You can expect they will only “enforce” this with a competitor that gets too popular and all the other niche indie games like a cassette Beasts and TemTem they will leave alone
Existing IPs, maybe. But the real point of this patent is to stifle innovation and preempt competition. No indie developer is going to dare enter this creative space anymore as they don’t have the resources to challenge Nintendo’s patent - even though I think this won’t hold up in court.
Nintendo is shitty for patenting this, sure, but why was the patent granted? This has happened numerous times for big tech companies where an overly broad patent is granted that allows them to stifle innovation and bully smaller companies out of business instead of properly competing with government protection
Exactly. Nintendo is not our friend, but it’s also playing by the rules it has available to it. It’s the rulemaker’s fault if the rules are shite.
As a publically traded company in the current system, Nintendo is not in the business of making video games, it’s in the business of making shareholder value. Video games are just a tool for doing that, exactly how a PC is a tool for writing documents or developing software. At the end of the day, companies have more than one tool at their disposal, and are going to use all of them to compete.
It’s on us to take away the tools we don’t think they should have access to, not on them to voluntarily not use the ones that are in play.
Classic American response: “companies aren’t responsible for the shitty choices they make, they can make as many shitty choices that harm people for profit as possible at all times and it’s just business”.
I’ve grown to hate that famous quote “It’s not personal, it’s just business.” because it’s almost exclusively used to excuse people when they choose to act like sociopaths.
Systemic change is needed when the system allows for that exploitation. That is not excusing companies. Noone should be able to do it is the right reaction.
No one should be able to do it is the right reaction, but ‘Nintendo deserves no blame or shame for choosing to do it’ is the wrong reaction. Nintendo could have used all the money it spends on IP lawyers to instead lobby the government to change the patent system, but they chose not to.
Specifically, the patent describes a situation where:
A console or other system is being used to run a video game from storage
The player controls a character in a “virtual space”
The player can perform an input command to make a “sub character” appear (i.e. summon another character)
If there’s an enemy where the sub character appears, the player can control a battle between the sub character and the enemy
If there’s no enemy where the sub character appears, the sub character will automatically move around
The player can move the sub character to a different location on the field, and if an enemy is there they can control a battle between the sub character and the enemy
Even lawyers can’t get you out of trying to patent something that was clearly already in the market. Previously, Nintendo’s patent lawsuits had been for specific mechanics such as throwing a ball to capture npc animals.
“Typically, when a customer purchases a hacked console or the circumvention services, Defendant preinstalls on the console a portfolio of ready-to-play pirated games, including some of Nintendo’s most popular titles such as its Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Metroid games.”
Yeah, that’ll bring the hammer down every time.
We can argue about the legality and morality of mod chips all day long, but building a business on distributing pirated software (and software that’s still being actively sold, at that) is a legal slam dunk.
Nintendo might have still tried something, even with just the mod chips, just to try and strongarm someone into submission. However, distributing the games just seems incredibly dumb to me, and might be the main reason they were able to get this settlement.
I continue to not buy Nintendo devices or software because of their continuing nonsensical litigation like this. Whatever value they think they lost because of these chips I say compare that to their continued tarnishing of their name.
If your drm can be altered with a chip some guy made in his garage then it’s your drm that’s at fault. Financially ruining the guy only hurts the Nintendo brand.
I also do not buy Nintendo products for the same reason, but I think you overestimate the general public’s knowledge of their crazy litigant aggressiveness.
Ask any 12 year old what they want for Xmas and it’s a Switch 2, which means that parents are going to keep buying them for their kids, and it’s a massive pain to tell your kid that you’re not going to buy them their desired toy because the company that makes it is a scourge of hostile control freaks.
Most people just don’t care. So, keep up the fight because it matters but Nintendo’s brand image is mostly family safe game consoles, Mario, etc. despite what the very small subset of the world that is on Lemmy thinks.
I’m aware, we aren’t going to make a massive dent. However, for this 2 million dollar settlement, how many people would need to be swayed to not buy a switch 2 to make the settlement more expensive? In other words, how many sales would need to be lost because of us not buying the console to make the settlement moot?
In the case of 2 million, that’s about 4,500 switch 2s, not counting the loss in games bought or accessories.
If just 4500 people were convinced not to buy one because of this settlement, then the cost to their brand being tarnished is worse than the loss of potential sales due to the chip.
There’s a dozen other factors too, legal costs, what drives these potential sales, etc. what I’m trying to say is that if they’re willing to be this litigious over a few thousand console sales, then that means that even small groups like us not buying consoles can actually be noticed. It may be a simple dip in sales on a chart, but they’ll notice. To a greedy corporation willing to go after a single guy in a garage, they’ll notice a couple thousand people not buying consoles.
Yeah you’re the parent you can just say no. It’s this what parenting is like nowadays? When I still had a kid, we wouldn’t even feed him dinner cause we couldn’t afford it. It can whine all night long but as a parent no means no. We should bring back the rod as they say spare the rod, spoil the child.
what makes it spyware? i get wanting to boycott everything Microsoft because of…well, everything they do to make the world worse. But spyware is a new one.
Look at how aggressively copilot is trying to evade an interactive firewall, there are new processes and process names popping up every other day. You know what else acts like this? Malware.
But only if are a fan of Borderlands 2, right? For any other casual player without attachment to the series, the third entry doesn’t seem to bad. I have yet to play. This is just what I get from reading opinions. Is this correct?
3 has a bad story even if you aren't a fan of 2. It's peak middle aged men writing humor that the think teenagers would like. Gameplay is best in the series by far though. (Excluding 4 which I haven't played yet).
For someone who think gameplay is king, I would probably enjoy this game more than 2? Not saying that characters, story, writing, music, graphics and so on are not important; far from.
I, like you, heard the story was bad but figured I could just focus on the gameplay and ignore the writing. Unfortunately, the reason the bad writing is so notorious is that the game is setup to jam it in your face consantly. It’s unrelenting.
Imagine playing a pretty decent game while a dead-eyed 50 year old comedian is making the worst jokes you’ve ever heard in your life while doing a very poor impression of gen-z internet slang they barely understand. The comedian thinks you the player are actually stupid so the jokes are as condescending as they are awful. Now imagine they won’t shut up. Every time you do anything in the game, you get a few minutes of these whacky jokes. Accepting a mission, every bullet of the mission, skits that you have to watch before progressing, etc. You have no choice but to engage with the lazy, insulting, horrendous writing that wears thin after minutes and goes on for the entire hours-long game.
There are mods that disable the endless chatter which I can’t recommend more highly. I made the misake of playing the game raw. The game is actually pretty fun, but the aggressive garbage of the writing is not something easily ignored.
Hmm, I see. Like any extreme, it can outweigh and be the major pain point (or high point, whatever). Action games with too much cinematic and tutorial can also destroy the fun of an otherwise good game. And if the cinematic and constant chatting and characters are annoying, yeah, that’s a pass for me as well.
I’ve purchased the game for something like 2,99 or so in Steam and thought will play it someday. I’ll probably install and test it just because I have it, but after reading comments like yours, I do not think to finish it. Not all games you start needs to be finished.
BTW are those mods integrated into Steam? If so, I’ll have it in mind.
TL;DR future versions of the digital console with come with only 825GB of storage but still cost the same as the current version which has 1TB of storage. AKA shrinkflation.
And a really shitty one, price difference between those two for a manufacturer ordering things in massive quantity is barely anything. Sony saves $5 per console, users lose 20% of their storage.
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