It's no secret that gaming in China has seen a huge rise in popularity after the government's restrictions around the matter became progressively looser. Since then, many foreign industries have tried to take a slice of this already huge and rapidly expanding market, but there's one big issue that they need to tackle when considering to do so: piracy is rampant inside the country. With so many people opting "to go unlicensed" (70% of all software installs in the country weren't legit according to a survey made in 2015 by Statista), some businesses outright gave up trying to sell their digital goods in China when faced with the seemingly unstoppable piracy problem (like Microsoft). However, one company is trying to stand up and fight where the others fell.

After teaming up with the local tech giant Tencent as an effort to officially market the Switch inside the country, Nintendo is now taking advantage of this partnership to target Chinese Switch piracy websites. Two have been already affected by this move and amongst them was one of the top ROM sites in China. This last one has deleted its Switch downloads subforum, leaving only the discussion boards open, but other console's ROMs are still available and ready to be downloaded as usual. Even more interestingly, banners advertising Switch modding and piracy tools are still up on its home page and the forums are filled with hacking & homebrew discussions - that also includes threads linking to a certain unofficial, definitely not legal Shop replacement application.

Will Nintendo be able to defeat websites infringing their intellectual property in China? Will pirates prevail instead? Leave your comments below!

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[kevin corms]

I dont think people get it, gaming got big in china because of digital distribution and its now nearly impossible to regulate.

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I didn't expect Nintendo to team up with Tencent. I digress, but could this hint towards a possible future release of PUBG on the switch?
China has been the cradle of gaming piracy for as long as the gaming industry itself. With gaming being something not cared about there allowed pirates to conduct their illegal activities therefore resulting in an increase in pirate and bootleg things hence stereotyping China as the land of fake stuff.

Unless they rewrite the engine, pubg on switch isnt really feasible.

 

[RedBlueGreen]

Guys remember that Tencent is very close with the Chinese government. So this is a pretty big deal to be honest.

I really doubt anything will happen regardless. If anything I think this is only temporary until they finalize the deal and actually start selling the Switch in China. Once that happens I'm sure Tencent won't lift a finger and any attempts by Nintendo to do anything about it will be brushed off because it's China.

 

[kevin corms]

Didn't China say "no more new videogames" or something like that? Or do they just allow Tencent games only?

You are looking at it from the perspective of someone who lives in a western country I imagine, most shopping in China is grey market and not all that controlled. There is such a large population density that they have to focus on what they really care about, like guns and drugs.

 

[Kioku]

hey dude, from what u wrote makes u look alike a Orange man 's wshite supporter...are u? So china copied 5G from murica? since 5G technolgy has nno backdoor for NSA, now Murica is so BUTTHURT cauz you can't spy what German chancellor Angela Merker says with UN's secretary anymore hey?

You really went there? China is the copyright grey market of the world. They copy technology like nobody's business. 5G doesn't change that. So, yes, it's a bit weird that Tencent (who is in tight with the local government bodies) teamed up with Nintendo in this purely hypocritical move. Does it change the piracy market? No. It can't.

 

[kevin corms]

What I dont understand is why people fight so hard against piracy, piracy tends to actually increase sales/profits by quite a bit and most people dont even know how to pirate anything. I can see them cutting down on people actually charging people to pirate for them, or even making sure other companies dont steal code.. but this is madness.

 

[RedBlueGreen]

I dont think people get it, gaming got big in china because of digital distribution and its now nearly impossible to regulate.

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Unless they rewrite the engine, pubg on switch isnt really feasible.

I don't think that's true. There are a lot of optimizations that could be made without rewriting the game.

If they can't get it to work (and there's really no feasible reason they shouldn't if they make the proper adjustments) they could just use the mobile version as a base.

 

[the_randomizer]

I wouldn't trust Chinese piracy sites any further than I can throw a football.

That said, criminalizing piracy only makes it more desirable/tantalizing to pirate.

 

[kevin corms]

I don't think that's true. There are a lot of optimizations that could be made without rewriting the game.

If they can't get it to work (and there's really no feasible reason they shouldn't if they make the proper adjustments) they could just use the mobile version as a base.

Thats the thing, the cpu on current mobile socs is much faster than the slightly outdated tegra chip nintendo is using. Heres a youtube vid of someone playing pubg on an tegra x1, I suppose it works but I wouldnt play that.

 

[FAST6191]

I wouldn't trust Chinese piracy sites any further than I can throw a football.

Some of them back when were really good. Full collections, fairly well organised as far as pictures and whatnot, easy to use, even a decent collection of ROM hacks from time to time... couple them with a decent collection of hashes and you could do well.

 

[the_randomizer]

Some of them back when were really good. Full collections, fairly well organised as far as pictures and whatnot, easy to use, even a decent collection of ROM hacks from time to time... couple them with a decent collection of hashes and you could do well.

Piracy sites, IDK, like, isn't there a credible risk of getting malware/spyware from those sites? I admit to downloading a crap load of torrents back in the day and I got lucky, but now, I'm not sure I want to risk it.

 

[FAST6191]

Piracy sites, IDK, like, isn't there a credible risk of getting malware/spyware from those sites? I admit to downloading a crap load of torrents back in the day and I got lucky, but now, I'm not sure I want to risk it.

Between adblock (bad adverts are a problem everywhere) and paying attention to what you download then no more than visiting anywhere else really.

 

[Hells Malice]

It is likely to only be a symbolical move. You don't have to go far to find alternatives to ROM websites, and it would be impossible to just shut down them all.
Looks like Nintendo will never understand that, and what they do is more negative than anything else as more they try to "kill" piracy more people will take the place of the ones that gone, ending in two instead of one initially. This is part of the digital content deal, and that their business should adapt to not try to fight on a war they already lost in advance, like for example how Microsoft with their Xbox Game Pass and recently the PC version.

Yeah they should just stop selling stuff and give it away for free!

Fucking what lol. Obviously you can't eliminate piracy but you can make it much, much less convenient and that DOES deter people. We've already seen plenty of proof of that when Nintendo started hitting sites like Emuparadise hard.

 

[kevin corms]

Yeah they should just stop selling stuff and give it away for free!

Fucking what lol. Obviously you can't eliminate piracy but you can make it much, much less convenient and that DOES deter people. We've already seen plenty of proof of that when Nintendo started hitting sites like Emuparadise hard.



You've been here since 2013 and can barely type a legible sentence. That's quite a feat.

What proof did we see exactly? That they can shut down some piracy websites which means what exactly? Did they start selling a ton more retro consoles and software? Or did things go on much the same as before? With nintendo it seems they just dont like piracy, its not about their profits or anything like that... they just dont like the idea of it at all.

 

[ChaosEternal]

Huh, I guess China actually cares a bit about copyright when one of their own companies is involved. Go figure.

 

[linuxares]

You know a lot of free anime streaming sites in China got taken down once some started going legit instead and getting licenses. So yeah... China is changing. Vietnam is probably the new safe haven.

 

[linuxares]

Huh, I guess China actually cares a bit about copyright when one of their own companies is involved. Go figure.

Yes, yes they do.

 

[Kioku]

Piracy sites, IDK, like, isn't there a credible risk of getting malware/spyware from those sites? I admit to downloading a crap load of torrents back in the day and I got lucky, but now, I'm not sure I want to risk it.

Emuparadise was easily one of the better sites to acquire full collections from a safe, reputable site. Blindly Using torrents is actually a surefire way to catch trouble. Be it from Nintendo's legal team (received a letter cuz I didn't know what a VPN was way back when) or a virus.

 

[the_randomizer]

Emuparadise was easily one of the better sites to acquire full collections from a safe, reputable site. Blindly Using torrents is actually a surefire way to catch trouble. Be it from Nintendo's legal team (received a letter cuz I didn't know what a VPN was way back when) or a virus.

You still uh, well, there are *ahem* ways, to use that. I won't divulge how, but I managed to find a method to still get things... Google is a good source on how to do that. Torrents I absolutely refuse to trust, unless you can use a VPN, Peerblock, etc, but even then, not a chance in hell I'd use them again.

 

[Bladexdsl]

i have a dozen other rom sites and sources i can go to so go ahead shut all the ones down in china none which i use

 

[Deleted member 445482]

that's the least thing i worried about, u guys just pick which thing to understand and which not, have u already forgotten the ''Snowden scandal'' on how USA spy on allies? the Frau Merker knows very well