3DS, Wii U eShop Shutdown Leaves Archivists In the Wind, Hobbyists Pick Up the Pieces (techdirt.com) 39
On March 27th, Nintendo's eShop for its 3DS and Wii U consoles will be shut down. With many of the titles being original to those consoles and not available anywhere else, it's left archivists and historians scrambling to preserve them before it's too late. However, those preservation plans get complicated given Nintendo's litigious nature on matters of intellectual property. Techdirt's Timothy Geigner writes: Preventing the gaming public from continuing to buy games that rely on a company-operated backend infrastructure is one thing. After all, Nintendo can do what it wants when it comes to putting its products into commerce. But what really annoyed a ton of people, myself included, was how this would impact archivists and historians, or anyone else interested in preserving video game history and culture. With the impending shutdown, some of those entities are once again expressing concern: "While it's unfortunate that people won't be able to purchase digital 3DS or Wii U games anymore, we understand the business reality that went into this decision,' the Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) tweeted when the eShop shutdowns were announced a year ago. 'What we don't understand is what path Nintendo expects its fans to take, should they wish to play these games in the future.'"
Because Nintendo is litigious, utilizes DRM, and the DMCA exists, all of that combines to make it wildly unsafe for museums and archivists to actually retain copies of these games that will shortly no longer be found anywhere else. And, no, the exemptions built into the DMCA for content such as movies and literature simply don't exist for the video game space. [...] So what can be done? Not a whole lot, honestly, but some hobbyists are at least going to make a go of it: "In an effort to address this -- or at least address it in a single place on as few consoles as possible -- YouTuber The Completionist decided to sit down and spend almost a year of his life (328 days in total) buying his way through both libraries. He's now done, and the statistics are staggering. The dude bought 866 Wii U games and 1547 3DS titles, numbers that include DSiWare, Virtual Console releases and downloadable content. That adds up to 1.2TB of data for the Wii U, and 267GB for the 3DS. Or, for the 3DS purists reading, 2,136,689 blocks."
As part of this effort, The Completionist has said he plans to donate all of this digital media to the VGHF. What they can do with all of that content still remains to be seen. All of the same copyright and DMCA rules still apply, so what access it can grant to researchers, never mind the public, is in question.
Because Nintendo is litigious, utilizes DRM, and the DMCA exists, all of that combines to make it wildly unsafe for museums and archivists to actually retain copies of these games that will shortly no longer be found anywhere else. And, no, the exemptions built into the DMCA for content such as movies and literature simply don't exist for the video game space. [...] So what can be done? Not a whole lot, honestly, but some hobbyists are at least going to make a go of it: "In an effort to address this -- or at least address it in a single place on as few consoles as possible -- YouTuber The Completionist decided to sit down and spend almost a year of his life (328 days in total) buying his way through both libraries. He's now done, and the statistics are staggering. The dude bought 866 Wii U games and 1547 3DS titles, numbers that include DSiWare, Virtual Console releases and downloadable content. That adds up to 1.2TB of data for the Wii U, and 267GB for the 3DS. Or, for the 3DS purists reading, 2,136,689 blocks."
As part of this effort, The Completionist has said he plans to donate all of this digital media to the VGHF. What they can do with all of that content still remains to be seen. All of the same copyright and DMCA rules still apply, so what access it can grant to researchers, never mind the public, is in question.
Digital schmigital (Score:1)
Re: Digital schmigital (Score:1)
Except for all the updates and dlc of course!
Whoever could have predicted that the dmca would allow this!? /s
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For now.
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"On both platforms, users will still be able to: Redownload content they own"
Problem #1: they wouldn't already own anything flagged as DLC.
Problem #2: in a couple years Nintendo will just shut things down entirely, so the software updates will be dead as well.
Archivists, historians and for that matter gamers need a way to get the complete and final versions of the games.
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For games that were available in physical form, and while there is still inventory in the used market.
Eventually the physical copies become extremely rare - a lot of people will just throw them away, collectors often won't part with them or ask a very high price. A kid who just wants to try the same games his parents played is priced out of the market.
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You must be fun at parties.
Guys Guys! None of this matters! Stop having fun!
Re: Digital schmigital (Score:2)
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Here's a link to a (possibly incomplete?) list of eshop exclusives on resetera. [resetera.com]
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Pirates do what Nintendon't. /s
'member berries (Score:2)
Re:'member berries (Score:4, Informative)
The Nintendo Famicom was launched in 1983, and manufacturing only ended in 2003. Nintendo kept servicing Famicoms until 2007, when they ran out of spare parts.
The Wii U was released in late 2012. Only a decade later, you can't even access some games for it anymore. Some titles were primarily online games, and are defunct now.
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PC Master Race (Score:2)
Laughs at discontinued toys.
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We make copies of those games. Duh.
Sue me? Sorry, those games don't belong to me, they belong to the Society of Gaming, Ltd, which is a 100% daughter of the Gaming society, which owns the gameplay holding which is the 100% owner of the Society of Gaming. I just work here.
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PC Master Race member here, where can I buy Forza Horizon 3 for PC with the Blizzard Mountain and Hotwheels DLC?
Astroglide (Score:1)
Nice try. Everyone knows Astroglide comes in bottles and KY Jelly comes in tubes.
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My impression is that the pirates have already gotten their games, independent of the Nintendo online stores.
And pirates being pirates, there tends to be a group who act more like collectors - grabbing every game they can. They will end up preserving everything. With hardware mods like an optical drive emulator, one can even play the game on the original hardware.
Although honestly, the people who do play will almost always choose emulation. And most of those will probably
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My impression is that the pirates have already gotten their games, independent of the Nintendo online stores.
I have a pirated WiiU and did what I seemed to be the most popular method of piracy. Believe it or not I downloaded all my games straight off Nintendo’s CDN.
Seems to be happening more and more too. All my Microsoft operating systems were pirated directly from Microsoft (and mostly cracked with software that comes with Windows).
I’m actually struggling to think of any pirated software at my house that wasn’t taken directly from the manufacturer.
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Interesting. I'm more used to pirating older systems, where large collections of roms is normal - such as arcade roms or N64 games.
How does pirating content directly from the store work?
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Not exactly sure. I had to download a copy of brainage so I’d have signed content and then replace it with something called Haxchi which lets me run unsigned games. To get the games I had to use a tool on my PC which appeared to download them off Nintendo’s CDN and then install them on my Wii with an SD card. I guess Nintendo figures their walled garden provides all the security requirements required in their agreements with publishers even if they know in their hearts that it’s dumb.
Copyright (Score:2, Troll)
Copyrights are insanely too long. If copyright were much shorter, it wouldn't be as much of an issue. Even if longer, there should at least be an exception that if the owner doesn't make it available for X years or X% of the time, they lose the copyright.
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As-is, this crime hasn't yet taken action. In another 120 years or so when it does however, as copyright violations are criminal law as well as civil, we want the company executives punished for their crimes as well as damages.
Overall good idea. But we all know you can't stop the current company executives from doing what they are doing if the arrest and lawsuit can only come after they are retired or even dead for many years. So this line in particular is not practical.
Online Utopia not as good as evangelists said? (Score:3)
Now that is NOT a surprise..
(Buys another CD and DVD)
Copyright holds Culture hostage (Score:5, Insightful)
If a platform is no longer being sold, and the games aren't available for sale, then 10 years from that date they should revert to public domain so they can be preserved for historical sake. The 8-bit world has already lost many ancient games and utilities because pirates failed to preserve them. Yes, it is ironic that pirates preserved old software!
Companies abusing copyright just holds culture hostage. Copyright isn't stopping the pirates, only the honest person from enjoying past games.