Sorry, a game that’s been out for years shouldn’t be $60. Start discounting these older games like they used to do.
TOTK came out not a year ago. This article is specifically about how TOTK was allegedly downloaded 1 million times before it even was released. You did not even read two sentences of this article.
Nintendo filed a civil lawsuit on February 26 against Yuzu software developer Tropic Haze, claiming that the team’s tech let folks illegally pirate 2023’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom over one million times a full week and a half before it even came out.
My comment wasn’t about the specifics of the article, rather, more about why people pirate games in the first place. For the most part it’s because of the price.
i don’t care what he linked article is about, let’s talk about what i think is important…
Yeah
Did Nintendo ever really discount their games?
To my understanding, Nintendo actively opposed doing so.
But when Nintendo was “competing” with Sega/Sony, brick and mortar stores had a LOT more power. EBGames/Gamestop could basically do whatever they wanted because moving the Nintendo shelves to be behind the Sony shelves would lead to noticeable sales changes. So it was a lot more common for Toys R Us to run their own sales to move merchandise.
But in the past twenty years or so, Nintendo have actively shitlisted anyone who puts a discount on their games. Amazon famously got shitlisted at least three or four times which led to a lot of weirdness in terms of what “editions” of a given game was available for purchase.
So it was a lot more common for Toys R Us to run their own sales to move merchandise
Ah, I remember that. I used to buy most of my GBA and Sega Gamegear games at Toys R Us, and most games went for $20 or less, and I think I got some deals around $5-10 for older games. This was a long time ago, so I don’t recall specifics, but I do remember Toys R Us being the place to go for video games.
All my physical Switch games (which is most of them) I got used at GameStop because they were all about 50-70% cheaper than buying new or through Nintendo’s store. Even TOTK which I got maybe 3 months or so after release was only $35 used. Games that were even older were mostly $10-20.
Funny fact: the game stores here are so greedy you can find used game for more than the online shop price 🤷
Where is here for you? I wanna make sure to avoid it.
And gamestop paid the original buyer of that something like 5 dollars so they could sell it back to you at 7x the price.
Utilizing stores like gamestop can be beneficial to a consumer but the entire business model is built on exploiting children and idiots.
nah, best you’ll get is a deal like “buy this $60 game and we’ll give you uhh, $10 in credit or smth, idc just buy the game”. sometimes physical shops discount their games but that’s entirely up to the owners of the shops.
Nintendo’s flagship titles are basically immune to sales
Even the old ones aren’t particularly immune. A pokemon gold cartridge sells for only $10 less than a brand new Pokemon game at a fair few of the games stores I’ve been to.
That is more a mix of “collectors” and existential crises. People want to own the games they grew up with (nobody look at my shelf of Armored Core games…) and that went into overdrive when we were all expecting the world to end because of COVID… so expect another massive burst of sales come November.
And then you have the people who decide that, much like with baseball/pokemon cards, their scraped up pokemon yellow cartridge will be their retirement fund because it will be so valuable.
Should have made it cheaper…
One million people playing at 1080p and 60fps
I really don’t understand these people. I’m currently playing the game and love it, not once has my experience made me even think about the resolution and frame rate. I swear that’s all PC gamers care about, how crispy a game looks, even if it’s a pile of shit.
Yes, pc gamers only care about graphics, that’s why pc is the biggest indie platform, because indie games are known for the best graphics
Indie games in 8K though.
The James Webb Space Telescope is my favorite indie game
They’re frustrated because the game could easily be better if it wasn’t forced to run on a tablet. So easily in fact, that it’s just a button, and it’s unlocked. It’s right there, but Nintendo makes more money if you can only play it on their tablet.
Again though, this game is fantastic, and if you can’t enjoy it because of something that trivial, then I feel sorry for you. You must have hated every n64 game or any video game released before 2020 if you can’t enjoy it unless it has top of the line, current gen graphics
People were playing 60 fps minimum on most games before 2020. What era are you stuck in that you think 60 fps was a difficult target before 2020 haha. Even consoles have moved onto 120 fps options now.
Never said I can’t enjoy it. I beat it on Switch. It was great.
I’m saying a better game is available, and to deny yourself that game solely because of Nintendo lawyers is dumb.
I played TotK at launch on my Switch and also loved it.
The point you’re missing is that, whilst the game is already good on original hardware, the game is better when emulated and running at the full 1080p 60fps.
Think of it like Nintendo is giving you a ice cream sundae, and the emulator is adding extra toppings.
Also man, try to get out of the habit of doing the “Oh you like pancakes? Why do you hate waffles?” thing, it’s just combative. I mean unless you’re looking for an argument then by all means go ham
game is 30 fps and looks like crap in my opinion. 30 may be the minumum playable framerate but it still looks choppy as hell and feels unresponsive to play which you can notice after experiencing as low as 60 fps. and the landscapes have no saving grace either, anything 5 meters away has a ton of LOD applied and just looks bad.
lol imagine thinking metrics make a game good.
You’re perfect for middle manglement.
In my experience switch doesn’t even do 30 fps locked well with 20s not being rare in lot of games. Some exceptions being Bayonetta games that actually hit 60.
I mean this as nicely as possible but if the difference between 30fps tops and steady 60 isn’t obvious to you, you’re either ignorant of what you’re missing, or you’re too casual for it to matter
I mean this as nicely as possible but if his being able to notice a difference in graphic fidelity is that important to you, you’re either a maladjusted antisocial weirdo, or just an egotistical twat who has to be right 100% of the time
fps isn’t graphical fidelity, it’s litterally how it feels to play. It defines your whole experience.
Yep, on my first PC I chose to limit my resolution to 720p and low settings if necessary to hit 60 fps over 1080/30 higher settings. So quite the opposite of being a graphics snob.
My comment didn’t mention resolution or quality of graphics at all. I’m only talking about framerate, which has a major impact on how responsive and fluid the controls feel. All else being equal, a higher framerate typically just feels nicer to play. Compare Super Mario 64 (30fps) to Super Smash Bros. (60fps).
Its not juat about looking nice. Sub-30 fps is genuinely uncomfortable to many people. You aren’t sensitive to it, good for you.
You really don’t understand how a crisper image and smoother controls can’t enhance the experience? Like when you have the option of watching a video at 1080p or 4k why opt for 480p or less? And that’s not even a video game.
I literally make this choice almost every day. Why? Because I can have either my dvd player or the ps3 hooked up. I do not like using the latter for playback so I’m watching the DVD version if I have it. I’d have to run the calculations but I’m pretty sure at least 75% of my collection is DVD only. I get whatever is cheapest for most movies since the quality only matters for a small amount. Office Space isn’t any better at 1080p or 4k.
Doesn’t really apply to streaming since I don’t even pay for 4k and I’m pretty sure 1080p is default unless the show isn’t available at that res.
By that logic you couldn’t enjoy a movie like the godfather or gone with the wind prior to 4k technology because it wasn’t clean enough for you. I bet you also love watching old films with true motion and grain smoothing
Haha cinemas existed. Old people watched old movies at home on 4:3 ratio with tiny screens. It’s not that it can’t be enjoyed, but what we have now with restored aspect ratio and better scans is an improved product.
Most of those movies were never meant to be watched with “improved technology”. Just like how ps1 games look trash on a 4k tv
Haha. First off PS1 games were made with CRTs in mind which don’t use pixels to begin with so a 720p or 1080p screen would be terrible. Which lets be real. Outside of hardcore enthusiasts the average person isn’t going to have a heavy CRT in their house.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea6tw-gulnQ
And actually 4k oleds are great for emulating CRT effects with CRT Shaders over lower resolution non CRT devices and more resolution would make the effect better.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yNmJ0n-QMCY
And film actually…
35mm film is thought to have a digital resolution of 4K, whereas 70mm Imax is closer to 12K and 35mm Imax film has a digital resolution of 6K. Most movies will be edited and colored and enhanced digitally, regardless of how they were shot. (Called digital intermediate and usually at 2K resolution). Even Imax projection systems cannot play back anything higher than 4K, even when certain movies are scaled back to a digital or film print for distribution.
So yes old films on new TVs are definitely closer to the cinematic experience in theaters than CRTs. Not to mention the wider aspect ratio of films leading to content not being cut like they were for old TVs.
Not sure why you are so resistant to the idea of using better technology. If you are that resistant to 60 fps+ and higher resolutions you can stick with it, but other people will opt for the better performance and visuals if it’s an option.
For your sake I hope you’re a bot.
I’m late to the switch party, as I’m just messing with one for the first time since Christmas. I’ve been a PC gamer for decades. Decided to try out breath of the wild, and I’m having a blast with it. That being said, I would be lying if I said there weren’t times where the frame rate dropped so low it’s distracting. This new one may not have that issue, but I’m betting it’s similar. I would absolutely be interested in emulating the game on better hardware. Hardware I already have at home.
You may not understand this side of the argument, and that’s fair. I also don’t understand yours. If someone wants to improve their experience with the game, it costs me nothing to give them a smile and a thumbs up for enjoying their own time/money however they like.
I think it’s probably worse. They added in new mechanics, which probably means higher CPU load. I’ve heard reports of poor framerates on Switch, but can’t confirm because I didn’t bother getting it (I didn’t like BotW that much, I prefer more classic Zelda games).
If it was available on PC, I’d probably get it because playing a BotW-like game at 60fps at higher res may be worth it. I’m probably not getting it for Switch though, because I’ve already decided that experience isn’t worth the cost.
People have given you a lot of snarky or rude answers, which isn’t warranted. I partially agree with you, but partially disagree too.
For ToTK, High resolution doesn’t matter a ton because the game is well optimized for its intended platform, for playing on a switch can still give you great vistas and pictures. This is where I agree with you.
However, the difference between 30 and 60 fps makes a big difference in this game. Controls, motion, and fights all feel a lot smoother and natural at 60 fps. And while vistas and pictures still look great, a lot of the game has additional beauty when in motion. The improved frame rate does make a difference and can enhance the experience for a game that deserves it. The people who made this game clearly put a lot of thought and creativity into and the switch isn’t always able to deliver that experience to the players. Think of it like going to an indoor play with sunglasses on; it may still be enjoyable to but some of the experience is lost.
The original comment was pretty snarky so I see about as much snark as I’d expect, tbh.
What a weird hill to die on.
How can someone else’s experience and enjoyment of something differ from my own criteria?!
Not least because switch was old hardware when it launched, it’s aged hardware at this point, and equivalent games on other platforms have far better performance.
I’m just saying, PC gamers only care about graphics. Switch costs like $300 a gaming PC costs like $3k, why would Nintendo give up it’s exclusivity to please your tiny niche market, a market of unpleasable gamers as PC gamers are known to be.
You dont need a 3k gaming pc to get started. PC has lots of options, thats part of the appeal.
Steam alone has as many monthly active users as the switch has lifetime sales. Its not a tiny niche market.
Its also not unpleasable. There are certain technical standards, sure. But that is true for all consoles as well.
Forgive me if I say that might sound like a biased take.
Personally, leaving aside the legal argument of piracy, I would be fine with paying Nintendo the money but playing on my steam deck and having stuff like steam input and having my save games for future PCs. I haven’t played TotK yet but the 90+ hours I put in BotW is locked to the switch which I sold after getting a steam deck. I don’t care for high end PC performance.
Nah, some do be playing at 1440/2160p
Damn I heard you can inject ray tracing and even “mod” the game.
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.
Download an emulator and find a torrent for the game. It’s pretty easy to do, and you get better quality. I haven’t played TotK, but I did do this for Pokémon Arceus. I knew I’d hate it, but I wanted to see where it was going. It’s a pretty shit game. Do not recommend.
If anyone else wants to try Pokemon Legends Arceus, Here are a few Mods i would recommend:
- 60 FPS Mod (Don’t use the Nexus Mods one, its outdated, also this mod will double the battle speed, it’s impossible to prevent this at the moment)
- [Comprehensive HD Character & Clothing Texture Pack ] (https://gamebanana.com/mods/357717)
- Xbox Icons
- Sky & Moon Improvement Mod
- [AI Upscaled Terrain Textures] (https://gamebanana.com/mods/354194)
- [No Terrain Reflections] (https://gamebanana.com/mods/355082) (Make sure to install AI Upscaled textures first and then overwrite the files with this one)
Important: You need to use Yuzu, the latest Version of Ryujinx won’t work because you NEED to unlock 6/8GB Ram in the emulators setting’s. For some reason’s this won’t work in Ryujinx but in Yuzu it just works fine!
Gameplay Mods Vanilla Style:
- Max Draw Distance for Pokemon NPCs and Trees
- [Max Animation Distance] (https://www.nexusmods.com/pokemonlegendsarceus/mods/3)
- [More Wild Pokemon] (https://www.nexusmods.com/pokemonlegendsarceus/mods/7)
- [Wyrdeer Remastered] (https://www.nexusmods.com/pokemonlegendsarceus/mods/31)
- [Shaymin and Darkrai Spawn Without Old Save Data] (https://www.nexusmods.com/pokemonlegendsarceus/mods/32)
- [Improved Pokemon De-Spawn Radius] (https://www.nexusmods.com/pokemonlegendsarceus/mods/30)
Alternative to all this Gameplay Mods, you could also use this Big Overhaul Mod Pokemon Legends Arceus Plus But I prefer the more vanilla style Gameplay.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Tears of Nintendo
Yeah I pirated it, played it for 5 hours. I didn’t and don’t have any intention of buying a nintendo game ever, even if I couldn’t pirate it. They are almost never worth the asking price. Most have the quality of a 40 usd steam indie game, some even of a 20 usd one. I know that this doesn’t have anything to do with the creative departments, but nintendo can go fuck itself. Also, a friend of mine whose a fan of Nintendo pirated it even before it came out, but he played it in the switch lol.
And I bought it once. I think that’s a fair trade.
*loses
Also, I feel the same
Maybe people don’t want to pay premium prices for games on 8 year old underpowered hardware.
I’m really curious about this case’s outcome.
On one hand yuzu shouldn’t be illagel, on the other hand, their patreon income surged when tears of the kingdom came out, and maybe that is enough to say that they enable pirates and thus should cease all operations.
I’m rooting for yuzu. Have they said anything at all yet? Btw if you want yuzu I think now is the time to download it while it exists (in case nintendo moves forward / wins, or yuzu devs are intimidated to take it down)
patreon income surged when tears of the kingdom came out, and maybe that is enough to say that they enable pirates and thus should cease all operations.
Problem is, what part of that is Yuzu’s fault? They themselves stressed not to go down the piracy route.
Don’t forget about my homie Ryujinx! Better performance in same games, too!
For what i have read, they dont have a case and it should be a guaranteed lost for Nintendo if they try to pursue this to court. That said, they know the legal battle will be long and expensive and are preying on the Yuzo team not having the resources to fight back.
Is not the first time they are pulling this shit.
Nintendo needs to be sanctioned from the legal system for being a vexatious litigant.
I mean they’re assuming everyone who downloaded it was using it with yuzu and not, for example, hacked or modded switches.
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.
Pirated in this case as they’re talking about the leak that happened before it was released.
That’s technically legal right? Kinda like ripping a CD?
Ripping the game from your own system/cartridge is legal, downloading an identical copy from the internet is not.
Source?
The DMCA.
IANAL, depending on your jurisdiction, downloading someone else’s backup of something can be illegal. Backing up your own physical copy and using that is very often legal.
Usually its the uploading or distributing thats the illegal part.
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.
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
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?
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.
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?
I was one of them <3
But where are the other 0.999999999 Million? Like how they came up with such number?
Hey, I think tango@lemmy.ml is more than a thousandth of a person
i hope Nintendo looses on every count.
How can they possibly know how many times it was pirated? This was the last Nintendo game I bought, actually, and will now remain so until their next console comes out. Those of us with older Switches don’t need an emulator to play your games pirated, Nintendo!
Some unpaid intern was tasked to go onto public torrent sites, put in a search on Zelda, and just tallied up the number of times the various torrents were downloaded in a Excel spreadsheet using =sum(AX:AY).
That was turned over to the lawyers and charges 1k an hour, billed 20 hours for 1 hour of work a paralegal took to modify what came out of ChatGPT, bought some coke and here we are.
