In an effort to crack down on the unlawful profiting of Internet pirates, Nintendo has broken out the big, judicial guns today. The target? The Florida-based modding biz HackYourConsole.com. Real inconspicuous name there, guys. No one was going to suspect a thing.
Accusing the company of "blatantly" promoting and selling pirated Nintendo titles, as well as offering "services to hack and modify the Wii console and allow the play of illegal software" such as R4 cartridges, Nintendo appears to be pretty serious about pursuing HackYourConsole. The R4 cartridges--recently outlawed in Japan--are of particular interest to Nintendo, as they allow gamers to store a boatload of pirated titles onto a flash drive that can be easily accessed by a Nintendo 3DS.
Voicing his support for Nintendo's litigation, indie game developer Jools Watsham, of Renegade Kd, stated that, "Piracy on the Nintendo DS system has a huge impact on games sales. It can affect everyone involved, including the many honest players out there. If independent studios, like ours, are unable to recoup the money they invest into game development, through the sales of their games, we will unfortunately see fewer independent games developed in the future.”
And no one wants that. Yes, downloading a bunch of titles for free is obviously fiscally preferably to buying all of them but, remember, gamemakers have to eat too. Hopefully, this will send the proper message to the other pirating services scourges across the web.
[via Kotaku]
