous.
I think there should be some kind of compromise here where people are allowed to preserve older games (by rom dumping and archiving them) that have reached a certain age and enter the public domain. It's obviously a bad faith argument to say you should be able to play a pirated copy of a game on the day it came out. Nintendo should have an enforced monopoly on their ip for a fixed amount of time. But I should also be allowed to do whatever I want with my 3ds and the games I own for it after they end long term support. If I can't realistically purchase a game at retail from Nintendo, I should be allowed to access the game through other means.
Nintendo fan projects do exist, hell Dolphin has existed for decades now. If you saw the Yuzu situation play out and immediately lept to Yuzu's defense, hopefully Nintendo's request for discovery in that case disabused any notions that Yuzu is somehow "the good guys fighting against corporate tyranny."
We also have real world examples of piracy harming systems (Dreamcast, PlayStation Portable). Software is a console's lifeblood and it has to make sense as an investment. It's like fraud: you can never achieve 0.0% and must accept that reality, but you shouldn't let the situation go hog-wild either.
And yes, whether it's a small indie or Nintendo, if I lend my creative voice to a company I expect that company to protect what we make. This is why so many got pissed at WB disappearing Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme. Creatives are protective of their work and may factor that into employment considerations.
Edit- First demo released in 2011, DMCA was in 2016. As they say, timing is everything. Five years of undisturbed development isn't bad for de facto copyright infringement.
Citra was collateral damage.
In a sense we are very lucky these days these companies even extend support as long as they did for this particular case - in the future I think the window between "next gen version release" and the deprecation of the previous version will get smaller and smaller.
There is no financial incentive for them to keep the servers alive, so they don't. Thusly video game manufacturers should avoid making being online a necessity to play the game - but that's unlikely to get better either.
Not sure the solution, other than to provide "offline mode" for most games that really really do not need to be online other than to force players into some microtransaction/tracking hell.
But skip forward a decade — you cann’t run Facebook as it was in 2005; it’s gone forever. Same goes for any apps you installed on your iPhone; those are gone from the store and are never coming back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_marks_of_existence
the reason this feels particularly shitty, especially when compared to the reaction of microsoft shutting down halo servers -
halo was mostly a purely online game competitively, and single player could be played offline. There are a dizzying number of titles these days that cannot be played offline no matter how much you want to, or unless you come up with some ingenius hack.
Games that are purchased with the expectation that they won’t be around forever (like some sports franchise games that are discarded every year) are far less insulting to the consumer when support is yanked vs ones like Nintendo where you subconsciously just sort of expect to be able to play it forever.
It may seem bad for their bottom line to keep legacy server support (or enforce every game to support offline mode), but I think in the long run it builds brand loyalty and confidence. It’s a shame very few companies these days care or consider that.
This is the biggest issue and I wonder what can be done to fix this, short of government regulation.
I regularly play Gran Turismo 7. It should almost entirely be playable offline but any time they do server maintenance the entire game is shut down bar a small 'arcade' mode. Even worse: the saves are entirely online. So if you happen to be racing in 'normal' mode just as the server goes offline, it will allow you to finish the race but the progress will not save anywhere and is lost.
I own the physical disc for this game but what happens when those servers inevitably get shut down?
It seems like we are at a point where it's impossible to actually 'own' games anymore.
The market is failing to solve this problem, so our best shot is a regulatory fix. I know, I know, government solutions are always the wrong way, says HN. But how else can The People solve a problem that nobody is economically incentivized to solve?
Regulatory action is the only way that this will change, hopefully the EU puts their foot down soon. At least they seem willing to fight the software companies.
https://twitter.com/Team0Percent
https://www.issmmbeatenyet.com
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39754943 - The Super Mario Maker community faces its final boss (arstechnica.com)