Nintendo doesn’t care if you emulate old games on stream.
They do if it’s a live event which I don’t really get. Modded smash bros is just not okay at live events but hacked Mario World was at GDQ.
All that aside these games were not only new, but unreleased. He literally could have contributed to lost sales from potential buyers watching the games before they were released.
If they went after some SMW hacker emulating a three decade old game, sure. But they didn’t.
I don’t normally victim-blame, but streaming an unreleased game is really asking for it.
It’s one thing to pirate a game for yourself. That’s just called being poor or being someone who doesn’t believe in copyright. The only party who can argue they’re being harmed is the developer, who may or may not have received a sale otherwise.
It’s another thing to pirate an unreleased game and stream it for others. If you do that and receive ad revenue or donations, you’re profiting off of someone else’s work. Not only that, but you’re also harming the console modding community by incentivizing the publisher to go after homebrew developers and emulator developers. It wasn’t a coincidence that shortly after some asshat streamed an unreleased Zelda game being played on Yuzu, Nintendo decided to finally come down on the emulator with an iron fist.
In conclusion, between pirating a game to enjoy yourself and pirating a game to play on a for-profit streaming platform, one of those two things is morally gray and the other is someone being a selfish fuck.
I got banned from Xbox live until year 9999 cause one of the Halo games leaked and I had a modded Xbox. I didn’t play online and I didn’t stream anything. But my account it accrued achievements. And those fuckers are dated. Lol. Connected the ol Xbox 360 back to the internet to watch Netflix a few months later not thinking about it. And RIP lol
Not only that, but you’re also harming the console modding community by incentivizing the publisher to go after homebrew developers and emulator developers. It wasn’t a coincidence that shortly after some asshat streamed an unreleased Zelda game being played on Yuzu, Nintendo decided to finally come down on the emulator with an iron fist.
There’s plenty of ways to stop piracy, Nintendo just doesn’t want you to play outside their walled garden. They could choose to facilitate emulation and let you buy their games from emulators and prevent piracy while not hindering emulation. They could choose to port their games to other platforms. But no, they crack down on emulation because it hurts their bottom line if people don’t have to buy a switch - or whatever to play their games. Fuck Nintendo.
Don’t get me wrong: Nintendo deserves no sympathy here. They could do many things to make their games more accessible, but they chose not to.
That’s not to say asshats like this deserves any either, though. The homebrew community and emulator developers step in to make Switch software interoperable, and they end up being the ones getting screwed over by both Nintendo and the people who provoked Nintendo.
This is my problem with your argument, you’re saying that because of piracy they’re entitled to crack down on emulation. Piracy is just a pretext they’re using here. Emulation is legal and yet they’re doing everything in their power to stop it from happening, this has nothing to do with piracy.
Unfortunately, it’s not that straightforward anymore. Emulation of modern consoles exists in a legal gray area that may or may not be illegal under the DMCA.
With something like the Switch, the ROMs are encrypted in a way that they can only be unencrypted with keys that are derived from data baked into the console itself. Yuzu for example is still protected as an emulator for some hardware/software platform, but it wouldn’t be able to run retail games without being able to decrypt the ROMs.
And that’s kind of the problem. Creating tools for preservation and interoperability is permitted by the DMCA, but tools that are made in part or whole to bypass DRM measures is explicitly not. That conflict hasn’t been tested in court either, so the first ruling is going to be the one that sets the precedent.
This is my problem with your argument, you’re saying that because of piracy they’re entitled to crack down on emulation.
My argument isnt that they’re entitled to crack down on emulation because of piracy. My argument is that people blatantly and publicly using emulators to play pirated, unreleased games emboldens Nintendo.
I believe Nintendo isn’t willing to test that gray area in court without having something to support their anti-emulation position. What they want to do is bully devs into settling because it’s a low-risk way to kill development on the emulator without opening up that can of worms that could make Switch emulators unambiguously legal. But, the more evidence Nintendo gets to support their argument, the more confident they become in thinking they would end up winning if they don’t get that settlement.
Keep in mind that when they did finally go after Yuzu’s devs, they went after them for creating software to circumvent the Switch’s DRM (that gray area I mentioned) and not for creating an emulator. If they were actually confident in thinking the legal answer to “is an emulator that decrypts ROMs illegal” was “yes,” they would’ve just went after Yuzu a long time ago instead of waiting 7 years into the console lifestyle.
Broadcasting spoilers to an audience tuned in to an unscripted live stream play of an unreleased game on the Internet. I don’t get the impression spoilers were much of a concern in the first place.
When you play a game on release date that wasn’t leaked, spoilers and stuff surface on the internet at an average pace. Players who wait a long time to play the game will have this similar experience.
Leaked content spreads like wildfire as the posters know it’ll most likely be taken down, and well, streisand effect. All communities for the game will be flooded with untagged spoilers before the game is even out. I bet that streamer was basically speedrunning the games to leak as much as possible, which most players who just enjoy the game won’t do.
Either way, the money asked for is a lot, yes, however pirating and broadcasting unreleased games is a very stupid crime.
This argument is nonsense. Why don’t they go after regular review channels and streamers? What difference does it make that the game is streamed before release vs after?
Nintendo isn’t your friend. Every minute you waste defending their honor online can instead be spent finding real friends IRL
Before release is before everyone gets a chance at playing it themselves. This person also isn’t a professional reviewer or journalist so their content isn’t beneficial to the consumer either. Before also releases spoilers that will be near impossible to avoid once they’re out. And what’s the point of playing the hot new game if you already know the story?
I call Nintendo my angel of salvation and the mother I never had, but I’m just being realistic. Streaming (actually) pirated new games actually does cause damage. Most likely not as much as Nintendo is suing for, but damages nonetheless.
If they were suing for streaming Super Mario World romhacks, especially in 2025 where SMW is old enough to be a dad or the United States President, and is NOT being actively sold, then yeah, I’d disagree. Even if one were to pull “but it’s on Switch Online” or some silly nonsense.
You’re actually unwell then. Seek professional help because Nintendo is not your friend. This is going to blow up in your face some day, and it is going to end poorly for you.
Mental health issues are complicated and suicide is awful, and idk you or your situation. Whatever happened, it’s good that you’re still here, but this religious devotion to a corporation is fucking disgusting. When you find out that Nintendo employees laugh at people like you during their lunch breaks, will you still feel like they’re your angels? How much labor have you given to them, both in the form of money you earned to buy their products, and online activity to defend their honor?
Don’t give yourself to a corporation like this. If you were saved, Nintendo weren’t the ones who did it.
Nintendo doesn’t care if you emulate old games on stream.
They do if it’s a live event which I don’t really get. Modded smash bros is just not okay at live events but hacked Mario World was at GDQ.
All that aside these games were not only new, but unreleased. He literally could have contributed to lost sales from potential buyers watching the games before they were released.
If they went after some SMW hacker emulating a three decade old game, sure. But they didn’t.
I don’t normally victim-blame, but streaming an unreleased game is really asking for it.
It’s one thing to pirate a game for yourself. That’s just called being poor or being someone who doesn’t believe in copyright. The only party who can argue they’re being harmed is the developer, who may or may not have received a sale otherwise.
It’s another thing to pirate an unreleased game and stream it for others. If you do that and receive ad revenue or donations, you’re profiting off of someone else’s work. Not only that, but you’re also harming the console modding community by incentivizing the publisher to go after homebrew developers and emulator developers. It wasn’t a coincidence that shortly after some asshat streamed an unreleased Zelda game being played on Yuzu, Nintendo decided to finally come down on the emulator with an iron fist.
In conclusion, between pirating a game to enjoy yourself and pirating a game to play on a for-profit streaming platform, one of those two things is morally gray and the other is someone being a selfish fuck.
I got banned from Xbox live until year 9999 cause one of the Halo games leaked and I had a modded Xbox. I didn’t play online and I didn’t stream anything. But my account it accrued achievements. And those fuckers are dated. Lol. Connected the ol Xbox 360 back to the internet to watch Netflix a few months later not thinking about it. And RIP lol
There’s plenty of ways to stop piracy, Nintendo just doesn’t want you to play outside their walled garden. They could choose to facilitate emulation and let you buy their games from emulators and prevent piracy while not hindering emulation. They could choose to port their games to other platforms. But no, they crack down on emulation because it hurts their bottom line if people don’t have to buy a switch - or whatever to play their games. Fuck Nintendo.
Don’t get me wrong: Nintendo deserves no sympathy here. They could do many things to make their games more accessible, but they chose not to.
That’s not to say asshats like this deserves any either, though. The homebrew community and emulator developers step in to make Switch software interoperable, and they end up being the ones getting screwed over by both Nintendo and the people who provoked Nintendo.
This is my problem with your argument, you’re saying that because of piracy they’re entitled to crack down on emulation. Piracy is just a pretext they’re using here. Emulation is legal and yet they’re doing everything in their power to stop it from happening, this has nothing to do with piracy.
Unfortunately, it’s not that straightforward anymore. Emulation of modern consoles exists in a legal gray area that may or may not be illegal under the DMCA.
With something like the Switch, the ROMs are encrypted in a way that they can only be unencrypted with keys that are derived from data baked into the console itself. Yuzu for example is still protected as an emulator for some hardware/software platform, but it wouldn’t be able to run retail games without being able to decrypt the ROMs.
And that’s kind of the problem. Creating tools for preservation and interoperability is permitted by the DMCA, but tools that are made in part or whole to bypass DRM measures is explicitly not. That conflict hasn’t been tested in court either, so the first ruling is going to be the one that sets the precedent.
My argument isnt that they’re entitled to crack down on emulation because of piracy. My argument is that people blatantly and publicly using emulators to play pirated, unreleased games emboldens Nintendo.
I believe Nintendo isn’t willing to test that gray area in court without having something to support their anti-emulation position. What they want to do is bully devs into settling because it’s a low-risk way to kill development on the emulator without opening up that can of worms that could make Switch emulators unambiguously legal. But, the more evidence Nintendo gets to support their argument, the more confident they become in thinking they would end up winning if they don’t get that settlement.
Keep in mind that when they did finally go after Yuzu’s devs, they went after them for creating software to circumvent the Switch’s DRM (that gray area I mentioned) and not for creating an emulator. If they were actually confident in thinking the legal answer to “is an emulator that decrypts ROMs illegal” was “yes,” they would’ve just went after Yuzu a long time ago instead of waiting 7 years into the console lifestyle.
By allowing consumers to be better informed of what they might have otherwise purchased?
Well yeah, that will be their argument and legally it’s a good argument.
By broadcasting spoilers and making playing the game pointless.
Broadcasting spoilers to an audience tuned in to an unscripted live stream play of an unreleased game on the Internet. I don’t get the impression spoilers were much of a concern in the first place.
There’s never a point in playing a game if you can’t beat it the same day it is released, by that stupid argument.
When you play a game on release date that wasn’t leaked, spoilers and stuff surface on the internet at an average pace. Players who wait a long time to play the game will have this similar experience.
Leaked content spreads like wildfire as the posters know it’ll most likely be taken down, and well, streisand effect. All communities for the game will be flooded with untagged spoilers before the game is even out. I bet that streamer was basically speedrunning the games to leak as much as possible, which most players who just enjoy the game won’t do.
Either way, the money asked for is a lot, yes, however pirating and broadcasting unreleased games is a very stupid crime.
You can avoid these kind of spoilers without much difficulty.
I still don’t even know what game he was playing when he got caught.
This argument is nonsense. Why don’t they go after regular review channels and streamers? What difference does it make that the game is streamed before release vs after?
Nintendo isn’t your friend. Every minute you waste defending their honor online can instead be spent finding real friends IRL
Before release is before everyone gets a chance at playing it themselves. This person also isn’t a professional reviewer or journalist so their content isn’t beneficial to the consumer either. Before also releases spoilers that will be near impossible to avoid once they’re out. And what’s the point of playing the hot new game if you already know the story?
I call Nintendo my angel of salvation and the mother I never had, but I’m just being realistic. Streaming (actually) pirated new games actually does cause damage. Most likely not as much as Nintendo is suing for, but damages nonetheless.
If they were suing for streaming Super Mario World romhacks, especially in 2025 where SMW is old enough to be a dad or the United States President, and is NOT being actively sold, then yeah, I’d disagree. Even if one were to pull “but it’s on Switch Online” or some silly nonsense.
Upvoting just for this.
Nintendo actually saved my life, not joking or exaggerating.
You’re actually unwell then. Seek professional help because Nintendo is not your friend. This is going to blow up in your face some day, and it is going to end poorly for you.
Mental health issues are complicated and suicide is awful, and idk you or your situation. Whatever happened, it’s good that you’re still here, but this religious devotion to a corporation is fucking disgusting. When you find out that Nintendo employees laugh at people like you during their lunch breaks, will you still feel like they’re your angels? How much labor have you given to them, both in the form of money you earned to buy their products, and online activity to defend their honor?
Don’t give yourself to a corporation like this. If you were saved, Nintendo weren’t the ones who did it.
I call them out when they actually do something wrong. And yes, they really did save my life, far more than just saving me from suicide.