A good rule to live by is to ask "what would happen if everyone did X?" In this case, Nintendo would cease to exist. Maybe you'd be happy about this. Plenty of people wouldn't. Switches are generally available and not that expensive. If you want to play Switch games, buy one. If you don't, don't.
And failing that if you want to just steal, then just steal. But what really rubs me the wrong way is when people who have chosen to steal start moralizing their position like they're standing up for some vague rights or principles. At least be honest about it. The hyporcrisy, intellectual dishonesty, bad faith arguments and self-delusion is in many ways worse than the theft.
For example: "What would happen if all companies blocked individuals from doing what they want with the hardware they bought?" You get a hacking community and people imprisoned for the unlocked hardware they paid for. Not to mention a whole lot of ewaste that could otherwise work for years.
No, that's not a good example. How about this one: "What would happen if all companies opened up their hardware and stopped forcing people to upgrade for no reason?" Eutopia, that's what! Less ewaste. Less consumerism. People can actually use the hardware they paid for the way they want to use it.
This argument has been (ab)used since piracy has been a thing. I'm not aware of any company going under directly because of piracy, especially not just because of emulators. If there is one, I'd love to know, but even so, the numbers is negligible. Also, emulation is not the same piracy. While emulation can be used for piracy, it is not the main use case.
Corporations like Nintendo are not your friend.
You can go further than that, there's never been a study proving that piracy is making companies lose money.
It's repeated ad-nauseam by lobbies but as far as I'm aware, it's just urban legend for now.
One empirical demonstration of piracy's impact on sales (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#Softwar...>):
>Will Wright said that Raid on Bungeling Bay sold 20,000 copies for the Commodore 64 in the US, but 800,000 cartridges for the Nintendo Famicom with a comparable installed base in Japan, "because it's a cartridge system [so] there's virtually no piracy".
That's not a demonstration, that can be explained by the difference in hardware penetration, the quality of service provided which was much higher on consoles at the time, pricing, market differences or other factors. You had plenty of counterfeited/bootleg cartridges as well on the famicom.
I'm sure we can find more than one story from the 80s if that's really a thing.
> Factors cited were the heavy debt incurred during its aggressive expansion in the 1990s, growing competition from mass discounters and Internet piracy.[10] Mismanagement, managerial incompetence, and crippling restrictions from the first bankruptcy deal also contributed to Tower's demise.[11]
Not just piracy to say the least.
The Government Accountability Office came out in 2010 with a report that said these numbers “cannot be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology.”
http://freakonomics.com/2012/01/12/how-much-do-music-and-mov...
Sorry, but what is "X"? Emulation? If everyone emulated Nintendo games, we don't really know that Nintendo would cease to exist, but they probably would not cease to exist because plenty of folks who emulate Nintendo games still buy Nintendo products, because they are, you know, Nintendo fans. :)
> And failing that if you want to just steal, then just steal. But what really rubs me the wrong way is when people who have chosen to steal start moralizing their position like they're standing up for some vague rights or principles.
What really rubs me the wrong way is when commenters on HN paint people who use emulators as thieves, and emulator developers as enablers of theft, and nothing more. The irony here is that you're doing moral posturing yourself in this comment. The commenter you responded to never mentioned piracy. The article in question never mentioned piracy. So if by "X" you meant "piracy", well, nice strawman, otherwise you're equivocating emulation with piracy, which is wrong.
EDIT: By the way, a great reason to emulate Switch games is to experience them at higher resolutions and higher framerates. Thought you should know, not everyone does it to save a few bucks.
So if by "X" you meant "piracy", well, nice strawman, otherwise you're equivocating emulation with piracy, which is wrong.
Related to this, accessibility, particular for retro games. I'm visually impaired, it's easier for me to emulate GB games because have you played on a GBA screen recently? Likewise, since my MS gives me twitches, the ability to do things like save scum is nice when I'm replaying NES games. I own an NES and a GB along with the games. I'm not stealing anything; I'm preventing my disability from locking me out of my own belongings.
Nintendo needs to make a better argument for their hardware if they want people to buy it. Not by dictating laws about hardware usage. Simply put, they're living in the past where different hardware and different firmware mattered.
What's next, Microsoft doesn't let me run anything other than Windows on my hardware? Wait ... https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/enable-tpm-2-0-o... https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2020/11/17/meet-the-...
Hey look, propaganda! Your favorite <3 Hopefully, this is a wake up call for you to read between the lines. In this case: No, Microsoft did not invent secure cloud computing.
You can apply this to literally anything to make it bad.
What would happen if everyone only ever emulated pirated Switch games? Nintendo would cease to exist. What would happen if everyone just stopped buying consoles and only played games on PC? Nintendo would cease to exist, Sony and Microsoft would take a massive hit. What would happen if everyone just... stopped playing games at all, ever? The entire video game industry would die.
Does that mean I can never decide games are a waste of my time and money? Obviously not. People are different and make different decisions.
And when I've done my duty and bought one, and bought the games, am I allowed to tinker then?
I see what you're driving at, but there are a great number of advantages to emulation and system hacks even for those of us that buy our games.
My PSP, when properly hacked, didn't need disks as I could store all the games I owned on a memory card or two. They loaded faster, used less battery and I didn't have to carry the damn things around. Similarly I had a PS2 with a hard drive so I could have all the games available on a menu system, and with faster load times. Same story on the Wii.
The other way around, I would play my Wii games that I had bought on Dolphin, which generally could render them at a higher resolution to target the 1080p tv I had at the time, where the Wii itself was limited to 576p. I routinely emulate the megadrive/genesis on all sorts of platforms including those hacked consoles, so I can play Sonic, which I bought many years ago.
I don't think these actions are wrong, nor do I think they hurt Sony, Sega or Nintendo, unless we're getting into the territory of "you denied them money they could have had if you re-bought everything multiple times". Sure, and I could give them 100 bucks a month direct from my paycheck, but I'm not doing that either.
This is an awful rule to live by. There are very few things in the world that _everyone_ would actually do.
I feel like this "law" really fails to account that not everybody on Earth is the same person and won't do the same thing because they either don't want to or can't.
Not everybody will want to use an emulator (because they want to play online, have a deckable console, or whatever other reason) or be able to get one (because they don't have a powerful enough pc). And people using emulators might make additional publicity that might bring new consumers to Nintendo products.
So, like, if John really dislikes Joe, the rule saying "if you really dislike someone, punch Joe in the face" wouldn't be a rule of the appropriate sense. It doesn't make sense that if Steve really disliked Erwin, that he would punch Joe in the face as a result.
The rule that John should be considering whether he would approve of, is closer to[1] the rule "If you really dislike someone, punch them in the face." . Presumably John would find this rule less appealing than "If you really dislike someone, punch Joe in the face.", because someone might dislike John and therefore punch John in the face, and John would rather not be punched in the face.
So, in the case you gave an example of, about "whether to have children", the question would be along the lines of, "If everyone decided whether to have children (as well as how many) using the same criteria that you are using (where these criteria could include their personal tastes, aspirations, etc. as a factor), would you approve of the outcome?" This seems quite compatible with the ways that people differ.
Like, it isn't about assuming everyone behaves in the same way, but about assuming everyone responds to their desires and motivations in "the same way", for the right sense of "the same way".
[1] I won't say that this is exactly the right rule to consider. idk. Probably not quite.
But also remember that this is about human choices, not forced realities. The thought experiment is about what happens if everyone chooses to act in a certain way, not if everyone is a literal copy/paste automaton. To illustrate, even if everyone decided they didn't want kids, assuredly thousands/millions would still have "whoopsie" babies.
With regards to choosing to have three kids: overpopulation, famine, and destruction of Earth are not a given. Firstly (and again) because nowhere close to everyone on Earth is actually able to have three kids for a variety of reasons, and secondly because even if you did have exponential population growth you can avoid those things, mostly by colonizing space / building vertically / Dyson Sphere / etc. Unlikely but not a given so therefore hard to argue its necessarily bad.
Yes!
> Is it immoral for me to have 3 kids because it means exponential growth, overpopulation, famine and destruction of the Earth? If we follow the logic to its end, the only moral choice is for everyone to have not 1, not 3 but exactly 2 kids.
Limiting to 2 would cause the extinction of the human race. Some people should have 3 so that we get a sustainable level of population growth - especially people in countries where the population is declining.
(I'm not anti-emulator, I'm not even a huge fan of the categorical imperative, but this is an astonishingly weak counterargument)
> Yes!
This is a flawed rule then.
There is no moral implication that you need to create kids.
There is also a number you can orientate yourself if you like to achieve a certain outcome
Nonetheless are you aware that Nintendo had quite bad numbers on and off?
It could have broken Nintendo.
Also, leave it to HN to take some news about video game emulation to a discussion about antinatalism, haha
Also it would be 2.something not 2 exactly, because some number of people die from various causes before reproducing.
Of course, due to mortality we actually need more than 2. Around 2.1 - 2.4 for most developed nations IIRC.
And this doesn't hold if the household have more than one wives, say.
Even if every human were single and babies were made in sperm banks and creches, and every human was assigned one baby from the pool to raise, you still "have" 2 kids, in the sense that you took part in the creation of 2 kids.
I don't know how this needs to be explained to any human?
It takes 2 to replace 2. Not 1 for 1, 2 for 2.
How the ever loving F do you wind up asking about the 2 kids mating with each other? What the hell is going on in there?
The context though is the current real world: It’s perfectly fine to have 1 kid or even no kids at all and just adopt existing orphans, because a lot of other people have been having way more than 2 kids for way too long.
Someone misunderstood the purpose off that question, and said that by that logic everyone should have 2 kids. They were wrong about that but not because the number 2 was wwrong. 2, or really 2.something, is the number that everyone has to have, IF they were applying the "what if everyone does X" correctly.
What they were wrong about was a couple things:
1 The question isn't a simple litteral absolute rule. It's a tool that you use along with others to evaluate some idea or action. It only helps judge one dimension among many.
A previous commenter gave the simple example of queues. Imagine you have figured out a trick that lets you get away with jumping every line. The trick works. No one else in the line ever complains that you're cutting instead of waiting for your turn.
What's the harm then? Free market people like to try to excuse bad actions that way. Maybe the trick is you tell a joke, so it's a transaction, the people you cut in front of voluntarily let you and they got a funny joke out of it.
The question exposes the problem, because, ok, cool, life hack, do this trick and never have to wait in a line again. Since it's sound advice, let's teach this knowledge to everyone in schools. What happens then? Does it still work?
This exposes that this advantage you are taking is actually coming from somewhere. You aren't just more efficient at lines, you are benefitting only on the backs of everyone else.
2 In this case the X in "What if everyone did X?" wouldn't be "have exactly 2.36 children" it would be more like "had however many children they wanted"
Because it turns out that people want different things, and so if you just let everyone have however many kids they want or feel they can manage, it more or less works out naturally.
Everyone doesn't want 5 kids, or 0 kids, and so if everyone did what they want, it's fine, and so it's fine for you to have however many kids you want.
You CAN in fact have just 1 kid if you want.
But the thing you were replying to was about the basic math, and 2 was the right number in the context of that oversimplified misunderstanding of "what if everyone did that?" If letting people do what they want would not work out, and we had to make a rule to make everyone do exactly the same thing, it would indeed be everyone has to have 2 kids.
Yes I think some people would cherry pick skewed numbers to justify whatever action they want, but doing it with good faith estimates is pretty helpful. Usually the answer is don't do that.
Nintendo has a long habit of stopping console support and games become harder or impossible to buy; waiting for a Nintendo console to reach end of life before emulating and dumping the games means that some games are going to be missed. Also, emulating currently supported consoles allows for things like archival records of system OSes to study how they changed over time. (Because in 100 years, some graduate student will study how 20th and 21st century video gaming companies handled security updates).
I think a better question would be "what if it were possible to buy 90% of Nintendo's historic catalog to play on the switch instead of less than 1%?"
I emulate because I already know the retro games I want a) cost $15-30 b) would cost that if available, are never on the eshop anyways so I don't even bother checking and c) I remember when SquareEnix android games accidentally, and carelessly, deleted everyone's saves because they arbitrarily forced offline single player games (NES/SNES final fantasy series) to be online-only cloud saves.
We're at the tail end of a decade of being shat on and in some cases Nintendo just refusing to sell us the products we want to buy.
The entitlement is not with the users in this case.
That's a very nice strawman you're putting in the middle of that field. I can do the same too. What if everyone in the video game industry opened its games to mods and gave out tools? An unbelievable breadth of quality content and a new generation of excellent designers. What if everyone stopped buying video games because we now all own rubles? What if we all became blue?
Is piracy selfish? Yeah. I'll be the first one to admit it. I pirate it because I don't want to pay for it, or I can't. Is piracy wrong? No. Data wants to be free, and we collectively thrive when ideas, plays, music, creations of the mind flows freely. And if it causes a company to make a tiny bit less on the billions it makes, I won't be crying for them.
+1 I like hacking and tinkering with tech but these should not be socialized solutions for the masses. They are fun hobby projects, if you want the thing go buy it. The money supports the thing and is the reason it exists.
The same argument used to say pirated music would kill music. I hope you realize how ridiculous it is.
Yes, because it was true then too. Well, mostly true. There are big differences between music and video games. For example, the vast majority of artists can't support themselves based on the sale of recorded music. Most support themselves through performances. Additionally, there is a lot licensing of music to movies, TV and advertising.
But yes if no one paid for music it's quite likely that the industry would cease to be.
None of this applies to video games.
But I don't care if you pirate music (I did, at least before Spotify made it too convenient not to bother, which is a whole separate lesson). I also don't particularly care if you want to emulate Switch games. What I find distasteful is dressing up this selfishness as somehow being moral or just. You're not a principled crusader standing up for freedom. You're just a guy who doesn't want to pay for something.
You don't get to define what is everyone's view of morality.
Do you find it moral that copyright holders can keep charging forever for the same goods AND enjoy state protection at the same time? Piracy is what limits this behavior from becoming too extreme. Remove piracy, and you will see the most outrageous corporate behaviors in action in no time.
Checks and balances - that's the name of the game.
An emulator is just an API-compatible device. It is legal to make and sell an emulator. It can be used for playing legit and pirated copies of games, just as the original console can. It's a healthy form of competition (like between PC manufacturers), resulting in better performing hardware for the consumer.
The comment you're replying to doesn't mention or defend piracy. They're only saying Nintendo's Switch hardware is lacking so people are searching for a better performing alternative, and Nintendo is using anti-competitive legal trickery to suppress alternatives, instead of improving their product.
I don't understand when this rule should/should not be used. Clearly, the rule breaks down in certain situations.
For example: What if everyone decided to go into tech? That's not really good for society since we need things like doctors, but some people do need to go into tech.
I feel like these are the same people that haven't learned how to shut up in highschool
Nintendo's hardware business would cease to exist, and the world would have a little less e-waste in it. How would that be a bad thing?
If we want to cut down on e-waste, we should rather lengthen the smartphone replacement cycle. That's a better impact just because of sheer numbers. Lobby for replaceable-battery mandates in smartphones and a minimum duration for security updates of 5 years or even 10 years.
How is a Switch materially different from a laptop, or a tablet with a controller strapped on to it?
> If we want to cut down on e-waste, we should rather lengthen the smartphone replacement cycle. That's a better impact just because of sheer numbers. Lobby for replaceable-battery mandates in smartphones and a minimum duration for security updates of 5 years or even 10 years.
Why not both? Disposable devices are bad, needing duplicate devices in the same form factor is bad, DRM is bad (especially when it's locking down how you can use or repair your own hardware). Tackling one doesn't prevent anyone from tackling the rest. We need to fix all of them
They don't even need to stop releasing their own accessories when they have a legitimate reason to do so. The Wiimote could have just been a Bluetooth gamepad and a LED strip. In fact, that's exactly what it was!
If you steal then thats your problem, but its wrong morally and is gross to do without reasons.
Like PC game studios ceased to exist?
Yes.
/Librarian
And copyright is an artificial monopoly on information.
A lower price and better games is quite a lot actually.
I can imagine how disruptive a successful Steam entry into the console space could be once people realize they are tired of "renting" $60 games from ad-hoc console e-shops.
They re-released childhood favorites like Zelda Ocarina of Times and Super Mario 64 on the 3DS and I actually bought the 3DS (in a special Zelda variant no less) just for that and Majora's Mask. I had a blast.
In comparison Steam and PC in general was late to the party of remastering old games or even just keeping them playable. Getting old Win 98 or even some XP titles running is often a challenge and sometimes borderline impossible.
People who purchased games on the original Wii Virtual Console had to pay per-game fees to upgrade to native Wii U versions. As if that wasn't cheeky enough the Wii U NES emulation was terrible. Bad colors and serious input lag. Instead of fixing it for those customers who already paid (sometimes twice) for those games, Nintendo released the NES Classic which had a much better emulator… but only if you paid again.
(There also wasn't cross-buy/play between Virtual Console 3DS and Wii U, as opposed to e.g. Sony's PS3 and Vita's PS1 support.)
Then came the Switch with Nintendo Switch Online. Putting aside subscription vs. purchasing, the experience is great. But all those Virtual Console games you have? Can't play them. Pay again.
Remaster are cool but the way Nintendo approaches them is another example of how early adopters get the short end, with Wii U games getting re-releases on Switch (great) with additional content like Bowser's Fury (also great) but without making that content available as DLC to people who already paid full price for the original versions.
(By the way, those NSO N64 games aren't part of the basic subscription)
I'm definitely not going to defend how bad the Wii U emulators were, but asking users to pay for a new emulator doesn't seem so unreasonable to me. Developing an emulator takes work. If you don't want to use the new emulator, play the game in Wii mode.
Yes, paying for the emulator on a per-game basis is weird, but any other model would be prohibitively difficult for consumers to understand.
> Remaster are cool but the way Nintendo approaches them is another example of how early adopters get the short end, with Wii U games getting re-releases on Switch (great) with additional content like Bowser's Fury (also great) but without making that content available as DLC to people who already paid full price for the original versions.
But again, Nintendo had to port the game to the Switch, so I think it's reasonable to charge for that. And while they certainly could have instituted some sort of upgrade pricing model, it would have quickly become prohibitively complicated, particularly when you start considering retail versions of the game.
My feeling is, I paid $60 for Mario 3D World in 2013 because it was worth (more than) $60. I already played it and got my money's worth. The Switch version doesn't have enough new content for me to justify paying another $60, but for anyone who never owned a Wii U, it's a great deal and I'm happy for them.
Games (particularly non-Nintendo games) often become much cheaper if you don't mind waiting a few years, if not less.
They are hard work, but fans working for free have consistently done a better job than Nintendo themselves at writing emulators in all respects: added features, performance, input latency, accuracy, and compatibility.
I will also say that within a constrained console environment, I do think Nintendo's VC emulators are more reliable than Homebrew ones.
Nonsense, it's just an excuse to nickle-and-dime customers. Compare this to the effort Microsoft has gone through to make old Xbox games work on modern consoles, or how all digital PSP games just worked on your PS Vita.
The Wii U upgrade wasn't even that big of a deal compared to the Switch now. They've brought NES, SNES and N64 emulators to the Switch but none of those games you already paid for (twice) carry over.
It's not just about having to pay a bit, it's about what it means to digitally purchase anything from Nintendo.
> The Switch version doesn't have enough new content for me to justify paying another $60, but for anyone who never owned a Wii U, it's a great deal and I'm happy for them.
This was my point though - if you already paid that $60 and got that great game, there's no way to play the new content without playing it again.
Most of the titles also ran better and had lower input latency than what's available on the Switch.
The service was completely discontinued in 2019 with no way of transferring the titles over to the Switch or having the proof of purchase even linked to your account. In terms of preserving their old titles Nintendo is awful, they'd rather continually rerelease the popular ones and have you pay yet again for the (temporary) access.
The closest they got was Super Mario 3D All-Stars that included emulation of a GameCube (Mario Sunshine) and a Wii (Mario Galaxy) game, but Nintendo being Nintendo, it was on the e-shop for a limited time and a limited manufacturing run for physical release. Two console generations after the Wii, the most Nintendo can muster is bringing back Nintendo 64 games to their current console, 5 years after the console's release. It's pathetic.
For nintendo NES/SNES is if you have the basic subscription, n64 and genesis is an upcharge.
https://www.nintendo.com/whatsnew/detail/2021/what-you-need-...
I don’t think it’s fair to say valve is late to the party, if anything they are first. There is a distinct difference between consoles games and pc games, the steam deck focuses on bringing pc games to a portable format, that opens the door to an almost endless supply of cheap indie games, as well as the potential for large AAA titles like Assassins Creed. The best part? Unlike Nintendo or PlayStation you don’t have to buy the game again if it’s already in your steam library, outside of Xbox play anywhere it’s the first time players don’t have to repurchase a game in order to play it on a portable device.
I agree that's a nice perk and I also regularly pay more to have my games in Steam rather than somewhere else, because it usually just works and keeps on working with Steam era games. My issues were mostly with pre-online era games where I still owned the actual CD.
It would've been nice if I could just play my old N64 games for free, but I also didn't feel cheated that I had to pay for the ported versions again.
If whole generations of gamers will buy them regardless, why should they change it?
Even after shitting hard on their customers, gamers are still voting Nintendo with their wallets.
Edit: I looked it up, it requires the subscription and updated my comment accordingly.
I'm sure there are some people out there that are passionate about this but I can't imagine it being anything more than a small minority of video game buyers. There are certainly other ways the Steam Deck could be disruptive though.
And in fact it’s actually worse given that many titles are available digital only.
But I am probably still going to buy breath of the wild 2, so I still need a switch...
The quality requirements of the Nintendo's storefront are ridiculously low. I've seen footage of the Switch WWE game and frankly it should never have been allowed into any store front, let alone the one people expect to be better.
There are plenty of platformers out there, but only one company can use Mario. The games on the Switch are pricey, but the console is affordable, making it excellent for multiplayer gaming.
I don't think it has a lower price and better games in practice. They did manage to corner the portable gaming space with their 3DS and Switch, which all major competitors abandoned. Now they're at risk of losing that too.
Sure, a three year-old Pokemon game might still cost $40, but you have a cartridge you can resell and get almost all of that money back (or even more, if you're happy to wait a few years). With Steam, every dollar you spend is gone forever.
What annoys me more are cartridges that (literally) require an additional online download. But even then, game covers are pretty clear about the requirement. I avoid those games.
I think their complaint is actually valid in these instances. You're paying top dollar and only getting a digital code. Pretty raw deal, if you ask me.
Not that Steam is a bastion of quality (or necessarily has a better ratio of decent:shovelware titles), but by the numbers, it definitely takes the crown for quantity of decent titles (if for no other reason than it having been around much longer).
Doesn't even look that bad to me compared to what Sony accepts, ranging from "life of black tiger" to Cyberpunk 2077's PS4 release.
Lower price, yes, but better games? Different games, sure but I wouldn't call them better given that it can run almost everything a windows PC can.
I have a switch mainly for Nintendo titles.
The fact Nintendo even exists at all in the face of competitors orders of magnitude bigger is impressive.
Nintendo’s position is and always will be that you can only play their games on their platforms.
I have an actual physical NES, SNES, Genesis, N64, Gamecube, and Wii, along with games. The NES and SNES don't reliably run games anymore. I expect the others to eventually follow. And emulation provides better graphics, better features, portability (e.g. playing on a device you can travel with), creativity (romhacks, translations, etc). So yes, emulation can be used with games you actually own, and doing so has great advantages.
I'm not denying that is one use case, what I'm saying is that it's very unlikely it's the regular one.
Nintendo's argument is basically that even if that were true, just because you purchased it once doesn't give you the right to it indefinitely. You might disagree with that, but that's their stance (when you buy e-Shop games you don't even get access across Nintendo consoles).
Did I buy it or rent it? If I bought it then I damn well do have the right to it indefinitely.
One might claim that, and that claim should be rejected.
Really not well established, no. You may "know the deal" but the idea that your ownership is time limited by the life of the platform is unlikely to hold up well in a legal setting, IMHO.
Game producers would like to claim that all such uses are fundamentally illicit. The point of my comment was to reject that claim, not to claim that the majority of users are licit.
(There's a separate argument that I'd also make that all such uses should be entirely accepted, but that's an orthogonal argument that I'm not making here.)
Sure it is. Try extending this argument to every other kind of business. Most shops, for example, don’t let you take whatever you want off the shelves and promise to mail them a check later. Even if many people would be honest, enough wouldn’t that it would make their business unsustainable (or at least substantially less profitable). Therefore, they almost universally prohibit this.
That’s just one example among many. The logical conclusion of your argument is that it’s unacceptable for any business not to extend unlimited trust to all their customers unconditionally.
I agree that games that has been commercially available sometime in the last year shouldn't be pirated (and I'm not sure at what point in time after the last time it was commercially available that it becomes permissible, and so I haven't pirated any games, unless you count an unreleased in-progress demo of a game that got discovered, and which I have a physical copy of what the game eventually became).
But my hardware is mine. I can do what I want with it.
Why is there any notion of acceptability for a company’s rulings on how their copyrights should be protected?
From a legal perspective, there's not, companies can attack copyright infringement even if they don't do it in a moral or acceptable way.
However, from a legal perspective, emulators don't violate copyright and neither do videos teaching people how to use them. So if we want to talk about the acceptability of Nintendo claiming copyright on emulator videos, and if we want talk about the morality of emulating systems that are current-gen, and if we want to talk about the "typical use case" of emulation, then we're not really talking about laws anymore. In the context of those questions, it is valid to talk about whether or not a company's motivations are "acceptable", because we're not talking about legality.
The law is already settled on this point, building and distributing emulators is legal activity, even for current-generation systems. Social convention/responsibility are the only things people can debate about emulators. And legally speaking, at least a portion of these videos are probably fine (of course, Nintendo is unlikely to be called out on this because nobody wants to get sued even wrongfully over a Youtube video). We can debate whether or not they're responsible to make and post online, and we can debate whether or not they contribute to piracy, but legally they're probably not copyright infringement.
Nintendo is under no legal obligation to wield its copyright acceptably or responsibly, but also people who build emulators are under no legal obligation to make sure that no one pirates Nintendo games. I don't like how these conversations often get framed in a way where Nintendo is judged only on its legal obligations, but people who build and talk about emulators are judged on subjective social responsibilities that have nothing to do with the law.
We all felt the same way about SEGA in the early 90’s…
https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/sega-genesis-control...
I'll be buying a Deck in a few months when my preorder is ready to ship, but it's a niche product for tech enthusiasts while Nintendo makes mass market products for the general public.
It is if you want it to be, but it's also a plug-and-play handheld console for PC gamers, which is not a niche market. Yeah, it runs a Linux-based OS but it's not like the user has to install it. Yeah, tinkerers and hackers are gonna do crazy stuff with it, but the vast majority of users will simply exchange $400 for a thing that runs video games.
Best case scenario it is plug and play for Deck verified games bought on Steam. If you want to play a game you own on GOG or the Epic store that's already going to require some tinkering to get it working in handheld mode if the experience is anything like trying to get the steam controller to work with other stores on PC. Similarly anything not sold on Steam (Including any Ubisoft game or Blizzard game these days I think).
And all the parts of the Steam catalogue that just aren't verified to run well.
Is that a good definition?
> and you have to order it 6 months in advance since Valve can't make them in large quantities at the moment
Switches were, and other consoles still are, in short supply for a number of reasons the past two years. The deck was released a week ago amid a historic shortage of the key component and general supply chain issues. The PS5 is hard to get at MSRP, to say nothing of GPUs, something like a year and change after release. I wouldn't call those niche products.
> Best case scenario it is plug and play for Deck verified games bought on Steam.
Yes, this is the best case scenario. It's also the baseline use case that most people will go through and a revolutionary value add in the market. Steam is the most popular platform for PC games and the vast majority of peoples' libraries are on their platform, not Epic's or GOG's. People without much investment in the platform are probably not going to buy a product named the *Steam Deck*. And even for the minority of users that are heavily invested in smaller platforms, it's a step up from whatever other obscure options they have now. That Epic doesn't want their games to run on a competitor's hardware is unfortunate but it's not like the Switch games I payed out the behind for are ever going to run on Sony or Microsoft hardware.
All of this seems like a strange set of criticism to target it with - all other plug-and-play consoles on the market basically require buying new games in a locked ecosystem with no/little crossplatform capabilities and all other PC handhelds either suck or cost roughly three times as much.
For simple 2d games both should have 6-8 hours of battery life. From what I could find for Witcher 3 (moderately complex 3d, but not the very latest) steamdeck can run 4H, for Nintendo Switch the battery estimate as claimed by CD project red is 2.5 hours, but some newer materials suggest that on the new oled switch depending on mode it can 4-5H. And at least initially witcher3 on switch in portable mode was running at 540p resolution. So again no clear winner without properly controlled tests.
I really doubt it.
- It doesn't include a dock or any external controller without paying more. This was the entire pitch for the Switch
- It's more expensive and has worse battery life. Better graphics don't matter that much on a tiny screen. (Game Gear anyone?)
- Valve has a bad track record for committing to their own hardware. Remember how everyone also thought SteamOS was going to be the big takeover and it barely even happened?
- It runs linux. I run linux and love it, but running specific games, correctly interfacing with a variety of inputs and displays, it's just not going to be as smooth as a console with a dedicated OS. I'm guessing lots of people will install windows.
- Their marketing is basically non-existent next to Nintendo. It's impressive how successful Steam is without really marketing, but that won't fly in the console space. Having a successful console launch is incredibly hard. Nintendo only manages it about half the time.
- From what I've read, the emulation isn't perfect. Switch emulators even on desktop hardware can't necessarily handle every game well, why would the Steam Deck be able to?
You seem to be unaware that SteamOS was a a resounding success in its primary goal: to stop in its tracks Microsoft's plan to turn the Windows OS into a locked-down walled garden that would run only MS-approved software* (by threatening them to switch the majority of gamers to Linux). Microsoft has never attempted such thing again to the same extent, and even XBox games are largely PC compatible.
That Valve has learned a lot about porting Windows games to Linux and they went through all the early labor pains, so that a few years later they have a robust and stable platform for their new competitive device, is just icing on the cake.
* For a hint of this backstory, see https://www.pcworld.com/article/394953/why-does-the-steam-de...
> it's just not going to be as smooth as a console with a dedicated OS. I'm guessing lots of people will install windows.
This is a console with a dedicated OS (which just happens to be Windows retro-compatible, thanks to Valve's Proton layer). Given the success it looks set to have, publishers won't be able to afford not to optimize their future AAA games for the device.
They actually have a pretty good track record when it comes to long term support of their hardware. Steam Link and Steam Controller have been getting new features and updates even after becoming unavailable to buy, and from what I heard Index owners can't really complain either. You may be thinking about Steam Machines, but those weren't actually Valve's hardware at all.
> I'm guessing lots of people will install windows.
...and they'll quickly go back to SteamOS, as running Windows on a device like that will come with quite a lot of suffering.
did you miss the fact that they now sell undockable Switch versions?
> m guessing lots of people will install windows.
You will be surprised. A lot of customization went in steamOS that wont be easily done on a windows build
- I do wish I could take of the sides and plop the screen down like a Switch, mostly because it is cool. And it is less of a complete package without a dock, but if you don't want to play docked at least you aren't paying for e-waste.
- The Steam Deck is an enthusiasts device, I think the price is great for the hardware. And if graphics doesn't matter then with this enthusiast device you can lower the graphics and get comparable to switch battery life, or tune it to be better.
- The only hardware this applies to is the Steam machine, everything else is still supported, literally all of it is still supported with updates.
- With the steam deck verified system, they make you well aware when you are about to play a unsupported/unchecked title, if you stick to "verified" and "playable" then you'll have a console experience, one with more optional knobs to play with. Also installing windows on this thing would ruin so much of it.
- They have no marketing now, but after reservations are filled it does make sense to start having ads and maybe selling it in third party stores, we'll have to see.
- Emulation can only get better, it is just ARM.
I think this is the key point here. It might seem like I'm hating on the Steam Deck but I'm really not. I'll probably get one eventually, but IMO it's in no way a threat to the Switch.
The Steam Deck is like a Switch Pro, but not in the usual way the Pro naming is used, it is just more complex and for people who know what they are doing.
It is the Switch tech-enthusiast edition.
I would think if you kept the game shots short and incidental the copyright would be fair use.
It's time to redo the DMCA, but I fear the copyright industry has only gained a bigger foothold since the DMCA was written.
The reason why YouTube has such a robust Content ID system in the first place is inherently due to DMCA. The less automated DMCA complaints YouTube receives, the less damage control and legal overhead it will be as expenditure.
Fair Use is only a legal defense. It is not a requirement that YouTube host your content.
So they don't just want to make money off of it, they want every emulated Nintendo title to survive the same way Grand Theft Auto or Skyrim does, except it's just you buying it over and over again on the newest Nintendo console.
But my impression is that Nintendo is working super hard to keep game developers happy. And that includes working DRM. Sorry if you don't like it, but that's why you see so many games on Steam and so relatively few on Gog. And can you really fault studios who put in 100+ mio USD into financing a new game that they hate with a passion those people who play but don't pay?
Nintendo has to act strongly against emulation, or else their game development partners will be upset.
The other thing that I believe Nintendo is extremely concerned about is making things family safe. With an actual Switch, you can put it into kids mode, set a play timer, and safely hand it to your kid. That's also why they do not have a web browser.
What did you expect would happen with a video showing DRM removal, software piracy, and the ability to mix in adult content?
You can't give me the archivist argument that there's no other ways to experience these games.
Nintendo is not targeting the same market as the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck still looks too much like a prototype for me to want to buy it. A very large percentage of games available on Steam will simply not work on a steam deck. Nobody knows if it's even possible to get Microsoft Game Pass running on it, and for many PC gamers that's a significant percentage of your library. Nobody knows if other storefronts are going to play ball.
For example, I really wanted to play the HD. Tony hawk. But since Epic has an exclusive deal, I dusted off my PS4 and played it there.
Compare this to a Nintendo switch, it's a small game console for me to play Smash Bros and Advance Wars. It's a vastly more polished experience. I don't need to worry about Photon compatibility issues , I can just play a video game.
It's as if someone posted "Here's how you get Netflix for free", and Netflix filed a DMCA request against it. You can't call Netflix the bad guy here. Likewise Nintendo isn't monopolizing an essential service, you can enjoy other content. You just don't have a right to enjoy theirs without paying the entry fee.
For example, if you decide you don't want to buy a Mac, and then your Hackintosh gets your Apple account banned, you have no one to blame but yourself.
What do you mean nobody knows? Just install windows on it, and play your Gamepass games? Same with the Epic launcher.
>>It's as if someone posted "Here's how you get Netflix for free", and Netflix filed a DMCA request against it.
That's not even remotely comparable. May I remind you that in US Sony has lost the legal battle against Blem! Emulator, for this exact reason, and the court was explicit in its ruling - the games that you own can be played on other systems using emulators and Sony doesn't get to have a say in it.
>>You just don't have a right to enjoy theirs without paying the entry fee.
No one said anything about playing games without paying for them. That's your own interpretation.
>>Compare this to a Nintendo switch, it's a small game console for me to play Smash Bros and Advance Wars. It's a vastly more polished experience.
Literally no one is making you get rid of your switch. Enjoy the system and the experiences on it.
It's just what it is, you'd have to crack the DRM on it and that's already a violation of the DMCA.
Let's be honest for a second, almost no one who's running a switch emulator legally purchase those games, and then dumped those games to a file. Sure, it's possible but that's not what 99.9% of users are going to do.
You attempt to install Windows on a Steam Deck, but it looks like nothing works yet.
https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/install-windows-steam-de...
I don't live on the US and there's literally nothing illegal about dumping a switch ROM here. DMCA doesn't have any authority here. Besides, even in US you have the right to make a copy of the media you own and this particular scenario hasn't been tested in court so at best you are speculating.
>>Let's be honest for a second, almost no one who's running a switch emulator legally purchase those games, and then dumped those games to a file.
Where I live you can legally just download a copy of a game that you own and play that, nothing illegal about that.
>>Sure, it's possible but that's not what 99.9% of users are going to do.
Even then, that's not a reason for Nintendo to remove those videos from YouTube. Just like a video explaining how to use a torrent client shouldn't be removed, even though "probably" 99.9% of users use torrents to pirate content.
Did you forget the entire discussion last year about the takedown of Youtube-DL? Just because something might be used illegally doesn't make it illegal.
>>You attempt to install Windows on a Steam Deck, but it looks like nothing works yet
Right, that part I'll admit I wasn't aware of.
Not in the sense that we usually refer to "rights" in US law. The big tangle here is that Congress essentially passed one law that said making copies is only legal under one set of conditions, then passed a different law saying that breaking DRM is only legal under a different set of conditions.
Additionally, YouTube has a right to act in their own best interest. Nintendo also runs advertising on various Google products, if responding to their DCMA request makes it easier for Google to turn a profit, why not?
Actually, taking the DMCA and Youtube policies out of the conversation for a moment—what is the legality of something like this? It's not illegal to share instructions on how to make a bomb, right?
Depends on the country, I think many countries have terrorism laws that this might contravene now. I would expect that to be illegal in the UK for a start, probably most of Europe.
Something something that's capitalism.
But seriously, what do we do as responsible consumers and voters to prevent this? Should there be a measurable penalty for knowingly lying on DMCA takedown orders, something proportional to the estimation of attempted damages caused? It's obviously anticompetitive, but can anything be done?
For example I am a Zelda and Metroid fan (by “fan” I mean “someone that enjoys playing those games”), but I don’t think I’ve ever cared about any video game to the point of actually subjecting myself to any suffering. I know even more diehard friends than me that happily use emulators for games that they can’t find/afford.
Maybe there is a masochistic style of being a fan that someone can choose to subscribe to, but it’s not clear that it’s Nintendo’s fault that one would make such a choice.
The Steam deck doesn't just threaten the outdated hardware of the switch in terms of games and gaming performance, it threatens Nintendo's platform on its own turf.
Nintendo can't compete with the Steam deck on hardware terms or even game availability. Brand exclusives and a low console price are all it's got, and they seem to know that that's not enough to keep all of their customers glued to their platform.