4 ms·

Real question, what's the harm here? Are the modified Pokemon being used in competitions? What is the harm, really?

josephcsible 3y ago
> Are the modified Pokemon being used in competitions? Even if they were, the penalty should be limited to being banned from future competitions, not prison.
- grugagag 3y ago
  I agree but the Japanese legal system is very weird. It seems like pokemon is very a lucrative business and a tough sentencing is probably only as an example to deter future violations.
  - jrockway 3y ago
    The legal system sounds pretty normal. Elected officials are in their 80s. Some corporation comes to them with a bunch of mumbo jumbo not involving fax machines and a stack of money. Law enacted. I also think that east Asia thinks that esports are as important as normal sports, at least in the sense of exporting their culture. Everyone wants to be Hollywood or the NFL, and esports are their route to that kind of international renowned, or so they think. Thus, they have a bunch of laws to make sure nothing crops up that could impact that. Pokemon isn't an esport, but if you're 80, you don't know that.
    - anigbrowl 3y ago
      That's an absurd caricature; just checking in on TV news would have informed you that Japan's legislature has a fairly broad age distribution. Video games have been huge in Japan since the 1970s, and mechanical gambling games like pachinko well before that. I suspect most legislators have had household exposure to videogames, and any under 60 probably played growing up. Likewise Japan went wild for digital cellphones well before smartphones; there's a whole genre of literature called 'text message novels' that started in the early 2000s. As for this case, the prohibition on selling mod tools/services is certainly to protect the game manufacturers; if there's a perception that it's easy and safe to cheat in the game then players' incentive to spend (whether via microtransactions or future releases) goes way down, and so does the publisher's revenue, and so do tax receipts. I can't help noting that Japan's game industry isn't engaging in mass layoffs over the last few years, suggesting that maybe they know what they're doing. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2024/04/02/japan-no-games-layoffs/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2024/04/02/japan-no-ga... No manufacturer wants their product utility diluted. After market modifications that add a benefit to the user don't make the product any worse for people without the modification. but in a product which is used by people to compete for social entertainment, modifications absolutely hurt the product because wins and losses are no longer a function of skill.
      - jrockway 3y ago
        I mean, we have legislators in their 30s in the US and we regulate tech like it's 80 year olds.
      - redox99 3y ago
        > As for this case, the prohibition on selling mod tools/services is certainly to protect the game manufacturers; if there's a perception that it's easy and safe to cheat in the game then players' incentive to spend (whether via microtransactions or future releases) goes way down, and so does the publisher's revenue, and so do tax receipts. I can't help noting that Japan's game industry isn't engaging in mass layoffs over the last few years, suggesting that maybe they know what they're doing. There is 0 chance whatever prohibition on selling mods had any impact on mass layoffs happening or not happening.
        anigbrowl 3y ago
        Of course, but maybe the ethos that makes the industry stable there (and presumably drives its lobbying efforts) is a good fit for the society in which it exists.
drngdds 3y ago
>Are the modified Pokemon being used in competitions? Interestingly, it's pretty much standard for competitive Pokemon players to use hacked Pokemon because of the crazy time investment the game demands to train Pokemon with optimal stats and movesets legitimately. They use free methods to do this though.
SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
Based on the law invoked it seems the idea might be that his versions of the games essentially piggy-back off the trademarks attached to Pokemon, while effectively rendering the vanilla, unmodified cartridges such that they may be perceived to be an inferior product in comparison, despite being the original product. This seems like a stretch even under Japanese law, since the article gives the impression that he was not selling the cartridges themselves, but merely the service of taking cartridges and modifying them. But Japanese copyright law is kinda crazy. There's a reason that Japanese Wikipedia is almost totally bereft of images.

> Are the modified Pokemon being used in competitions? Even if they were, the penalty should be limited to being banned from future competitions, not prison.

grugagag 3y ago
I agree but the Japanese legal system is very weird. It seems like pokemon is very a lucrative business and a tough sentencing is probably only as an example to deter future violations.
- jrockway 3y ago
  The legal system sounds pretty normal. Elected officials are in their 80s. Some corporation comes to them with a bunch of mumbo jumbo not involving fax machines and a stack of money. Law enacted. I also think that east Asia thinks that esports are as important as normal sports, at least in the sense of exporting their culture. Everyone wants to be Hollywood or the NFL, and esports are their route to that kind of international renowned, or so they think. Thus, they have a bunch of laws to make sure nothing crops up that could impact that. Pokemon isn't an esport, but if you're 80, you don't know that.
  - anigbrowl 3y ago
    That's an absurd caricature; just checking in on TV news would have informed you that Japan's legislature has a fairly broad age distribution. Video games have been huge in Japan since the 1970s, and mechanical gambling games like pachinko well before that. I suspect most legislators have had household exposure to videogames, and any under 60 probably played growing up. Likewise Japan went wild for digital cellphones well before smartphones; there's a whole genre of literature called 'text message novels' that started in the early 2000s. As for this case, the prohibition on selling mod tools/services is certainly to protect the game manufacturers; if there's a perception that it's easy and safe to cheat in the game then players' incentive to spend (whether via microtransactions or future releases) goes way down, and so does the publisher's revenue, and so do tax receipts. I can't help noting that Japan's game industry isn't engaging in mass layoffs over the last few years, suggesting that maybe they know what they're doing. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2024/04/02/japan-no-games-layoffs/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2024/04/02/japan-no-ga... No manufacturer wants their product utility diluted. After market modifications that add a benefit to the user don't make the product any worse for people without the modification. but in a product which is used by people to compete for social entertainment, modifications absolutely hurt the product because wins and losses are no longer a function of skill.
    - jrockway 3y ago
      I mean, we have legislators in their 30s in the US and we regulate tech like it's 80 year olds.
    - redox99 3y ago
      > As for this case, the prohibition on selling mod tools/services is certainly to protect the game manufacturers; if there's a perception that it's easy and safe to cheat in the game then players' incentive to spend (whether via microtransactions or future releases) goes way down, and so does the publisher's revenue, and so do tax receipts. I can't help noting that Japan's game industry isn't engaging in mass layoffs over the last few years, suggesting that maybe they know what they're doing. There is 0 chance whatever prohibition on selling mods had any impact on mass layoffs happening or not happening.
      - anigbrowl 3y ago
        Of course, but maybe the ethos that makes the industry stable there (and presumably drives its lobbying efforts) is a good fit for the society in which it exists.

drngdds 3y ago

>Are the modified Pokemon being used in competitions? Interestingly, it's pretty much standard for competitive Pokemon players to use hacked Pokemon because of the crazy time investment the game demands to train Pokemon with optimal stats and movesets legitimately. They use free methods to do this though.

SuperNinKenDo 3y ago

Based on the law invoked it seems the idea might be that his versions of the games essentially piggy-back off the trademarks attached to Pokemon, while effectively rendering the vanilla, unmodified cartridges such that they may be perceived to be an inferior product in comparison, despite being the original product. This seems like a stretch even under Japanese law, since the article gives the impression that he was not selling the cartridges themselves, but merely the service of taking cartridges and modifying them. But Japanese copyright law is kinda crazy. There's a reason that Japanese Wikipedia is almost totally bereft of images.