• jordanlund@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    “the harm caused by this software was “manifest and irreparable.””

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Tears_of_the_Kingdom

    "More than 10 million copies of Tears of the Kingdom were sold in its first three days of release, making it the fastest-selling game in The Legend of Zelda franchise, as well as the fastest selling Nintendo game in the Americas with over four million copies sold in the US alone.[50][51] 

    Tears of the Kingdom sold over 2.24 million copies within its first three days of release in Japan, 1.1 million being physical copies.[52][53] 

    By December 2023, the game had sold 20.28 million copies worldwide.[54] 

    In August 2023, it was reported that the sales of Tears of the Kingdom may have boosted the gross domestic product of Japan, with a 2.8% increase in consumer spending in the semi-durable goods sector during April to August 2023, which included video games.[55]"

    • Poggervania@kbin.social
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      9 months ago

      the harm caused by this software was “manifest and irreparable.”

      Except it’s arguably not, because it’s not like the 1 million copies of the game was stolen and could not be sold anymore. The game is still available for sale, and it is still making them money - all people did was pirate a single copy of the game 1 million times.

      Also, if they sold 20.8 million units, and assuming every single instance of pirating was done by people who did not buy the game (read: lots of people bought a legal copy and “pirated” it anyways for better performance on Yuzu), they lost out on 5% revenue as of this time of writing.

      Very sad Nintendo couldn’t sell another $60 million worth of games /s

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        Yup. I’d buy a digital copy of TotK if I could play it on my PC, but Nintendo doesn’t offer that, so I either need to buy it for Switch, or pirate it. I found BotW kinda lame (I much prefer Skyward Sword and Link’s Awakening), so I’m not motivated to buy it for Switch, especially since I’ve seen reports of mediocre performance.

        So yeah, I don’t feel bad for Nintendo at all here. If they made their games available on PC for a reasonable price, I’m sure many would buy their games twice, once on Switch and once on PC. Their loss I guess…

        • Nexz@feddit.nl
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          8 months ago

          Im not in bed with Nintendo here, as I very much disagree with their aggressive stance against emulators and such - but I do believe that your argument ‘they don’t release it for PC so I’m gonna pirate’ doesn’t hold up. You can still support the people creating the games (which give you lots of hours of entertainment) by buying a copy for the Swtich. Some countries even allow you to back up your game cartridge and play it on PC so you’d be completely within your rights even.

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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            8 months ago

            I never said I’d pirate, I said I’m not going to buy the game.

            I’d only be within my rights if I actually backed up the game, but I don’t have a rooted Switch, so that’s not an option for be currently. It’s easier to just not buy the game.

      • 🔍🦘🛎@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Article states that the 1M copies were downloaded before the game even came out. There’s certainly an argument to be made about lost revenue there.
        But of course, Yuzu is in no way responsible, and you could argue the majority of downloads weren’t intending to buy anyway, so lost revenue is likely very small.

  • Euphorazine@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I feel like everyone is missing the line that says “before it came out”. However, I find that hard to believe that 1 million people played a pirated copy before the release date and i can’t remember any leaked gameplay or screenshots.

    • PriorityMotif@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      They probably mean in regions it wasn’t available in yet, which is a key reason people would pirate. If they just made the game available everywhere then they wouldn’t have these problems.

      • DeadOfMind@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Nope, 2 weeks before tears of the kingdoms worldwide May 12 release, someone uploaded it to torrents.

    • stardust@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      Can’t even blame emulation as the main culprits playing it either with first gen switches being able to be jailbroken and hardware mods existing for current ones.

      • Euphorazine@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I do think Yuzu should win. I’m in favor of emulation. I just read all the comments being like “I only emulated after I bought it for the 1080p 60fps”. Which wasnt in line with what the article was asserting.

  • Mr PoopyButthole@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    I love it when companies think the (often invented) number of pirated copies has any meaningful correlation to lost revenue.

    My girlfriend and I have one Nintendo Switch. We share it. But the only modern Nintendo games I play are the Legend of Zelda series. Since Breath of the Wild, when a new one came out, we’d buy it right away, and then I’d end up placing a copy on my PC to play so we could play together.

    If Nintendo thinks I’m gonna buy a game twice just to play at the same time as my partner, when we only have the one console, think again. If Nintendo thinks someone who only likes one game is gonna buy a whole second console, they’re out of their minds.

    What I do own is a Steam Deck, because Steam is a platform first and I can play my games on my fancy PC at home and on multiple devices. My Steam Deck can even play non-steam games great too!

    The second Nintendo makes a PC store that let’s me play their games on my other hardware, I’ll start buying that second copy of all our games solely for the convenience of it. Until then they can suck an egg.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      8 months ago

      Yup, if Nintendo sold their games for PC, I’d probably buy some games twice. The Switch is really good for couch MP, so I’ll still buy Mario Kart, Mario Party, etc for the Switch. It’s okay for SP games, but I honestly prefer my Steam Deck, so I almost never buy third party titles for Switch.

      I spend $100-150/year on Nintendo stuff, and I spend well more than that on Steam. If Nintendo first party games worked on PC, I’d probably double the amount I buy from Nintendo.

  • demonquark@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    Oh my, that’s terrible. If anyone were to tell me however one could do something so dastardly, I would totally take active steps to avoid ever pirating the game.

    • photonic_sorcerer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      8 months ago

      They’d never open up to the PC market. Their whole business is based on selling their propreitary hardware.

      Also, that would open the floodgates for modding. Nintendo hates modding.

      • filcuk@lemmy.zip
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        8 months ago

        But their switch is crap. Breaks constantly, is low power, the software is painful (IMO), games are expensive, and save game backup is a subscription.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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          8 months ago

          My experience:

          • never breaks
          • low power - irrelevant for the games we get for it
          • software is fine
          • save game backup - I don’t need it

          Here’s where I’m disappointed:

          • parental controls - need to use an app for most features, and they’re still disappointing; I just want what the Steam Deck has
          • games are expensive - I’d spend far more if games were cheaper; net result is I use my Steam Deck and PC far more, the Switch is just for exclusives

          But that’s about it. If they sold games for PC, they’d get more of my money, especially if I could swap between PC and Switch. I spend far more on games for my Steam Deck than for my Switch (I get like 2-3 Switch games, and like 20+ Steam games per year).

          • ABC123itsEASY@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Nah TOTK runs like garbage on the switch compared to it’s potential you can say it ‘doesnt matter’ but it’s a mess. I played for a couple hours on my actual switch but got so annoyed with the horrendous aliasising of shadows and jagged camera movement that I stopped and spent a couple days of free time setting up yuzu on my PC. The difference is NIGHT and DAY! You are just sitting in Nintendo’s cave watching shadows on the wall if you think it doesn’t matter. The difference is in fact enormous it just might not matter to you.

            • ProfessorProteus@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              IIRC it runs worse than BotW which is kind of shocking to me. I mean, yeah the game is much larger in scope, but it runs on the same engine, and you’d think they would have been able to optimize the hell out of it.

              I started my TotK playthrough a few weeks ago and I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been taken out of the experience when the FPS dips below like 10. And this is with no action happening in the scene. Not to take anything away from the overall product—the game is magnificent—but I’m really curious as to what their lower bound was in terms of acceptable performance.

              I haven’t been bothered by any shadows, and I think the camera is quite nice (so far), but I’m right there with you regarding emulation. Pretty soon I’m gonna try to dump my own cart and get it working on a more capable machine. I don’t need 4K res, or AA, or texture filtering. Just let me get a little immersed without poor hardware standing in my way. And if I want to play it on the go, I’ll use my Deck.

              • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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                8 months ago

                BotW was mostly tolerable for me, though some parts felt a less smooth. But I honestly didn’t like the game all that much, so when TotK was released, I bought Skyward Sword and Link’s Awakening instead and enjoyed them much more than BotW. Both of those run fine, and while I don’t know FPS, they’re probably stable 30FPS.

                I almost always play docked though, and it runs on my 4k TV (so upscaling). The art style of most Nintendo games look fine when upscaled, so I’m more concerned about smoothness of the gameplay. If TotK doesn’t run at 30FPS stable when docked, I’m not interested at all. I’m already not particularly interested in the general game design (I like dungeons and boss fights, and BotW was disappointing in both), so I don’t see much reason to go out of my way to get a pleasant experience.

                • ProfessorProteus@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  I feel ya. The two most recent titles are anything but the traditional Zelda experience. I do love open-world games though, so I’m cool with both of them. But I do miss the classic Zelda adventure game, where every location has its own theme music and more emphasis is placed on the temples/dungeons. It’s a shame Aonuma said that the future of the series is open-world, but honestly it’s amazing that they’ve been able to keep it fairly fresh, if a bit formulaic, for 30+ years.

          • filcuk@lemmy.zip
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            8 months ago

            That’s fair. It is popular for a reason, even if I don’t see it myself.

        • Jimmycakes@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          You don’t have to list all the highlight features Nintendo uses as selling points we know what a switch is

        • Benaaasaaas@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          What nintendo hears

          Breaks constantly - Money

          Low power - Less costs

          Software is painful - Less costs?

          Games are expensive - Money

          Game save backup as a service - MONEY

        • samus12345@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Past experience has shown that you’re probably correct. There are lots of people who pirate games, but there are more who will pay for them if they’re good. Many do both.

      • fibojoly@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        Nintendo is not ready for the Mario cast naked mods. They most likely never will. I’m surprised there is even any Nintendo IP hentai floating around at all, really.
        Can’t say I blame them for that, really.

    • butiloveu@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      From a business prospective, If your whole idea is to sell your console as often as possible it’s not a good idea to make your games work on every platform. Console exclusives are a big part of the selling strategie.

      Also, as always, if you own the money you should buy a game to show support (especially if it’s an indie title). But when it’s an old game owned by a company who still thinks we are in the 90s. Which dosen’t want to sell the game to you anymore but at the same time forbids everyone from making a copy of the said game, you should absolutely pirate it.

      It’s sometimes the only form of game preservation we have.

      If we somehow discover a second library of Alexandria and it also turns out that infringes on a Nintendo IP, I have no doubt that Nintendo will burn it down immediately.

        • butiloveu@lemmy.ml
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          8 months ago

          This could be the case if we would talk about one game. But the whole Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, Kirby, Metroid and etc. Franchises are exclusive on Nintendo and they are objektiv good games (maybe pokemon has fallen of but it’s still a money grab) you don’t have that many exclusives on PS4 and 5 and Xbox one and X/S together. And it shows. The Switch and Switch light still outsells Sony and Microsoft consoles.

          My friend group got switches mainly because of pokemon. But I dropped it for other games because Gamefreak underdeliverd IMHO.

          Also we know that Nintendo is overprotective about their IPs. I guess they think that if they solely sell their games on their closed system they can decrease the chance of pirating. And it’s not far fetched because you need a decent PC to emulate and play switch games. Also know how on how to set it up. (which why I belive, that the onemillion is just a fantasy number from Nintendo in this case)

          Of course they would make a fortune selling their old games on pc. But it’s Nintendo we talking about, they are super conservative about things like that.

  • GlitterInfection@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Pirated, or downloaded a back up of a game they bought a physical copy of?

    All the people I know who emulated it also bought it in this case, because emulation was objectively a better experience for the game.

    I bought it and played in on the switch, myself, but if I ever did another playthrough I’d want to higher res of emulation.

  • clearleaf@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    That was mostly me. I put a copy on a clean 2tb hard drive and repeatedly hit Ctrl-A Ctrl-C Ctrl-V. Then when it was full I pressed Ctrl+A and Delete and started the process all over. I went mad with power and don’t even know how many copies I stole.

    Consider that your warning, Nintendo. Shut down Yuzu and I’ll activate the batch script.

  • randomaside@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    9 months ago

    I own a switch, I bought the game, Game runs like shit, Instead of returning it, I play it on yuzu

    I’m sure if they had their way anyone who backwards engineers a system like polymega or analogue would be next on their hit list.

    • BirdEnjoyer@kbin.social
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      9 months ago

      I actually paid someone to rip my WiiU BotW for me years ago because I like being legit legit, but most people either feel like its morally 100% fine to download a copy if they bought one, or don’t even know that its technically not legal.

      Ripping your own ROMs tends to put your system at risk of bricking or being banned from online play. Its just not a desirable thing to do, so fans who care enough about the game to see it run at q higher quality or with lovingly crafted mods are very likely the ones who already purchased the game and are downloading a new copy.

      I would love to see Yuzu run a poll to see how many people already purchased the game. Even if its anecdotal, maybe it would prove a point that people are crying out for more content and will go to illegal means to get it

      • hedgehog@ttrpg.network
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        8 months ago

        but most people either feel like its morally 100% fine to download a copy if they bought one, or don’t even know that its technically not legal.

        Morally speaking, why would backing up your own copy make a difference, assuming you bought a copy in either case?

        • Lesrid@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          Morally I would say it depends on how much the legal aspect is valued. Legally (where applicable) you’re supposed to use your own copy of the software to make the rom you use, ensuring you own both the hardware and the game.

          • hedgehog@ttrpg.network
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            8 months ago

            Laws should be heavily influenced by what is morally right and wrong, but morality as a concept is not influenced by laws. An individual’s or culture’s sense of morality might be, but if laws are derived from morals then that’s fine.

            Questions of morality will have different answers when the context changes, so it may be morally unacceptable in one society to do something and morally acceptable to do the same thing in another. Laws have an influence on morality only insofar as laws have an impact on the context in which actions take place. This would not be because the law prohibits those actions.

            Some examples:

            • If a law is passed outlawing sharing nonconsensual AI-generated pornography, it should be because it was agreed that doing so is morally wrong. The law being passed doesn’t make it suddenly morally wrong.
            • If a law were passed making some completely innocuous action illegal, and frequently punished - say, hand-painting Nintendo or Disney characters on an interior wall in your own house - then posting publicly on someone’s Facebook wall about loving their Princess Peach X Princess Elsa mural would be morally wrong, even though it would have been fine to do that before the law was passed.

            The context that we have is that it is illegal (in the US) to:

            • distribute copyrighted materials
            • download copyrighted materials
            • bypass DRM even when making a backup, except for specific purposes. With video games, unless you are circumventing DRM because the auth servers were taken down (inapplicable for the Switch) or solely because you have a physical disability and are patching the game to support other input options (standard keyboard and mouse specifically excluded), then it is still illegal.

            So in either case you’d be doing something illegal. But morally, in a situation where you’ve purchased the game and are platform-shifting to an unsupported platform (like the “time-shifting” defense used with VHS recordings, DVRs, etc.), then the laws aren’t really relevant. The laws certainly don’t exist because there’s societal agreement that this type of platform shifting is morally wrong.

            The reason the person I replied to had to pay someone to rip his own game for him is because Nintendo makes it difficult to do so. Even if the law were different and allowed those actions, I don’t understand why anyone would think that it makes sense that a corporation can morally obligate their customers (who want to consume their product in a particular way) to perform work with no value add when the customers could get what they want by doing something much easier.

            Unless you’re actually causing harm (directly or indirectly) to someone by your actions in one instance but not the other, I don’t see how one option would be morally acceptable and the other morally wrong.

            If the game were supported on the other platform, then the context - and potentially the outcome - changes. If Nintendo invested a decent amount of money porting BotW to Android phones and it cost them a decent amount of money to do so, then would it be morally wrong to not support them and to emulate it instead? Would there be an ethical obligation to support them? What if the Android port was terrible - would it be acceptable to buy it, then use the emulated version anyway - and if you’d bought the Android version and were emulating it on Android, would there still be a moral or ethical obligation to purchase the same cart you were emulating? What if Nintendo just licensed or repackaged Yuzu and didn’t actually make any changes to the game, so their investment was minimal?

            It’s a different situation entirely when determining whether it’s morally wrong to host a site with freely downloadable ROMs. The site could be used by people who did not purchase those games, causing lost revenue to their creators.

            Both of those situations have grey areas and I can see why someone would consider them immoral. I have opinions on them, of course, but there’s a lot more nuance there; I can easily see why someone would feel differently.

            With this specific situation I don’t understand - and am trying to understand - how someone could come to different conclusions for the morality of the two actions. Are they inferring that you support the site hosting the content when you download it? (If you use an adblocker and don’t financially support them, would it then be fine?) Are they assuming torrenting, where you would have to either leech (which they would consider immoral) or seed, and thus distribute, as well? Or is there some other factor that I’m not thinking of?

        • BirdEnjoyer@kbin.social
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          8 months ago

          Depends, really. Some just feel squicky about breaking copyright law.

          NGL I kinda feel a bit obligated to be extra careful out of deference to a relative’s relationship to a lawyer, haha.

          But in general, I try to conduct myself in the model of the ideal world I want to live in, if I can.

          In the best world, there’s no piracy because everyone gets their fair dues, and users get fair access to their purchased goods. But I also ain’t judging others who do pirate or do other stuff with their own things, because we definitely don’t live in that world, and corporations do not deserve to have a monopoly on access to media like that.

          And, really, its just not right. As a fan of classic, old games, I can’t respect not technically pirating entirely, when it means the loss of amazing games. Like the amazing 3DS Virtual Boy emulation projects! Or just soooo many classic, otherwise lost adventure games.

          I’m probably not going to wind up playing those, but the world is worse if not for people technically pirating.

  • Crampon@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I have a GameCube, Wii, Wii u, 3DS and a switch with multiple games on all. I’ve also used emulators to play modded Zelda games with increased performance.

    Nintendo made shit ports on switch and took a premium. They can get royally fucked.

    They are not losing revenue from piracy. Stupid greedy orcs.

  • jaschen@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    If I was never planning on buying your game, does that mean you lost money?