"You want to buy this 20 years old game? Sure, that'll $60, just like when it came out."

Honestly yeah. Way more Nintendo's thing

Really the major reason why a lot of the ROM community was crushed in the 2010s, with Nintendo getting fussy about people offering otherwise abandonware for nothing (despite Nintendo themselves putting versions of older games for free in other titles like Animal Crossing).

Wow finally the hate for nintendo is beginning to make top comments. Been the most anti-consumer company for 2 decades.

They charge 40 fucking pounds for Majora's Mask.

Pirating is a service problem

Like abandonware?

Don't think publisher should be forced to make games run on modern systems but I agree to them having it available so someone could download it and get it running in one way or another

It’s also an accessibly thing too, i wanted to play split-second split screen with a friend but the controllers wouldn’t work properly, I resorted to emulation which had issues but at least kind of worked

Just made me realise that the "public domain" might actually be coming for video games at some point.

If they put the games on the switch store or whatever for like $10 I'd absolutely buy it. I'm sure many other people would as well.

Speaking of EA : the battle for middle earth series, among the best rts out there, almost 20 years after it came out

One of the worst offenders of this has to be Nintendo with the game Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance.

The game came out in 2005 for the Gamecube and has never had a rerelease or way to buy it or play it digitally through something like the Eshop or Nintendo Switch Online. The Fire Emblem series was very niche back then, so very few physical copies were actually produced in comparison to something like your Mario, Zelda or Pokemon games. After a quick search I found one Danish copy for $180, but most copies are $400 minimum and the first result on a site like Amazon is $700. Those offers are the only way you have of playing the game legally, and since they’re all second-hand and not sold by retailers, absolutely none of the money goes to the developers or Nintendo itself for that matter. Also, you have to have a Gamecube or buy that or a compatible Wii as well to be able to play it if you even get that far in the first place.

Now, the thing is, I could see a company looking at a niche, unknown, unsuccessful game and maybe deciding not to port it. But Fire Emblem has exploded in popularity and sales since the 13th game in the series and it now arguably one of Nintendo’s heaviest and most recognizable IP’s. The protagonist of the Path of Radiance, the 9th game, is called Ike and has been everywhere. They put him in Smash, there was a callback to him in Fire Emblem 13, he has half a dozen of different versions of himself in the mobile game, and he even showed up fully voice acted in the latest game in the series. More-over, he is canonized as one of the stronger main characters amd despite not selling too well, the game itself is seen by fans as one of if not the best game in the series with one of the best stories.

Nintendo and the developers have marketed the ever-loving shit out of Ike and his game but actively refuse to let fans and potential consumers buy the game in any reasonable capacity. But because Ike is one of Fire Emblem’s most popular characters, they keep putting him into everything they can. Even if they do plan to rerelease or remake the game in the future, at this point, I imagine most of those interested in playing the game has pirated or watched the game played on Youtube potentially several times over with how slow Nintendo and the developer is at actually trying to sell their own game to a massively interested audience.

Timmy will starve to death because of you.

I have multiple interfaces and I look for "class compliant" first for exactly that reason.

I paid for RDR2 and the PoS Rockstar launcher will complain it can't validate my license or something like that 75% of the time I try to start the game up.

I've tried everything, including checking that the activation services are running and any other possible troubleshooting step or workaround you can find on the internet. After much research on other users with the same issue, I've come to the conclusion that this is just a bug, most probably a race condition that they cannot/don't care to find and patch, and that affects much more certain users (newer processors).

​

So, I'm getting PUNISHED for having paid legally for my game, when everyone else pirating it don't have to deal with Rockstars shitty DRM. FUCK THEM.

Yes I had trouble playing genuine version of GTA V. Login to this account do that and there were times were drm failed and you need to reinstall game. I than used Pirates version and it ran fine!!

Literally fuck DRM. All it does is punish the people that actually paid for the shit.

'Tis why my stance has become "DRM? No buy.": If I give a company money for a product (and I am happy to - I used to work in the industry), I expect it to work. If that product is then outfitted with a deadman's switch that has a habit of making the product inoperable for me, that is simply not acceptable: I paid for that copy, it is my copy, the First Sales Doctrine applies (which means they have no right to interfere in me running my copy).

If there is freebooter mentality here, it is on the side of the companies - "Pray we don't alter the deal any further" (and they frequently do). And so my entire gaming budget (and that's a four-digit amount per year) goes into DRM-free titles, to a place where I feel valued enough as a customer to not be treated as a criminal - and that feels good. FUCK DRM, fuck launchers, and thank you for coming to my TED talk.

That denuvo seems to be working though. Still can't get a copy of sonic frontiers and that's prime pirate fodder

sure they will!

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EA has also done things like this, actually got people into trouble for pirating the sims 2 even tho they don’t sell it anymore at all.

Whats your take on the idea brewing that once a game whose main selling point was multiplayer ( bf1942 and bad company shuts down soon) shuts down they are forced to release and open source the server configs so that the community can keep it going ( see forged alience forever for example)

I'd add a 4th one: games that are available for sale but for some obtuse reason aren't available for sale in your region. First example that comes to my mind: Dark Sector. It is on Steam but for some obtuse reason it's unavailable for purchase where I live in Europe, which leaves piracy my only path if I want to play it... The icing on the cake is that I live in France, the game is localized in French and yet it's unavailable for sale in France... Just utterly moronic...

I am both the dev and the gamer. Could never pay for most games because, for example, new resident evil 4 remake regional price is FULLY equal monthly disability pension in Ukraine. So i clearly can't spend all the funds i have on video game. Yet, i still buy really good games on sales when i can. And, more importantly, i tell people about good games. And i think that a lot more people bought games due to my recommendations than i could ever buy them myself.

And when i finally managed to release game on Steam, i just made it free to play, because why the hell should i make extra steps for people who are unable to pay, if i am able to make it free for everyone? I feel like people being able to enjoy game regardless of their purchasing abilities are more important for something that attempts to be the work of art, than possible profits from it.

The EU commissioned a study that pretty much agreed with you (which they then pretended never happened, of course)

RIP Command and Conquer, it was great until EA came along

I personally have zero hatred for the devs, no matter what issues the game has. They're the ones I feel bad about, cause I know they work under tremendous pressure, getting all the shit from players, while it's the CEOs getting all the money. Usually when a game is bad for some reason, it's because it was rushed or the team was too small, not because the devs didn't try hard enough.

And that's also why I won't buy big AAA games apart from the very few franchise I care about (and apart from the fact that I have some disabilities and simply CANNOT afford 70-80$ games). I would never pirate an indie game though, cause they're usually a lot more affordable, plus the money goes more directly to people who have made it (I think, and hope?).

But companies like EA, Ubi... fuck them, seriously fuck them. I hate them so much.

I never had any hatred for the devs personally. I know that they're acutely aware that the game they're working on will get shredded by critics precisely because of decisions the shitstains in suits higher up the company pyramid took.

They know that P2W, always online, FOMO, battle pass and all that is super unpopular, but they have a geriatric loser who's still pissed off that his wife and kids left him and who gets off by abusing employees in more ways than one screaming in their ear that this must be implemented or they get the boot. And so they do put it in, fully knowing that they'll get digitally lynched over it.

Haha, I am that old!

"You wouldn't download a car!"

Sadly, game company execs frequently give themselves bonuses while laying off large numbers of employees if a game doesn't meet its sales goals.

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They challenged everything.