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Comment by aurareturn | Hacker News Reader

I'm probably the only person on HN who sympathizes with Nintendo. I think the law should be stronger against internet piracy without hurting other freedom.

Let's be real. I'm guessing only 1% will rip the ROM off their purchased cartridge and play on an emulator. The 99% will pirate games they never purchased.

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Either way your so called "piracy" helps preserve the games and keep them playable for much longer.

IIRC NES, SNES, and Game Boy cartridges have a battery for game saves that eventually needs to be replaced.

The point is a good one though: can we preserve the games so that they'll be playable hundreds of years (or more?!) from now, much as we can still play tabletop games from antiquity (backgammon, 9 man morris, chess, mancala, go, senet, etc.?) Whether the cyborgs of the 25th century will still want to play Mario Kart is unknown however.

It does, and "preserving" Switch games that aren't even out yet doesn't constitute preservation. See Yuzu case where they specifically used leaked copies of Zelda games to make those compatible with the emulator, while accepting financial retribution. Sometimes the hypocrisy is just too blatent for companies not to care.

The interesting question to me is how piracy (or unlicensed downloads) affects the company. In many cases, it seems like it has little effect at all.

Are people really going to stop subscribing to Switch Online because NES ROMs are readily available for emulators?

What I think might (?) have some impact on Nintendo is downloading Switch games for execution on competing handhelds like the Steam Deck.

Yuzu and Ryujinx are the real threats to its business as a number of highly anticipated game titles have been leaked and pirated several days (if not weeks) before their releases. This is not acceptable for both the developers and legit purchasers. I actually suspect that the recent Zelda title leak (2 weeks before its release) was the main motivation of recent takedown of Ryujinx.

I have read comments from game developers that copy protection, and anti-piracy tech, does seem to have a significant and positive effect on a game's sales for the first few days after release, which seems to be a hugely important window in a market with a short attention span and a constant flood of new games.

I agree that the big deal that Nintendo must be worried about is Switch emulation and piracy/leaks of new games before or close to release.

On the other hand (refuting my GP speculation perhaps), are Switch (and Switch game) sales really going to tank because pirates can run Zelda on Steam Decks? Regular Zelda fans who can afford one probably own a Switch already, are planning on buying a Switch 2 (or an OLED Switch after a price drop), and preordered the game.

> Regular Zelda fans who can afford one probably own a Switch already, are planning on buying a Switch 2 (or an OLED Switch after a price drop), and preordered the game.

This might be true, but only represents part of the sales — there are many potential buyers who are not “regular Zelda fans” and who may end up not buying the game if they can find a pirated copy.

I think more importantly: anyone who looks at the Switch as another computer they can buy will see it is worse than the Steam Deck by basically any metric including the Switch's own games running much better with higher resolutions and framerates plus all the QoL enhancements emulators add.

There's very little reason to buy-into a proprietary handheld that will restrict your usage and repairability and compel you to pay the highest possible prices for games, if you can enjoy those games without that hardware.

I don't know how many consumers are savvy enough to make that comparison but Nintendo are in an extraordinary vulnerable position already - and the Switch 2 will have to contend with two future generations of the Steam Deck as well!

Your comment about the effect on customers is interesting. I could see that as a Switch owner I might be a bit disappointed/envious to see the game running on other systems before I get my hands on it legitimately? Maybe it deflates the excitement a bit, especially if it is widely publicized. On the other hand, I'm still probably going to buy the game and enjoy playing it.

> a number of highly anticipated game titles have been leaked and pirated several days (if not weeks) before their releases

Do they ever find out which stores or developers are leaking the games? Maybe they should have better control over how they ship new games to stores if they insist on shipping physical media...

i can’t imagine having sympathy for some foreign megacorp hellbent on controlling every way you interact with a game their employees made. fuck nintendo, maybe they shouldn’t release complex software exclusive to an underpowered piece of shit that can’t even run ps4 games at 1080p60 if they don’t want people to prefer a superior experience

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