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as always shitty journalism from polygon that conveniently leaves out details
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he was allegedly running rom download sites that had some roms behind a paywall and casually advertised them on the switch pirates subreddit to try and make money
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he received a cease and decist telling him to stop and completely ignored it
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the 4.5m Nintendo is asking for is the default judgement, not a specific number
this guy is a dumbass, basically
Your first two points are mentioned in the article:
The filing claims that Williams sent thousands of messages on Reddit to other users directing them to piracy websites, at times offering technical support for issues fans might encounter while attempting to mod their Switch. Williams reportedly asked for “donations” of Nintendo eShop gift cards in exchange for his services. The Japanese company believes that Williams created, operated, supported, and promoted piracy websites that allowed users to download “extensive” libraries of Nintendo Switch games.
In the lawsuit, Nintendo also says that it attempted to work with Williams by sending a cease and desist letter in March 2024. In it, Nintendo urged Williams to “shut down his pirate shops.” While Williams initially seemed receptive, Nintendo alleges that progress came to a halt as Williams denied involvement with any piracy shop and apparently became “combative.” Eventually, Williams apparently deleted his online posts that could imply culpability.
there’s a big difference between making a piracy website and profiting off selling pirated content, which the article doesn’t mention. there’s also a lot of
nintendo claimsandhe denieswhich doesn’t make it clear what was happening, but so many redditors knew and confirmed he was selling roms which makes his story clearly false and less likeable
But this doesn’t confirm my bias’.
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Multiple interesting things in this case.
First that they could even identify the mod, second that he apparently asked for donations as thanks. Getting monetary benefits from something makes it much harder to argue that you just did it out of interest and not to illegally profit from it.
second that he apparently asked for donations as thanks.
he wasn’t asking for donations, he was illegally selling roms, something polygon didn’t mention
Ok, but one could also argue that Nintendo was never going to release what this content creator made, it attracted more business to the official IP, the artist was expressing themselves through painstaking love for the content, and only asked for tips to support further creative adventures.
Dropped my Switch for a Steam Deck and never looked back.
Fuck Nintendo and Games Workshop. Just say it’s not cannon and fucking move on you controlling pricks.
I think you are in the wrong thread. Mod in this article means the moderator of a subreddit, not a a modification of a game.
Fuck Nintendo and Games Workshop. Just say it’s not cannon and fucking move on you controlling pricks.
100 % agreed.
When did I say game mod? But yeah! Fuck Nintendo and Games Workshop.
You didn’t, but you referred to a content creator and his creative adventures? In what way is that not fitting better to mods as modification than mods as moderators?
Because no matter your stance on piracy, it doesn’t create new things, but rather makes it available to more people.
And also you referred to Nintendo never releasing what this creator made, which is strange when we are talking about somebody copying exactly what Nintendo released.
So if you weren’t referring to game modifications and posted in a wrong thread, in what way did your original comment fit to this news article? Because I don’t see any connection.
Nintendo was never going to release what this content creator made
They didn’t make anything, they just ran a community and offered support and advice, accepting donations in exchange.
You’re arguing logic where the person you replied to was just stating facts.
Yeeeeeah, the headline in isolation is a bit misleading and unfortunately this seems in line with some recent Nintendo moves where they go after people who slipped on something adjacent.
I have no idea how things work wherever this guy lives, but over here soliciting remuneration would be the difference between this being a problem or not.
That said, I still hope they lose this and I have so many serious questions about how Reddit wouldn’t be liable if the content is illegal and they didn’t do anything to moderate it. This is a weird one and it’s worth keeping an eye on, although I would imagine Nintendo is hoping the lawsuit itself acts as a deterrent regardless.
Eh people selling roms can fuck off anyway.
Even if its legally a crime I don’t think its morally correct to punish someone this badly for a nonviolent crime. Our FBI cares more about Piracy than releasing Epstein Files. Sure they were stupid but its still insane.
Well yeah the law isn’t controlled by the morally correct. This guy got a warning from nintendo and decided to continue making money off their product illegally. Is it excessive? Yes. Is he a moron? Also yes.
Definitely, pirated content should be free or not exist at all.
No on hates their own fans more than Nintendo. Pirate everything they sell.
Reverse engineer the Switch 2 and give away schematics to a DIY version.
They never sell their games outside their own consoles, and mobile market… And games never go on sale. Lego party finally came to PC to compete with Mario party.
Ok but why were Redditors paying this dude? I mean there’s LITERALLY the ROM Megathread via Reddit that has…literally everything listed, for free, to download. You don’t even need to go to various rom sites or anything because it’s all in that megathread for every system even system bios.
Hell even fitgirl does Switch roms.
Cause all the fucking moron kids that clogged up reddit during summer break are now fucking moron adults clogging up reddit year-round. It’s part of why I left; I could see the average IQ of its users declining in realtime.
And they don’t want to do anything for themselves. It’s why AI is gaining ground, everyone is too lazy to do anything for themselves, and that includes finding good games and hacking their own roms.
There will always be the clueless, helpless people who maybe discovered piracy and roms a week ago and don’t realize how accessible it is, thinking it’s locked behind some paywall like drugs from the local dealer.
I guess it must be a hot take, because it gets downvoted a lot every time I say this, but…
I think it’s better to boycott Nintendo outright, rather than pirate their games. Piracy is still promotion, it still benefits them, and anyone going out of their way to facilitate Nintendo piracy is clearly putting themselves at great risk. Even video content creators who are doing nothing illegal are at risk of legal battles they often can’t afford.
Nothing that Nintendo comes out is so uniquely great that it’s worth putting up with their awful business practices, fan abuse, and general enshittification. As far as video game platforms go, Steam provides orders of magnitude more value for the same cost, and they are doing genuinely good work advancing the quality and popularity of Linux.
Nah, I’m pirating their shit if it’s worth playing. Less and less of it qualifies now anyway. Knowing how much they rabidly hate piracy of their stuff makes it all the more satisfying!
I doubt Nintendo fanatics know how to boycott at all.
I’ve seen threads even in lemmyverse of folks purchasing the Switch2, esp. after some recent releases.
I doubt they’ll ever even grow spines and burn Execs’ homes.This would never be downvoted on Lemmy, so you’ve asked to be distrusted. And no, piracy is not promotion. No one is going home and buying a switch 2 if they play an emulator of an SNES game at my house.
People play Nintendo games because they are fun. Pretending otherwise is kind of stupid. I’m hard pressed to give them any more money, but some weird campaign to pretend they don’t exist isn’t going to change a damned thing.
Edit: notice how I’m downvoted but the person saying a popular opinion while claiming they’ll be downvoted gets upvoted. Imagine that.
You probably got downvoted for saying that something which does happen “never” happens, and for calling people “stupid” if they don’t agree with your opinion, and lastly for calling a boycott “some weird campaign to pretend they don’t exist”.
You gave strangers many reasons to dismiss what you’re saying.
Everything you said is wrong
It’s copy and pasted from your comment 🤣
What a sick ass burn.
What planet do you live on? Who do you think burned someone??? Lmao.
You made a whiny edit saying that people would downvote you because your comment “wasn’t popular”. I pointed out, using the exact words that you wrote, which rude and condescending statements that you made would likely cause people to think that your comment is not worth listening to.
You said that I am “wrong” despite having copy and pasted your text.
You feel “burned” when I pointed out that I copy and pasted it???
The idiot said they were going to be downvoted when they obviously weren’t going to be. You clearly think you burned me. And this time too.
i CopY paStEd Ur TeXt!!!1
Okay cool you have a lot of time on your hands to comb through people’s comment histories.
You’re basically saying boycotts are ineffective. That’s bullshit. Sure I know Nintendo isn’t going away, but now I’m putting my time, effort, and money towards the goods and services from a more deserving company. And Nintendo is gone from my life.
It’s about what you want to grow, not what you want to die.
boycotts can totally be effective.
But even if a million of their customers fell off the face of the earth tomorrow, nothing would change. Nintendo is too successful for their own good. I’ll never buy a Nintendo product, but let’s not fool ourselves thinking a small group of people on the internet has anything on the largest video game company in Japan.
A million customers dropping Nintendo at once would absolutely have a massive impact, are you kidding?
okay, I did pull that number out of my ass, but my point still stands, Nintendo will not learn their lesson by a few thousand people on the internet claiming to boycott them. I guess it would take maybe a million lost customers, but I doubt that will ever happen because the bulk of Nintendo sales go to people who only care about the games, not the company.
Even if it’s a small amount of people, it still matters. Even if boycotts can’t be made big enough to force a company to change, the change that does occur for the people boycotting changes their own lives. Things don’t happen in a vacuum, there is opportunity cost. Nintendo might still be bullying the rest of their customers, but the boycotters themselves are already free. They’re already using alternatives, supporting those alternatives, and the growth that can happen from that support can potentially mean the world to who is being supported.
I could be playing a Zelda game, but I won’t. And because of that, one way I’ve scratched that itch is by buying indie games with a similar style like Blossom Tales and Anodyne. Indie devs can use all the support they can get, so every customer counts.
It also has me looking into open-source alternatives like the Zquest engine and Solarus engine - both of which seem pretty cool.
And of course as I said earlier it means more of my time, energy, and money go toward Steam, and Valve is doing great work driving increasing popularity and technical capability of Linux, and largely doing it in the right way by substantially supporting open-source software like Proton.
One or few people don’t make much of a difference in the short term, but they are always the first ones necessary to get network effects going. I mean come on, we’re having this discussion on lemmy.
No, I’m saying boycotts are good but a weirdo interpretation of them which say piracy violates a boycott is fucking stupid
It’s really not, and evidently you don’t know jack shit about the discussions, studies, and history in piracy. If you did, you’d know that a primary argument in favor of the free sharing of information is that as we consume media, we effectively become free advertising for that media. So by claiming my stance is a “weirdo interpretation”, you are undermining one of the pillars that supports movements to make info and culture more free.
Piracy is a form of free advertising. And piracy can and often does lead to more sales.
To pirate something does promote it through word of mouth viral marketing.
Nintendo is gone from my life.
No it isn’t. You’re here on a soapbox telling people that they aren’t doing enough by completely changing their buying behavior. That’s not enough – they have to also conform to an arbitrary goalpost that you set. Nintendo is still so in your life that you’re can’t even let people pirate their shit in peace.
Supporting Nintendo is self harm, I am just trying to suggest to people that they don’t have to participate in that self harm.
Seriously, this is you right now.
It’s been past 24 hours, and not a single headquarters is in flames.
I consider your “boycott” a tantrum.
Let us know when you actually do something else than keyboard arts.
In the last 24 hours I’ve had a great time playing Heroes of Might and Magic 3 on my laptop, feeling pleased about my 800+ games on Steam and the fact that I’m not having my life ruined by Shigeru Miyamoto’s lawyers. This is what people get wrong about boycotts and the defeatist refrain, “no ethical consumption under capitalism.” It ignores that, on the example of Nintendo, I have not purchased any of their systems since the New 2DS XL. No Switch, definitely no Switch 2. And in leveraging that opportunity cost I have instead directed my resources to one of their competitors, which has had immediate benefits for my own personal life.
It’s not about what you want to kill, it’s about what you want to grow. I am helping to support the increased use of Linux by using Linux, paying for products that have Linux, and naturally advertising for Linux as a result of that being a part of my life. I don’t care how successful Nintendo is, because I am already free from their enshittification.
Could you then explain:
what you then meant by this?
’Cause last time I recall in history, when fascist corporations exists, there’s literally only one remedy for boycotting them.
Your linux plight is honestly hearsay to this conversation, and I support it, as an anarchist. But Nintendo has already C&D MANY linux projects. How many more linux projects do you want to see C&D?
Is this ragebait written by an eleven year old?
Are you unaware how political action takes place?
Pointing out that pointless actions are pointless isn’t “supporting” anything but thought. Bye.
got 'em
Unless you have no playmates, you basically play the games and later discuss with your buddies. In turn you passively encourage your mates to play the games, even if you pirate, the social force is there.
Boycotting works, we’re social creatures
Y’all will still keep on feeding them money for the same 7 games rereleased 18 times over.
That’s not very family friendly Nintendo
Shitendo being shitty again. I seriously hate that company. Ruining people’s lives just so they get a few more dollars.
Yup, and when the official ICE Twitter page utilizes their intellectual property in a video showcasing them also ruining peoples lives, we get crickets from Nintendo.
I used to feel bad that they struggle for profit, with what they set out to do back in the day with their influence in the video game industry and all; now I wholeheartedly believe they should fucking sink.
Nintendo not having any legal standing doesn’t help. Parody law is set and settled and unfortunately the ICE video counts as fair use. They did actually come out and say they had nothing to do with it and didn’t give any permission.
Fuck nintendo, stop giving money to these assholes.
Check out games in libraries and buy used if you still have an old switch.
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Okay, that’s it. Time to boycott Nintendo.
