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I grew up with Nintendo being my "main" game console and to this day I play (Switch) but I'm starting to wonder, might this be a company that's worth boycotting

I grew up with Nintendo being my "main" game console and to this day I play (Switch) but I'm starting to wonder, might this be a company that's worth boycotting? Sure I'd miss out on the exclusives but lots of games exist on multiple platforms or have similar games on other platforms. Nintendo's behaviour seems to be very much anti hacker and even anti-consumer in cases like this one. Anyone else have any strong feelings about this?

mcphage 3y ago
Nintendo’s disdain for historical preservation is frustrating and problematic. But this is an emulator for their current console, I’m not sure this is boycott-worthy. This is more, they’ve got a business to run, and Yuzu impacts their bottom line in a way that Dolphin doesn’t.
- ejj28 3y ago
  While that's a fair point, I also have to wonder how much of that is actually lost sales, vs. people who wouldn't have bought the games otherwise, or didn't have a Switch to play on, or etc. Personally, I paid for a copy of Tears of the Kingdom when it came out, but only because I had a Switch I could borrow from someone to play it on - if I hadn't had that option, I wouldn't have bought a Switch just to play one game, and I just wouldn't have bought the game at all. Had they released the game on PC as well as Switch, I would have bought it for PC, but that's not an option. As it stands, either you have to own an overpriced and underpowered console, even if you only want to play one Nintendo game, or you can pirate the game and play it on PC, and have a much better experience than on a real Switch. Nintendo is somewhat bringing this upon itself in my opinion and I don't feel much sympathy for their lost profits, real or imagined.
  - gamblor956 3y ago
    Valve used the Yuzu emulator in some of its Steam Deck initial marketing, and emulating the Switch is one of the most popular uses for the Steam Deck, so there is definitely a measurable impact. Considering that the Steam Deck is more expensive than the Switch, arguably every SD player using Yuzu is several lost sales for Nintendo. Nintendo is somewhat bringing this upon itself in my opinion and I don't feel much sympathy for their lost profits, real or imagined. This is why they are going after Yuzu in the first place...Because Yuzu makes it easy to pirate Switch games and the pirates feel entitled to play those games on a more expensive device than the device they claim is too expensive.
    - cheeseomlit 3y ago
      Yes but the more expensive device is better in every conceivable way, it's a PC instead of a locked down walled garden that only exists as a platform for nintendo products. Just because someone owns a Deck doesn't mean they would otherwise own a switch, I own a Deck and haven't remotely considered buying any nintendo hardware since gamecube. If I couldn't emulate switch games I just wouldn't play them.
      - prophesi 3y ago
        Anecdotally, the friends that I know who have a gaming PC own a Switch as well. The one guy running TotK @ 4K/60FPS on their rig was also the first to preorder the game. But we're all in our 30's with decent salaries.
      - gamblor956 3y ago
        If I couldn't emulate switch games I just wouldn't play them. And Nintendo is okay with that. If you're never going to be a paying customer, they don't care what you think.
        Dylan16807 3y ago
        They didn't say they wouldn't be a paying customer. Regardless of that particular commenter, many paying customers of Nintendo have the same attitude that they will only emulate switch games.
        mcphage 3y ago
        > many paying customers of Nintendo have the same attitude that they will only emulate switch games I think “many” is probably a bit much.
      - mcphage 3y ago
        > If I couldn't emulate switch games I just wouldn't play them. Given this discussion started around whether to boycott Nintendo or not, it seems that you're not a Nintendo customer at all. So I'm not really sure what you would be boycotting?
  - SmallDeadGuy 3y ago
    How is the Switch overpriced and underpowered? I picked up a switch lite with a game as a bundle for my wife for £180 brand new. If you want detachable controllers and the ability to dock the Switch to a TV, you can spend more. But those features and the built-in screen are ones that literally no other games console had at the time and is only just starting to gain popularity in the handheld PC market recently. It may be underpowered now, but the Switch has been out for 7 years. And it still has enough power to play games like TOTK, The Witcher 3, Xenoblade Chronicles, etc. As for releasing games on PC, I don't see any reason why they would? Developing for PC is much more difficult than a single console, when it comes to handling the variety of hardware, anti-cheat, etc. TOTK and their Mario games are system sellers, with the former even releasing alongside a special edition console and pro controller. Delaying the release of these games to add dev time for a PC port is never going to be worth it.
- skyyler 3y ago
  >this is an emulator for their current console >Yuzu impacts their bottom line in a way that Dolphin doesn’t. Dolphin could emulate nearly all commercial Wii games by April 2009. That was sooner into the console's lifespan than where we are now with the switch. (29 months since the Wii's release vs 83 months since the Switch's release) Maybe more people have gaming-grade computers sitting around now than they did 15 years ago?
  - fmj 3y ago
    >Maybe more people have gaming-grade computers sitting around now than they did 15 years ago? You don't need a very powerful computer to emulate a Switch. My M1 Mac Mini w/ 8GB of RAM (~$400) has been able to play every Switch game I've been interested in with equal or slightly better performance than the actual console.
    - 1317 3y ago
      an M1 is a very powerful computer
  - mcphage 3y ago
    > Dolphin could emulate nearly all commercial Wii games by April 2009. > That was sooner into the console's lifespan than where we are now with the switch. I don't have any insight into why they didn't go after Dolphin in 2009, but I do think it explains why they're going after Yuzu now.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      Dolphin has always been very precise about doing everything "on this side of the line"
  - SmallDeadGuy 3y ago
    Most popular Wii games had significantly different control schemes than what is available on a standard PC. Afaik, dolphin was primarily used for things like Smash Bros but other system sellers like Wii Sports, Wii fit, and LoZ: Skyward Sword just wouldn't work at all. Even Mario Kart was typically played with motion controls, because that was new and exciting for home consoles at the time. Contrast that to the Switch where most system sellers can be played on a standard controller without a gyroscope, the threat to their bottom line is much higher.
- kevingadd 3y ago
  Preservation isn't a matter of flipping a light switch on the moment a console isn't "current" anymore. The Switch came out in 2017 - that's a long time ago. If not for people preserving firmware updates and 1.0 builds of games, emulator developers and users would have nothing to start from when they start development on an emulator from scratch in ~2025 like you suggest doing.
  - SmallDeadGuy 3y ago
    The emulator could have been developed and released open source without the ability to decrypt Nintendo games, which (I believe) is a copyright violation and one side of the lawsuit. And also not put the latest emulator builds and private discord encouraging piracy behind a patreon paywall. I have nothing against a Switch emulator existing at all, but making it conveniently easy for the masses to pirate games, condoning it in private spaces you manage, and profiting off the demand for the emulator due to that piracy are all against the ideas of preservation.
    - kevingadd 3y ago
      The pirates would just decrypt their games. That doesn't meaningfully change whether the emulator is used for piracy.
      - SmallDeadGuy 3y ago
        No it doesn't necessarily change what the emulator is used for, but it changes the optics on what it's developed for. If you develop an emulator without any methods of DRM circumvention built-in, then out-of-the-box it can only be used for homebrew stuff like making your own games/apps for that platform. If you include DRM circumvention with the emulator, then there's an argument that it's developed specifically with piracy in mind.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  >Nintendo’s disdain for historical preservation is frustrating and problematic. Nintendo themselves don't disdain historical preservation. They preserve their code, assets, games, etc themselves.
ejj28 3y ago
Nintendo's been a horrible company in this regard for ages. Personally I've never given them money besides for Tears of the Kingdom when it released - I don't even own a Switch, I borrowed one to play it. They make good games sometimes but that's the first and last time they're getting any money from me.
Meninoyo 3y ago
Nintendo started with consoles and the quality sign to make sure you buy quality after people were disappointed with Atari and other systems And the target audience is still kids/family. Playing games doesn't need to be PC first or mobile first and it hinders quality. Nintendo has the same right as Sony and ms to sell their system. I would love to have it for PC, don't get me wrong, but families don't play games in front of a PC. I don't think this argument is fair.
johnnyanmac 3y ago
>might this be a company that's worth boycotting? Sure I'd miss out on the exclusives but lots of games exist on multiple platforms or have similar games on other platforms. As far as I'm concerned, this is an issue of the DMCA more than Nintendo itself. In the strictest sense, devs really don't care about this and lawyers are only doing their job. Boycotting Nintendo may make sense in a moral sense, but not one that will change how the DMCA works. >Nintendo's behaviour seems to be very much anti hacker and even anti-consumer in cases like this one. Anyone else have any strong feelings about this? Anti-hacker, sure. 99% of companies are anti-hacker. Anti-consumer... First, I really think this is the worst modern cliche of modern media discourse. Just to remind people of the definition: > Anti-consumerism is concerned with the private actions of business corporations in pursuit of financial and economic goals at the expense of the public welfare, especially in matters of environmental protection, social stratification, and ethics in the governing of a society. I don't really see how luxury entertainment can ever meet the true philosophical meaning of the term that halts social progress and suppressing the flow of money to the populace. With all that said, the closest I feel Nintendo has gotten to anti-consumerism is the "vault" strategy done with Mario All Stars. Which they seemingly only did for that game and a few of those "100 multiplayer" style games. It's a strategy making use of false scarcity for a product that can be infinitely reproducible (and requires no servers on their end to operate) in order to increase urgency to play/buy said work. Not only is that morally repugnant, I'm not even sure if it's a financially sound decision for a company who's products are known for having a long tail in sales, unlike most video games. ---- in the colloquial sense of: >not favorable to consumers : improperly favoring the interests of businesses over the interests of consumers. every business technically strides to be anti-consumerist. The act of charging money for a product is anti-consumerist. I don't see how Nintendo differs here, nor how they are the worst, in a world where almost every AAA company in the west is trying to rely on psuedo-subscriptions with battle passes and every company in the east are making millions on mobile off of the lootbox model. Nintendo seemed to dip their toes in indirectly a few times (reminder: they do not fully own any of the remaining IPs using Lootboxes) but mostly have pulled out, even removing the gacha from a few of their games. So they for the most part simply profit from an online service with "free" games and one time purchase of other console games.
- 3y ago
kevingadd 3y ago
I stopped playing Nintendo products (on any platform, including my Switch) years ago and haven't really missed much. They put out good games, sure, but there are tons of good games available on other platforms where buying them isn't supporting a company that abuses the legal system to harass and imprison innocent people.
- theshackleford 3y ago
  “Innocent”. Reality (and the courts) disagree with you.
  - jokethrowaway 3y ago
    Just because something is a law doesn't make it just.
    - theshackleford 3y ago
      Who said anything about justice? You're moving the goalposts.
  - kevingadd 3y ago
    If you're talking about Bowser, the only thing they convicted him of is "conspiracy" to do things that shouldn't be illegal [1]. All the other charges were dropped. If you think "conspiring" to sell modchips is a crime worthy of prison I don't know how to convince you that we should have a fair and just legal system. It was a plea, too, and anyone who knows the legal system well understands that plea bargains are generally unjust and used to bully people into not defending themselves. 1: "Gary Bowser, 52, a Canadian national of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, pleaded guilty in October 2021 to Conspiracy to Circumvent Technological Measures and to Traffic in Circumvention Devices, and Trafficking in Circumvention Devices."
jokethrowaway 3y ago
There's no point boycotting one company playing by the system rules. Boycott the system which enable this much centralisation of power and removes freedom from citizens. Copyright and patents are an artifact of the government being easily corruptible by media companies who make insane amount of money. Until we get rid of the government we'll always have laws which help the rich steal from the people.
- rafaelmn 3y ago
  > There's no point boycotting one company playing by the system rules This is a bad attitude - every system can be gamed - social/market pressure is an important mechanism for shaping outcomes.
- ronsor 3y ago
  Well, we certainly aren't getting rid of the government, and it's an up-cliff battle to change current copyright and patent laws, so the best we can do is starve the companies that abuse these systems. Then they will have less money to perform lobbying and other activities.
grayfaced 3y ago
I disagree. The other platforms built their walls secure enough that they don't bother. Nintendo is aggressively defending a low fence. Most Nintendo cartridges will function a decade from now. Many discs for other consoles don't even have the full game on it... and many can't function without connecting to a service. I'd prefer the system that is possible to preserve (but gets aggressive with monetization) then the one that's impossible to preserve. Points to xbox for doing well with backwards compatibility and carrying libraries forward. But that could change in future.
- realusername 3y ago
  > The other platforms built their walls secure enough that they don't bother. The other platforms have also way less exclusives. The PS5 has a grand total of 12 exclusive games listed here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:PlayStation_5-only_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:PlayStation_5-only_ga... . Why even bother?
  - suzakus 3y ago
    The problem with this list is a lot of the non-exclusive games are because they're on the PS4 as well – what proportion of games are non-exclusive to the playstation world? For example for PS4 only games there's a decent amount more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:PlayStation_4-only_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:PlayStation_4-only_ga...
  - autoexec 3y ago
    Most of those are either remakes of older games, VR games, games that haven't been released yet, or games with poor ratings. The only real title there worth buying today would be Spider-Man 2. I'm pretty disappointed in the PS5's library but for someone who never had a PS4 the PS5 is absolutely worth it. Maybe by the time they get through the backlog of good PS4 games there will be something worth playing on the PS5
  - SmallDeadGuy 3y ago
    A lot of games are only on PS5 and Xbox S/X, not available on PC or other platforms. So if it's exclusive only to other securely walled gardens, they still don't need to bother.
catapart 3y ago
I've been "boycotting" them for a while now. Switch was cool, but they just cannot be reasonable when it comes to IP, so I just cannot stomach giving them any money. I'm not interested in applicable laws or "playing by the rules" or whatever other handwavy bullshit people will feed themselves to pretend that Nintendo is "in the right" here. It's pretty simple: don't target people who aren't doing things that are morally reprehensible, even if it's a systemic threat to your company (cue the laughter from the capitalists who can't understand anything beyond industrial machinations). Evolve and adapt to include them in your assets, or die while the fitter companies do. Someday, someone's going to have more money than Nintendo and they will force Nintendo to do whatever they want them to. I'm just hoping its sooner rather than later. They've earned every second of their demise. Fuck any company that thinks lawfare is excusable as 'might makes right'.
- SmallDeadGuy 3y ago
  The yuzu people were doing things that are morally reprehensible. From what I've heard: * They managed a private discord with hired moderators that actively encouraged piracy. * They saved important releases to coincide with major game releases like TOTK. These releases would include performance optimizations and bug fixes specifically for those games. * These important releases would initially only be available behind a patreon paywall (like the private discord), so they actively profited off people trying to get the latest release specifically for pirating the latest games.
joveian 3y ago
Personally, I only get DRM-free games, which mostly means GOG at this point (they also have a better refund policy). They have some issues too but seem to be much better than any other game stores in terms of customer friendly policies (unless you really want Linux support). I definitely wouldn't switch to Sony or Microsoft from Nintendo, that would make no sense (surprisingly there are a few Sony published games on GOG, although the latest announced one was supposed to be released a few months ago now so I'm suspicious that Sony was trying to sneak some DRM in and got caught). Reguarding Steam some would argue the Linux support makes up for the DRM, although I can't agree with that. Most of the other small platforms I've seen have DRM but with little or no positive. Itch mostly has solo developer games, doesn't clearly indicate if a game has DRM or not but mostly has DRM-free games, and has no refund policy other than what individual developers decide to do. Humble used to have some DRM-free games but has moved away from that under current ownership.
heavyset_go 3y ago
Nintendo's stalking and profiling of Neimod[1] has made it hard for me to justify giving them money. The leak that exposed that information showed it was part of Nintendo's larger 5-step plan to bully and silence the homebrew scene. [1] https://www.technadu.com/nintendo-spying-3ds-hacker-neimod-trying-to-stop-him/234759/ https://www.technadu.com/nintendo-spying-3ds-hacker-neimod-t...

mcphage 3y ago

Nintendo’s disdain for historical preservation is frustrating and problematic. But this is an emulator for their current console, I’m not sure this is boycott-worthy. This is more, they’ve got a business to run, and Yuzu impacts their bottom line in a way that Dolphin doesn’t.

ejj28 3y ago
While that's a fair point, I also have to wonder how much of that is actually lost sales, vs. people who wouldn't have bought the games otherwise, or didn't have a Switch to play on, or etc. Personally, I paid for a copy of Tears of the Kingdom when it came out, but only because I had a Switch I could borrow from someone to play it on - if I hadn't had that option, I wouldn't have bought a Switch just to play one game, and I just wouldn't have bought the game at all. Had they released the game on PC as well as Switch, I would have bought it for PC, but that's not an option. As it stands, either you have to own an overpriced and underpowered console, even if you only want to play one Nintendo game, or you can pirate the game and play it on PC, and have a much better experience than on a real Switch. Nintendo is somewhat bringing this upon itself in my opinion and I don't feel much sympathy for their lost profits, real or imagined.
- gamblor956 3y ago
  Valve used the Yuzu emulator in some of its Steam Deck initial marketing, and emulating the Switch is one of the most popular uses for the Steam Deck, so there is definitely a measurable impact. Considering that the Steam Deck is more expensive than the Switch, arguably every SD player using Yuzu is several lost sales for Nintendo. Nintendo is somewhat bringing this upon itself in my opinion and I don't feel much sympathy for their lost profits, real or imagined. This is why they are going after Yuzu in the first place...Because Yuzu makes it easy to pirate Switch games and the pirates feel entitled to play those games on a more expensive device than the device they claim is too expensive.
  - cheeseomlit 3y ago
    Yes but the more expensive device is better in every conceivable way, it's a PC instead of a locked down walled garden that only exists as a platform for nintendo products. Just because someone owns a Deck doesn't mean they would otherwise own a switch, I own a Deck and haven't remotely considered buying any nintendo hardware since gamecube. If I couldn't emulate switch games I just wouldn't play them.
    - prophesi 3y ago
      Anecdotally, the friends that I know who have a gaming PC own a Switch as well. The one guy running TotK @ 4K/60FPS on their rig was also the first to preorder the game. But we're all in our 30's with decent salaries.
    - gamblor956 3y ago
      If I couldn't emulate switch games I just wouldn't play them. And Nintendo is okay with that. If you're never going to be a paying customer, they don't care what you think.
      - Dylan16807 3y ago
        They didn't say they wouldn't be a paying customer. Regardless of that particular commenter, many paying customers of Nintendo have the same attitude that they will only emulate switch games.
        mcphage 3y ago
        > many paying customers of Nintendo have the same attitude that they will only emulate switch games I think “many” is probably a bit much.
    - mcphage 3y ago
      > If I couldn't emulate switch games I just wouldn't play them. Given this discussion started around whether to boycott Nintendo or not, it seems that you're not a Nintendo customer at all. So I'm not really sure what you would be boycotting?
- SmallDeadGuy 3y ago
  How is the Switch overpriced and underpowered? I picked up a switch lite with a game as a bundle for my wife for £180 brand new. If you want detachable controllers and the ability to dock the Switch to a TV, you can spend more. But those features and the built-in screen are ones that literally no other games console had at the time and is only just starting to gain popularity in the handheld PC market recently. It may be underpowered now, but the Switch has been out for 7 years. And it still has enough power to play games like TOTK, The Witcher 3, Xenoblade Chronicles, etc. As for releasing games on PC, I don't see any reason why they would? Developing for PC is much more difficult than a single console, when it comes to handling the variety of hardware, anti-cheat, etc. TOTK and their Mario games are system sellers, with the former even releasing alongside a special edition console and pro controller. Delaying the release of these games to add dev time for a PC port is never going to be worth it.
skyyler 3y ago
>this is an emulator for their current console >Yuzu impacts their bottom line in a way that Dolphin doesn’t. Dolphin could emulate nearly all commercial Wii games by April 2009. That was sooner into the console's lifespan than where we are now with the switch. (29 months since the Wii's release vs 83 months since the Switch's release) Maybe more people have gaming-grade computers sitting around now than they did 15 years ago?
- fmj 3y ago
  >Maybe more people have gaming-grade computers sitting around now than they did 15 years ago? You don't need a very powerful computer to emulate a Switch. My M1 Mac Mini w/ 8GB of RAM (~$400) has been able to play every Switch game I've been interested in with equal or slightly better performance than the actual console.
  - 1317 3y ago
    an M1 is a very powerful computer
- mcphage 3y ago
  > Dolphin could emulate nearly all commercial Wii games by April 2009. > That was sooner into the console's lifespan than where we are now with the switch. I don't have any insight into why they didn't go after Dolphin in 2009, but I do think it explains why they're going after Yuzu now.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Dolphin has always been very precise about doing everything "on this side of the line"
- SmallDeadGuy 3y ago
  Most popular Wii games had significantly different control schemes than what is available on a standard PC. Afaik, dolphin was primarily used for things like Smash Bros but other system sellers like Wii Sports, Wii fit, and LoZ: Skyward Sword just wouldn't work at all. Even Mario Kart was typically played with motion controls, because that was new and exciting for home consoles at the time. Contrast that to the Switch where most system sellers can be played on a standard controller without a gyroscope, the threat to their bottom line is much higher.
kevingadd 3y ago
Preservation isn't a matter of flipping a light switch on the moment a console isn't "current" anymore. The Switch came out in 2017 - that's a long time ago. If not for people preserving firmware updates and 1.0 builds of games, emulator developers and users would have nothing to start from when they start development on an emulator from scratch in ~2025 like you suggest doing.
- SmallDeadGuy 3y ago
  The emulator could have been developed and released open source without the ability to decrypt Nintendo games, which (I believe) is a copyright violation and one side of the lawsuit. And also not put the latest emulator builds and private discord encouraging piracy behind a patreon paywall. I have nothing against a Switch emulator existing at all, but making it conveniently easy for the masses to pirate games, condoning it in private spaces you manage, and profiting off the demand for the emulator due to that piracy are all against the ideas of preservation.
  - kevingadd 3y ago
    The pirates would just decrypt their games. That doesn't meaningfully change whether the emulator is used for piracy.
    - SmallDeadGuy 3y ago
      No it doesn't necessarily change what the emulator is used for, but it changes the optics on what it's developed for. If you develop an emulator without any methods of DRM circumvention built-in, then out-of-the-box it can only be used for homebrew stuff like making your own games/apps for that platform. If you include DRM circumvention with the emulator, then there's an argument that it's developed specifically with piracy in mind.
charcircuit 3y ago
>Nintendo’s disdain for historical preservation is frustrating and problematic. Nintendo themselves don't disdain historical preservation. They preserve their code, assets, games, etc themselves.

ejj28 3y ago

Nintendo's been a horrible company in this regard for ages. Personally I've never given them money besides for Tears of the Kingdom when it released - I don't even own a Switch, I borrowed one to play it. They make good games sometimes but that's the first and last time they're getting any money from me.

Meninoyo 3y ago

Nintendo started with consoles and the quality sign to make sure you buy quality after people were disappointed with Atari and other systems And the target audience is still kids/family. Playing games doesn't need to be PC first or mobile first and it hinders quality. Nintendo has the same right as Sony and ms to sell their system. I would love to have it for PC, don't get me wrong, but families don't play games in front of a PC. I don't think this argument is fair.

johnnyanmac 3y ago

>might this be a company that's worth boycotting? Sure I'd miss out on the exclusives but lots of games exist on multiple platforms or have similar games on other platforms. As far as I'm concerned, this is an issue of the DMCA more than Nintendo itself. In the strictest sense, devs really don't care about this and lawyers are only doing their job. Boycotting Nintendo may make sense in a moral sense, but not one that will change how the DMCA works. >Nintendo's behaviour seems to be very much anti hacker and even anti-consumer in cases like this one. Anyone else have any strong feelings about this? Anti-hacker, sure. 99% of companies are anti-hacker. Anti-consumer... First, I really think this is the worst modern cliche of modern media discourse. Just to remind people of the definition: > Anti-consumerism is concerned with the private actions of business corporations in pursuit of financial and economic goals at the expense of the public welfare, especially in matters of environmental protection, social stratification, and ethics in the governing of a society. I don't really see how luxury entertainment can ever meet the true philosophical meaning of the term that halts social progress and suppressing the flow of money to the populace. With all that said, the closest I feel Nintendo has gotten to anti-consumerism is the "vault" strategy done with Mario All Stars. Which they seemingly only did for that game and a few of those "100 multiplayer" style games. It's a strategy making use of false scarcity for a product that can be infinitely reproducible (and requires no servers on their end to operate) in order to increase urgency to play/buy said work. Not only is that morally repugnant, I'm not even sure if it's a financially sound decision for a company who's products are known for having a long tail in sales, unlike most video games. ---- in the colloquial sense of: >not favorable to consumers : improperly favoring the interests of businesses over the interests of consumers. every business technically strides to be anti-consumerist. The act of charging money for a product is anti-consumerist. I don't see how Nintendo differs here, nor how they are the worst, in a world where almost every AAA company in the west is trying to rely on psuedo-subscriptions with battle passes and every company in the east are making millions on mobile off of the lootbox model. Nintendo seemed to dip their toes in indirectly a few times (reminder: they do not fully own any of the remaining IPs using Lootboxes) but mostly have pulled out, even removing the gacha from a few of their games. So they for the most part simply profit from an online service with "free" games and one time purchase of other console games.

3y ago

kevingadd 3y ago

I stopped playing Nintendo products (on any platform, including my Switch) years ago and haven't really missed much. They put out good games, sure, but there are tons of good games available on other platforms where buying them isn't supporting a company that abuses the legal system to harass and imprison innocent people.

theshackleford 3y ago
“Innocent”. Reality (and the courts) disagree with you.
- jokethrowaway 3y ago
  Just because something is a law doesn't make it just.
  - theshackleford 3y ago
    Who said anything about justice? You're moving the goalposts.
- kevingadd 3y ago
  If you're talking about Bowser, the only thing they convicted him of is "conspiracy" to do things that shouldn't be illegal [1]. All the other charges were dropped. If you think "conspiring" to sell modchips is a crime worthy of prison I don't know how to convince you that we should have a fair and just legal system. It was a plea, too, and anyone who knows the legal system well understands that plea bargains are generally unjust and used to bully people into not defending themselves. 1: "Gary Bowser, 52, a Canadian national of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, pleaded guilty in October 2021 to Conspiracy to Circumvent Technological Measures and to Traffic in Circumvention Devices, and Trafficking in Circumvention Devices."

jokethrowaway 3y ago

There's no point boycotting one company playing by the system rules. Boycott the system which enable this much centralisation of power and removes freedom from citizens. Copyright and patents are an artifact of the government being easily corruptible by media companies who make insane amount of money. Until we get rid of the government we'll always have laws which help the rich steal from the people.

rafaelmn 3y ago
> There's no point boycotting one company playing by the system rules This is a bad attitude - every system can be gamed - social/market pressure is an important mechanism for shaping outcomes.
ronsor 3y ago
Well, we certainly aren't getting rid of the government, and it's an up-cliff battle to change current copyright and patent laws, so the best we can do is starve the companies that abuse these systems. Then they will have less money to perform lobbying and other activities.

grayfaced 3y ago

I disagree. The other platforms built their walls secure enough that they don't bother. Nintendo is aggressively defending a low fence. Most Nintendo cartridges will function a decade from now. Many discs for other consoles don't even have the full game on it... and many can't function without connecting to a service. I'd prefer the system that is possible to preserve (but gets aggressive with monetization) then the one that's impossible to preserve. Points to xbox for doing well with backwards compatibility and carrying libraries forward. But that could change in future.

realusername 3y ago
> The other platforms built their walls secure enough that they don't bother. The other platforms have also way less exclusives. The PS5 has a grand total of 12 exclusive games listed here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:PlayStation_5-only_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:PlayStation_5-only_ga... . Why even bother?
- suzakus 3y ago
  The problem with this list is a lot of the non-exclusive games are because they're on the PS4 as well – what proportion of games are non-exclusive to the playstation world? For example for PS4 only games there's a decent amount more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:PlayStation_4-only_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:PlayStation_4-only_ga...
- autoexec 3y ago
  Most of those are either remakes of older games, VR games, games that haven't been released yet, or games with poor ratings. The only real title there worth buying today would be Spider-Man 2. I'm pretty disappointed in the PS5's library but for someone who never had a PS4 the PS5 is absolutely worth it. Maybe by the time they get through the backlog of good PS4 games there will be something worth playing on the PS5
- SmallDeadGuy 3y ago
  A lot of games are only on PS5 and Xbox S/X, not available on PC or other platforms. So if it's exclusive only to other securely walled gardens, they still don't need to bother.

catapart 3y ago

I've been "boycotting" them for a while now. Switch was cool, but they just cannot be reasonable when it comes to IP, so I just cannot stomach giving them any money. I'm not interested in applicable laws or "playing by the rules" or whatever other handwavy bullshit people will feed themselves to pretend that Nintendo is "in the right" here. It's pretty simple: don't target people who aren't doing things that are morally reprehensible, even if it's a systemic threat to your company (cue the laughter from the capitalists who can't understand anything beyond industrial machinations). Evolve and adapt to include them in your assets, or die while the fitter companies do. Someday, someone's going to have more money than Nintendo and they will force Nintendo to do whatever they want them to. I'm just hoping its sooner rather than later. They've earned every second of their demise. Fuck any company that thinks lawfare is excusable as 'might makes right'.

SmallDeadGuy 3y ago
The yuzu people were doing things that are morally reprehensible. From what I've heard: * They managed a private discord with hired moderators that actively encouraged piracy. * They saved important releases to coincide with major game releases like TOTK. These releases would include performance optimizations and bug fixes specifically for those games. * These important releases would initially only be available behind a patreon paywall (like the private discord), so they actively profited off people trying to get the latest release specifically for pirating the latest games.

joveian 3y ago

Personally, I only get DRM-free games, which mostly means GOG at this point (they also have a better refund policy). They have some issues too but seem to be much better than any other game stores in terms of customer friendly policies (unless you really want Linux support). I definitely wouldn't switch to Sony or Microsoft from Nintendo, that would make no sense (surprisingly there are a few Sony published games on GOG, although the latest announced one was supposed to be released a few months ago now so I'm suspicious that Sony was trying to sneak some DRM in and got caught). Reguarding Steam some would argue the Linux support makes up for the DRM, although I can't agree with that. Most of the other small platforms I've seen have DRM but with little or no positive. Itch mostly has solo developer games, doesn't clearly indicate if a game has DRM or not but mostly has DRM-free games, and has no refund policy other than what individual developers decide to do. Humble used to have some DRM-free games but has moved away from that under current ownership.

heavyset_go 3y ago

Nintendo's stalking and profiling of Neimod[1] has made it hard for me to justify giving them money. The leak that exposed that information showed it was part of Nintendo's larger 5-step plan to bully and silence the homebrew scene. [1] https://www.technadu.com/nintendo-spying-3ds-hacker-neimod-trying-to-stop-him/234759/ https://www.technadu.com/nintendo-spying-3ds-hacker-neimod-t...