You Are All Pirates (According To The Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association)
Wow, that's a mouthful right there, isn't it? According to a recent statement in Scotland's The Sunday Post, John Hiller of the ELSPA (Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association) stated that we are all (mostly) pirates.
The implications are massive. In America it’s thought 90 per cent of Nintendo DS users are playing pirated games because of R4s. Takings from Nintendo DS games in the US are lower than any other console and no doubt it will have a similar impact here. That’s the real danger — you may think you’re getting a good deal but using the R4 is risking the future of the games industry.
Kudos on that outlandish statistic, 90% of us use the R4 to pirate software. Working on a sample (IE: everyone I've ever met) the number of people I've seen with one of these is a big zero. The article reeks of fear mongering, essentially he's trying to get anti-piracy laws changed in Scotland by scaring the crap out of game retailers, which can in turn lobby the government to make third party bootable DS cartridges illegal. After all, if they outlaw these, it would increase their potential profits by 900%.
Asterick
Posted to Video Games on 31 January 2008
· Comments (30)
Other stuff like this: be afraid, DS, ELSPA, fear mongering, Nintendo, Piracy, R4 revolution, Scotland
Wasn't there a similar, fearmongering, pirating story a few months back? Wonder if it is from the same group.
All I know is that if I am playing pirated games, I had no idea that those factory sealed boxes contain such illegal contents.
I don't understand, what is this R4 and how is it used?
I think this is appropriate for this situation.
http://piratelazytown.ytmnd.com/
Aw, now I feel lonely because I'm only like 10% of DS owners...
"Takings from Nintendo DS games in the US are lower than any other console"
Is this what they are using to assume that 90% pirate? That they sell a lot less games per console for DS than other console games? Well, you know that could be because DS is marketed towards casual gamers (as is the Wii, but with the shortage it's not getting to all those gamers) and they don't want to buy a ton of games. I doubt they're pirating. Hopefully, their info is not based on that statement.
I'll admit that I am a Pirate, but I am using a G6 Real. Either way, I do own legal copies of some of the game and most of the others I wouldn't buy anyway. (Or thats what I tell myself to justify it) That being said, I have only run into two other DS users with flash carts: my friend (who always manages to convince me to buy one) and my Mom, who didn't want to lose all of her little plastic games. (Also, she owns the games that she has on her cart)
thanks for telling the other 10% of us about the R4 card, Mr. Hitler...er...Hiller...!
90% in America? Really? I know anyone with an R4 in Hong Kong/China area I know of are not buying DS games because of it. 90% would be about right over there, but America?
An R4, for those of you who don't know, allows you to play DS roms on your DS via a mini SD card. Owning one of these isn't bad - but it does allow for piracy - imagine a tape recorder. However, I'm not saying that an R4 doesn't have legimate uses.
While the article here is a bit on the exaggerated side, the point is valid. If you want to play a game, you should buy it. There is simply no excuse to pirate anything on the DS. The thing is region free and DS games are among the cheapest games currently commercially available in stores.
To any pirates here: Thanks for your nonsupport. By not paying for your games, you've gone out of your way to ensure that we don't make any more games like the ones you stole. Congrats! I hope you don't want us to make any more games though. Because unless our game sells (torrents don't count to our publisher), you won't be seeing anything more.
This is another reason why companies love the "casual" market on the DS: They pay for what they play.
"Thanks for your nonsupport. By not paying for your games, you've gone out of your way to ensure that we don't make any more games like the ones you stole. Congrats! I hope you don't want us to make any more games though. Because unless our game sells (torrents don't count to our publisher), you won't be seeing anything more."
Also, for all you guys who rent games, or borrow them from friends, thanks for your nonsupport. By not paying for the game, you make sure similar games won't be made anymore. Don't let your friends borrow games! Burn down rental stores! Do it for video games!
/sarcasm
Uh yeah, I've never even heard of this thing.
I guess I'm in the lucky 10%.
"Thanks for your nonsupport. By not paying for your games, you've gone out of your way to ensure that we don't make any more games like the ones you stole. Congrats! I hope you don't want us to make any more games though. Because unless our game sells (torrents don't count to our publisher), you won't be seeing anything more."
Also, for all you guys who rent games, or borrow them from friends, thanks for your nonsupport. By not paying for the game, you make sure similar games won't be made anymore. Don't let your friends borrow games! Burn down rental stores! Do it for video games!
/sarcasm
I have one of these, if I paid for all my games I would be broke.
^ and if I had everything in the world that I wanted, I would be pretty broke too, or ridiculously rich. Just because you can't afford something doesn't mean you get to take it for free.
^ Well it's kinda been working for me so far.
"Also, for all you guys who rent games, or borrow them from friends..."
Did I say people shouldn't be able to rent/borrow games? No.
Renting and borrowing games (as long as it's not copied) is perfectly legal and still requires that somebody in the equation actually buys a copy of the game (be it your friend, gamefly, blockbuster, whatever). If people want to try out a game, there are plenty of legal ways to do so. But if "trying it out" means copying it, playing it for hours on end and not supporting the creators in any fashion, then we're talking about something else.
It's so sad that some people here, people that claim to enjoy/love games, will go so far out of their way to defend ripping off the people that provide them with one of their favorite pastimes. If you don't think this has serious and real consequences on a larger scale (including those in our GLBT community), you're fooling yourself.
Pirated copies require that the person who shares the game bought the game, in the same way that rental copies or borrowing from friends do. Where do we draw the line, can a friend lend it to two friends? Can he share it's rom with two friends? Can a game company rent it to 30 people? Can a person online share it with hundreds of people? What's the magic number that turns a company bankrupt? Or, is the method illegal and why?
But now your issue is legality, not about game company profit.
It's so sad that this company needs to lie about 90% of DS users are pirates in order to get their weak point across.
The game industry is not dying due to individuals who pirate games. The gaming industry IS thriving.
This R4 would be interesting to me if I was able to copy 3 or 4 of my games onto a single ROM, thus allowing me to NOT carry a bunch of ROMs on the plane and to be able to leave my originals in a safe place.
Is it possible to put several games on a single R4?
BTW, no game publisher has the right to tell me that I can't copy my rightfully purchased materials onto other media to protect my investment - and I don't care if the millennium act says otherwise!
David B.
This R4 would be interesting to me if I was able to copy 3 or 4 of my games onto a single ROM, thus allowing me to NOT carry a bunch of ROMs on the plane and to be able to leave my originals in a safe place.
Is it possible to put several games on a single R4 and still have them all be playable?
BTW, no game publisher has the right to tell me that I can't copy my rightfully purchased materials onto other media to protect my investment - and I don't care if the millennium act says otherwise!
David B.
All the money I didn't spend on games, and continue not too, I spend on beer and living the high life, money well spent, why have one when I can have both?..
I have no moral objection to piracy, nor does my conscience bother me in the slightest, clear as day my good man, clear as day..
I own an unchipped 360, not because I care, but because I like playing online, PS2 is chipped because it's free gaming, score..
"Is it possible to put several games on a single R4 and still have them all be playable?"
The R4 uses a mini SD card, so the number of ROM is limited by the amount of memory. A 1GB card can hold 10 to 20 DS roms.
"no game publisher has the right to tell me that I can't copy my rightfully purchased materials onto other media to protect my investment"
Agreed. As I have mentioned the R4 does have legimate uses other than piracy.
"Where do we draw the line, can a friend lend it to two friends?"
There's a very thin line here of course. We kill animals, why not humans? Lending also means the person who owns it loses their copy - I lend you a book means I will lose that book. So we are talking about freely reproducing something that someone gains without paying - is that right? Is it right for me to photocopy a whole book to give to a friend, or even a family member?
If I'm being righteous, then copying is a no-no unless it's for backup purposes. Lending or renting is completely allowed because one has to lose the object for someone to obtain ownership.
Each to their own...
I own an R4, and I do use it for some games. Though, the games I have on there, most I haven't played more than a few times. I didn't like them enough. You can't do this when you buy the actual games. I also use it to play Japanese games you can't get in America. There are some extremely fun Japanese-only games people won't get to play, and the R4 allows this. I've bought my fair share of about 20 games, some of which I don't like and haven't played more than a few times.
Not to mention that I run emulators on it. I can play old GB/C, NES, SNES, Genesis, and homebrew games. The R4DS is a great investment that I am glad I got.
"Pirated copies require that the person who shares the game bought the game, in the same way that rental copies or borrowing from friends do. Where do we draw the line, can a friend lend it to two friends?"
The line here is duplication. Lending out your *one* copy; fine. Copying it for others: Breaking the law.
"But now your issue is legality, not about game company profit."
My issue is legality, morality, and from a creative business perspective.
-Legally, we all understand that outside of freeware/shareware/open source/DRM, duplication is a big no-no.
-Morally, content creators deserve a fair shake, especially if someone is keeping their work without any form of compensation.
-From a business perspective, the more a game sells, the more likely the dev sees a royalty check. More sales also encourages a publisher to continue to do business with that developer. This is key.
"It's so sad that this company needs to lie about 90% of DS users are pirates in order to get their weak point across."
First off, this isn't a company. Second, I'm not defending their exaggeration. but my point about people that claim to love games are the first to steal them remains valid. Third, this is not a weak point, but a serious problem that has to potential to make things a lot worse. You think DRM is restrictive now? just wait...
"The game industry is not dying due to individuals who pirate games. The gaming industry IS thriving."
This depends on who you're talking to really. Companies will follow money. If companies start to notice that a significant in sales related to a genre or audience, they won't think twice about realigning their projects. Since "casuals" rarely pirate games, that genre/audience is pretty safe. But say, high profile PC games aimed at the hardcore? Not so much (Look at the sales of Crysis and recent UT).
@Brain B: "BTW, no game publisher has the right to tell me that I can't copy my rightfully purchased materials onto other media to protect my investment - and I don't care if the millennium act says otherwise!"
Actually, you don't. I'm not saying that's right or worng, just saying that according to current laws (and software agreements) this is exactly what it means. Contact your state representative if you want it to change.
Plenty of these products allow homebrew (which is great), but I think we can all agree that there's more than a significant amount of people using them to pirate some of the cheapest games in the market (which is not so great).
People that make games are regular people. With bills, car payments, families, the whole nine. Not all of us are Wrights, Myers, or Miyamotos. We are not paid with obscene stacks of cash. Piracy denies hardworking people the credit and patronage they deserve.
"A bit on the exaggerated side"?! If 90% of American DS owners had an R4 card, there'd be almost 20 million R4s out there in the US alone. In reality, I'd be surprised if they'd sold a million worldwide. That's more than a bit exaggerated; it's completely absurd.
This ELSPA guy is speaking on the same level as Jack Valenti comparing VCRs to a serial killer. Pure hyperbole for the purpose of lobbying to make a perfectly legitimate product, one with some pretty cool features that would have been cheaper to leave out if it were meant as a mere tool for piracy, and one with which it's not even possible to take a copy of an original game, illegal.
What's really going on here is that there are people like me who have bought 30 or more DS games but spend most of our DS time using free, legal homebrew software, which doesn't make the publishers any money. And now, after one of the strongest years in the history of the game industry, they're complaining they're not making enough money and going so far as to call their own customers thieves.
Does anyone really think that's a good strategy? Because the RIAA and MPAA don't seem to be having much luck with it.
I mentioned this on another site (Escapist) and will reiterate it here. I think that the grammar is what is tripping people up here, as it is unclear.
I think what he is .trying. to say is that 90% of pirates use the R4 system, not that 90% of DS owners do.
I think that is a far more realistic statistic.
^ my understanding of the quote as well. The homebrew crowd is big on the DS, but it's not *that* big.
"Does anyone really think that's a good strategy?"
Most likely not.
But does the issue of piracy need to be dealt with on some level? Based on comments like "if I paid for all my games I would be broke," I think so. I also think that once console makers and publishers find a solution it will have long standing effects on the experience, for better and for worse. Just look at Steam.
Sure enough, and if handheld game consoles and mobile phones ever converge, I fully expect that to happen. It's already happening to a small degree with the Wii firmware updates and, if I understand correctly, XBL. Sooner or later online gaming will be as big or a bigger part of the portable experience, and it's a lot easier to lock a pirated game out of online than it is to make an offline game uncrackable. I say this as someone who has both implemented copy protection under marketing-exec duress, and cracked copy protection in the past. If you can read it you can crack it, but server-side code really changes the rules.
However, lying to the press to try to get laws passed to make devices created for legal purposes illegal, because they give your customers more control over hardware they own than you'd like them to have, is just as unethical as piracy. ELSPA can't claim the high road in their dealings with pirates anymore.
This reminds me of the classic "Don't copy that floppy!" together with it's "Welcome to the End of the computer era!"...
-.-
When the game developers start making games for the DS that are actually worth the money to purchase them, I'll stop using my R4. :P I know some people that use the R4 for music and video. That's why I have an ipod (and to a lesser extent, psp) :P
We live in an age were many millions of people get away with stealing (6 million in the UK alone) . And they think nothing of it. They get all their entertainment for free. They download games, music and films at will.