[HN Gopher] Nintendo Is Removing Switch Emulation Videos on Stea...
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Nintendo Is Removing Switch Emulation Videos on Steam Deck from
YouTube
Author : throwaway2048
Score : 128 points
Date : 2022-03-03 20:15 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (exputer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (exputer.com)
| eezurr wrote:
| Nintendo really cares about the Nintendo experience, from their
| games all the way to the physical product people hold to
| experience them. And it shows. People talk about Nintendo as if a
| spell has been cast on them (much in the way Apple fans talk
| about Apple).
|
| If you look into how much Nintendo spends on R&D and compare it
| to their revenues, you'll see they are _really_ serious about
| R&D. It would be detrimental to their business to allow that
| experience to be watered down.
|
| There's nothing to be angry about. I dont think a product (at the
| scale and quality as Nintendo, Apple, etc) can exist in this
| world without it being in total control by the people who know
| how to create that experience. I'll happily pay more money to a
| company I trust to deliver quality (and fewer, polished options),
| much like people love Apple because it removes so many choices
| from people's lexicon.
|
| Perhaps (I'll hesitantly say young) people don't realize that
| with freedom comes the more choices. And with more choices, you
| spend less time enjoying the product. You're a different market.
| You have time to research the hundreds of different flavors of
| Linux (as an example). There's nothing wrong with that; just be
| aware of what you're buying and dont complain when they aren't
| catering to your needs.
| munchbunny wrote:
| I disagree with the "young" part, to the extent that plenty of
| young people who are not power users understand this tradeoff
| viscerally just as much as older people do. The main difference
| I see is that people who are of working age tend to be more
| willing to pay money/a premium for someone to remove the need
| to make those choices.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| Also I would actually say that older folks that have been
| around for the more open systems when the web was flourishing
| have a bias for things to always be this way, even if it was
| transient. Younger people who experience more locked down
| things throughout their existence come to expect it. So not
| sure about the young vs old
| corndoge wrote:
| Corporate censorship is unacceptable
| dmart wrote:
| > There's nothing to be angry about.
|
| Sure there is? This story isn't about Nintendo's curated
| consumer experience - that's perfectly fine - it's about
| flagrant abuse of the DMCA.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I've made that observation in the past as well- it's quite
| interesting how Nintendo and Apple both resemble each other in
| creating iconic products that require intense amounts of
| control and lock-down. Also they both favor off-white coloring,
| or used to, for whatever reason.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8537649
| joenathanone wrote:
| I wouldn't have known about this if not for the take down, now I
| am interested in purchasing a Steam Deck.
| threeseed wrote:
| If people were showing you how to bypass Steam and download
| games for free do you really think Valve wouldn't use DCMA to
| have it removed ?
|
| Because I can't think of any business who would tolerate this.
| snvzz wrote:
| False equivalence.
|
| These videos aren't showing how to download games for free.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Emulation, unlike software piracy, is not illegal.
| weberer wrote:
| You're going to be waiting in line for a long time.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Still waiting for the 2019 Index to be actually in stock in
| Australia.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Nothing new here. Nintendo hates emulation with a passion. It
| passionately hates ways people enjoy their devices and platforms
| in ways they didn't intent. It hates fan projects, it might even
| hate its fans. Nintendo has a long history of lying in legal
| documents like DMCAs to take content that doesn't please them
| down. To be a dedicated fan of Nintendo's franchises is to be a
| masochist.
|
| The Steam deck doesn't just threaten the outdated hardware of the
| switch in terms of games and gaming performance, it threatens
| Nintendo's platform on its own turf.
|
| Nintendo can't compete with the Steam deck on hardware terms or
| even game availability. Brand exclusives and a low console price
| are all it's got, and they seem to know that that's not enough to
| keep all of their customers glued to their platform.
| staticman2 wrote:
| Switch has better battery life than Deck, has a supply chain
| which is actually able to aquire parts in mass quantities and
| sell to a large number of customers, and is more user friendly
| than any PC will ever be.
|
| I'll be buying a Deck in a few months when my preorder is ready
| to ship, but it's a niche product for tech enthusiasts while
| Nintendo makes mass market products for the general public.
| [deleted]
| mwt wrote:
| > it's a niche product for tech enthusiasts
|
| It is if you want it to be, but it's also a plug-and-play
| handheld console for PC gamers, which is not a niche market.
| Yeah, it runs a Linux-based OS but it's not like the user has
| to install it. Yeah, tinkerers and hackers are gonna do crazy
| stuff with it, but the vast majority of users will simply
| exchange $400 for a thing that runs video games.
| Lascaille wrote:
| beebmam wrote:
| And out of all this, by far the most unethical thing Nintendo
| has ever done is refuse to release an English-language
| translation of Mother 3. I'll never forgive them for this, and
| I decided long ago I'll never buy another one of their products
| until they release it.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I'm sorry, but how is a company deciding not to localise and
| release a product to a certain market unethical?
| newbie789 wrote:
| newbie789 wrote:
| rhacker wrote:
| most of that is not true about hating things. It is trying to
| make sure people are not stealing games.
| sneak wrote:
| Nintendo hates emulation that isn't generating Nintendo
| revenue, to be specific. They sell emulator hardware and
| emulator software via their platforms.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| They would make more money from emulated content if they
| allowed you to transfer your purchases to the next generation
| console.
|
| So they don't just want to make money off of it, they want
| every emulated Nintendo title to survive the same way Grand
| Theft Auto or Skyrim does, except it's just you buying it
| over and over again on the newest Nintendo console.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| They don't even let you buy MOST old games to emulate
| officially. There's plenty of SNES, GBA, etc games that do
| not have a legal path to play other than finding the
| original cartridge on ebay and hoping your original
| hardware still works.
| Talanes wrote:
| And then they're spotty about what they'll actually allow
| you to buy that way anyway. I would have loved to play the
| first NA released Fire Emblem legitimately, but they only
| released it for WiiU.
| shmerl wrote:
| No one stops them from selling DRM-free images of their games
| to be run with any emulator on any platform and generate
| revenue from that. They don't, so it's their own loss pirates
| provide that flexibility instead.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| There has to be an alternative reality where I can purchase
| Nintendo software on Steam, right? Nintendo would make so much
| money...
| usrusr wrote:
| Sounds like a MacOS on third party hardware situation to me.
| Brand dilution and all that. I wouldn't expect that before
| they are end-of-days desperate.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| But they already sell shitty P2W mobile games on the app
| stores, seems like hubris trying to maintain their own
| platform.
| Klonoar wrote:
| There's an argument to be made that mobile gaming _in
| Asia_ is what forced Nintendo 's hand on the P2W mobile
| games. I don't (yet) see a world where Steam has the
| muscle to do this.
| genewitch wrote:
| the mid-90s called, they said "been there, done that". I
| can't even remember what other brands apple licensed their
| stuff to, but there were macintosh clones.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I think the interesting question is, how are they doing it?
|
| I would think if you kept the game shots short and incidental
| the copyright would be fair use.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The DMCA is ridicously unbalanced. There's no penalty to
| filing false reports and if you disagree with a claim you
| have to hand over your personal information and fight it out
| in court. This is hardly a surprise given that the DMCA was
| written mostly by the copyright lobby; sadly, the law is
| working exactly as intended in such cases.
|
| It's time to redo the DMCA, but I fear the copyright industry
| has only gained a bigger foothold since the DMCA was written.
| kube-system wrote:
| You don't even have to file a DMCA takedown request to take
| down videos from YouTube anyway, they have an entirely
| extralegal mechanism for taking down videos.
| gzer0 wrote:
| Guilty until proven innocent is what the DMCA is. Perhaps
| one of the most asinine, imbecilic, and nonsensical laws
| of our time.
| kube-system wrote:
| It's also one of the most confused and irrelevant laws
| when it comes to people discussing how YouTube works.
| Something like 2% of takedowns on YouTube are through
| DMCA.
| throwanem wrote:
| A judge would consider the fair use argument. I don't know
| that YouTube employs judges in content moderation. (I don't
| know that YouTube employs _humans_ in content moderation, at
| least below director level.)
| gitowiec wrote:
| That made me laugh. Because my movies were also taken down
| because of background music. And that was the feeling I got
| when I raised "dispute" in YouTube system to defend my
| videos. It was like a Russian roulette
| rezonant wrote:
| YouTube does not employ judges or humans in deciding
| whether to honor a content owner's request. It doesn't
| employ anything. It is up to the content owner to police
| themselves, only when they mess up royally will YouTube
| remove them from the content owner system.
| kube-system wrote:
| Most YouTube takedowns are not done through DMCA. They're
| done because YouTube cooperates directly with many content
| owners to do takedowns voluntarily. There are almost no
| legal limits or regulatory terms to what YouTube is
| permitted to _voluntarily_ take down.
|
| Fair Use is _only_ a legal defense. It is not a requirement
| that YouTube host your content.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Doesn't matter. Nintendo send a takedown notice, it gets
| taken down.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I mean, of course Nintendo would hate piracy. You might say
| emulation can be used with legit roms, or roms for games you've
| purchased, but let's be honest.
|
| The fact Nintendo even exists at all in the face of competitors
| orders of magnitude bigger is impressive.
|
| Nintendo's position is and always will be that you can only
| play their games on their platforms.
| lostgame wrote:
| >> Nintendo's position is and always will be that you can
| only play their games on their platforms.
|
| We all felt the same way about SEGA in the early 90's...
| themikesanto wrote:
| ...and now I play Sonic Mania on my Nintendo Switch
| threeseed wrote:
| And people have been talking about Nintendo's demise since
| the early 90's.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > You might say emulation can be used with legit roms, or
| roms for games you've purchased, but let's be honest.
|
| I have an actual NES, SNES, Genesis, N64, and Gamecube in a
| closet, along with all the games. The NES and SNES don't
| reliably run games anymore. I expect some of the others to
| follow eventually. And emulation provides better graphics,
| better features, portability (e.g. playing on a device you
| can travel with), creativity (romhacks, translations, etc).
| So yes, emulation _can_ be used with games you actually own,
| and doing so has great advantages.
| forgotmyoldacc wrote:
| Is it difficult to notice that you're in the minority here?
| endisneigh wrote:
| > So yes, emulation can be used with games you actually
| own, and doing so has great advantages.
|
| I'm not denying that is one use case, what I'm saying is
| that it's very unlikely it's the regular one.
|
| Nintendo's argument is basically that even if that were
| true, just because you purchased it once doesn't give you
| the right to it indefinitely. You might disagree with that,
| but that's their stance (when you buy e-Shop games you
| don't even get access across Nintendo consoles).
| snarfy wrote:
| > just because you purchased it once doesn't give you the
| right to it indefinitely
|
| Did I buy it or rent it? If I bought it then I damn well
| do have the right to it indefinitely.
| Paianni wrote:
| Old hardware is often repairable/refurbish-able though.
| teawrecks wrote:
| > Nintendo has a long history of lying in legal documents like
| DMCAs to take content that doesn't please them down.
|
| Something something that's capitalism.
|
| But seriously, what do we do as responsible consumers and
| voters to prevent this? Should there be a measurable penalty
| for knowingly lying on DMCA takedown orders, something
| proportional to the estimation of attempted damages caused?
| It's obviously anticompetitive, but can anything be done?
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > Brand exclusives and a low console price are all it's got
|
| A lower price and better games is quite a lot actually.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| It sure is, but the cost of ownership if the Switch is higher
| than that of the Steam deck. Games on Steam are cheap and
| plentiful.
|
| The quality requirements of the Nintendo's storefront are
| ridiculously low. I've seen footage of the Switch WWE game
| and frankly it should never have been allowed into any store
| front, let alone the one people expect to be better.
|
| There are plenty of platformers out there, but only one
| company can use Mario. The games on the Switch are pricey,
| but the console is affordable, making it excellent for
| multiplayer gaming.
|
| I don't think it has a lower price and better games in
| practice. They did manage to corner the portable gaming space
| with their 3DS and Switch, which all major competitors
| abandoned. Now they're at risk of losing that too.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I think you're comparing Apples with Oranges when you
| mention the price of Switch games.
|
| Sure, a three year-old Pokemon game might still cost $40,
| but you have a cartridge you can resell and get almost all
| of that money back (or even more, if you're happy to wait a
| few years). With Steam, every dollar you spend is gone
| forever.
| saltminer wrote:
| For the games that have cartridges, sure. When I bought a
| "physical copy" of Puyo Puyo Tetris, I thought it would
| be a cartridge but it was just a code to redeem inside a
| case. Waste of plastic if you ask me.
| saltminer wrote:
| Agreed, I had hoped Nintendo would have some quality
| standards, but the shovelware seems even worse than it was
| on the Wii. Perhaps that's because I have all those
| shovelware titles at my fingertips now vs having to go to a
| store to find Wii games (I never used the online
| functionality of the Wii), but in any case, it feels
| overwhelming.
|
| Not that Steam is a bastion of quality (or necessarily has
| a better ratio of decent:shovelware titles), but by the
| numbers, it definitely takes the crown for quantity of
| decent titles (if for no other reason than it having been
| around much longer).
| user_7832 wrote:
| > A lower price and better games is quite a lot actually.
|
| Lower price, yes, but better games? Different games, sure but
| I wouldn't call them better given that it can run almost
| everything a windows PC can.
| cassac wrote:
| Yes, better games. Nintendo first party titles from their
| Zelda, Mario and Mario Kart franchises are consistently
| among the best games for their time period with some of the
| biggest appeal across the gamer spectrums. If I could
| choose only one system it would be the switch easily. If
| only it had Valheim on it I would never put it down.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Switch has an e-shop with expensive games that will
| eventually get offlined within a couple generations like the
| ones before it vs. Steam, an e-shop with every game, for
| cheaper, including all the games people bought over the last
| two decades.
|
| I can imagine how disruptive a successful Steam entry into
| the console space could be once people realize they are tired
| of "renting" $60 games from ad-hoc console e-shops.
| mattnewton wrote:
| The steam deck exists and seems like pretty much this! I
| have been very impressed with what I have seen about it.
|
| But I am probably still going to buy breath of the wild 2,
| so I still need a switch...
| ascar wrote:
| I have to disagree hard on this. Nintendo was on the
| forefront of making old games playable on the new hardware.
| On the switch you can play many old SNES and N64 classics
| included in the Nintendo online subscription at ~2-4EUR a
| month.
|
| They re-released childhood favorites like Zelda Ocarina of
| Times and Super Mario 64 on the 3DS and I actually bought
| the 3DS (in a special Zelda variant no less) just for that
| and Majora's Mask. I had a blast.
|
| In comparison Steam and PC in general was late to the party
| of remastering old games or even just keeping them
| playable. Getting old Win 98 or even some XP titles running
| is often a challenge and sometimes borderline impossible.
| monksy wrote:
| If you have to pay a subscription and that's the only way
| to play the classics there.. that's not free
| ascar wrote:
| Well that's why I said "or". I'm honestly not sure, I
| never tried to play them while not having a subscription.
| The subscription at 20EUR/year is much cheaper than what
| Microsoft or Playstation are offering though.
|
| Edit: I looked it up, it requires the subscription and
| updated my comment accordingly.
| kipchak wrote:
| GoG (2008, the wii was 2006) is probably at the forefront
| of old games that just work on modern hardware, though
| there is some occasional hiccups. I think the oldest
| title is from 1980.
|
| For nintendo NES/SNES is if you have the basic
| subscription, n64 and genesis is an upcharge.
|
| https://www.nintendo.com/whatsnew/detail/2021/what-you-
| need-...
| wowokay wrote:
| They sell the old games, they are not free. All of there
| games are overpriced and never go on sale, probably
| because it seems like they only have a handful of games.
|
| I don't think it's fair to say valve is late to the
| party, if anything they are first. There is a distinct
| difference between consoles games and pc games, the steam
| deck focuses on bringing pc games to a portable format,
| that opens the door to an almost endless supply of cheap
| indie games, as well as the potential for large AAA
| titles like Assassins Creed. The best part? Unlike
| Nintendo or PlayStation you don't have to buy the game
| again if it's already in your steam library, outside of
| Xbox play anywhere it's the first time players don't have
| to repurchase a game in order to play it on a portable
| device.
| ascar wrote:
| > outside of Xbox play anywhere it's the first time
| players don't have to repurchase a game in order to play
| it on a portable device.
|
| I agree that's a nice perk and I also regularly pay more
| to have my games in Steam rather than somewhere else,
| because it usually just works and keeps on working with
| Steam era games. My issues were mostly with pre-online
| era games where I still owned the actual CD.
|
| It would've been nice if I could just play my old N64
| games for free, but I also didn't feel cheated that I had
| to pay for the ported versions again.
| chungy wrote:
| "Was" in an operative word. Nintendo was selling N64
| games virtually on the Wii in 2007. They have yet to
| improve on that offering.
|
| The closest they got was Super Mario 3D All-Stars that
| included emulation of a GameCube (Mario Sunshine) and a
| Wii (Mario Galaxy) game, but Nintendo being Nintendo, it
| was on the e-shop for a limited time and a limited
| manufacturing run for physical release. Two console
| generations after the Wii, the most Nintendo can muster
| is bringing back Nintendo 64 games to their current
| console, 5 years after the console's release. It's
| pathetic.
| jrimbault wrote:
| Japanese animations studios seem equallly litigious.
| oversocialized wrote:
| 0x500x79 wrote:
| There should be more accountability for incorrect DMCAs. I see
| why Nintendo is doing this, but it is wrong. Nintendo is famous
| for reselling old games on each and every new platform they build
| and this takes away that revenue.
|
| According to a thread on Reddit this video only showed emulators
| and not ROMs. Pretty wild that there is no accountability for
| these actions.
| kube-system wrote:
| The way people on YouTube get around the legal penalties for
| false DMCAs is simple: they don't file a DMCA request. There
| are several other mechanisms by which YouTube will gladly pull
| content: Content ID, contractual obligations, TOS violation,
| etc.
| aaomidi wrote:
| I still don't understand why Google went on the route of
| proactively removing content rather than reactively.
| kube-system wrote:
| They just don't care. They're not a public service
| altruistically serving their users' videos up until the
| point the law requires them to take it down. They're an ad
| platform, trying to serve ads and not get sued.
|
| Content ID was born out of a desire to keep Viacom happy
| after Google got sued: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom
| _International_Inc._v._Y...
| TheDong wrote:
| > this video only showed emulators and not ROMs
|
| It is probably still in violation of the DMCA. The DMCA also
| makes illegal tools that are primarily intended for
| circumvention, which these emulators almost certainly are.
|
| But, even moreso, removals of videos on youtube are typically
| not done through the DMCA directly, but rather through a
| private extra-judicial system youtube manages (content-id et
| al).
|
| Of course youtube has the rights, as a private company, to
| remove videos for no reason. Of course Nintendo can request
| youtube to remove any video for any reasons, DMCA or not, with
| no legal issues.
|
| I doubt any DMCA, false or otherwise, has actually been issued
| in this case, and "accountability for incorrect DMCAs" would
| not help as a result.
| causality0 wrote:
| I can't speak for other countries but emulators are 100%
| legal in the United States.
| [deleted]
| humanistbot wrote:
| > It is probably still in violation of the DMCA. The DMCA
| also makes illegal tools that are primarily intended for
| circumvention, which these emulators almost certainly are.
|
| Nope. Emulators do not circumvent copy protection. When a ROM
| maker is extracting the game content from the original
| version, they are breaking copy protection. The ROM file they
| create and distribute does not have copy protection, so the
| emulator does not need to include copy protection
| circumvention.
|
| > But, even moreso, removals of videos on youtube are
| typically not done through the DMCA directly, but rather
| through a private extra-judicial system youtube manages
| (content-id et al).
|
| These are not, which is the point. Nintendo is doing this
| intentionally with their own DMCA takedowns. These aren't
| accidental false positives picked up by content id.
| turndown wrote:
| > Nintendo is famous for reselling old games on each and every
| new platform they build and this takes away that revenue.
|
| I get why you might think this but it's also almost
| categorically wrong nowadays. Sony and Microsoft have
| significantly larger portions of their old games available for
| replay or purchase than Nintendo does. The only virtual console
| content produced for the Switch has been locked behind their
| low quality online servers. I definitely look forward to BOTW2
| and maybe an end-of-generation Pokemon game but otherwise I
| have a very dim view of Nintendo.
| [deleted]
| shmerl wrote:
| Someone is scared Switch got competition that can run Nintendo
| games that even Switch itself can't.
| meibo wrote:
| Not really can't, moreso won't. It's embarrassing how small
| their retro games lineup is, so long after launch. And yet
| they're raking it in, because their extremely low quality
| online offering is so cheap that it doesn't matter to most.
| causality0 wrote:
| I wonder how the Steam Deck does with Switch games that run
| notoriously poorly, like Age of Calamity.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| That's perhaps the saddest part of this ordeal, the Deck
| struggles to keep framerates consistent in all but the
| easiest to run games. From what I've seen most games are
| playable, but there are often stutters and interruptions
| because of things like shader compilation that seem to make
| the whole experience quite frustrating.
|
| The other issue is that the manageable framerates only exist
| when the Deck is throwing everything it's got at the
| emulator. The advertised battery life of the Deck is shorter
| to begin with, and the chip constantly running at max power
| only makes that worse.
|
| I doubt anyone is going to buy a Deck instead of a Switch to
| run Switch games. Any fan seeing clear footage of game
| performance should realise that to play Switch games, you
| should really just get a Switch. By killing the videos,
| they're giving off the signal that they're afraid of
| emulators encroaching on their territory, which will only
| drive Deck sales.
| fermentation wrote:
| Nintendo has a history of being very anti-emulation (see
| https://www.nintendo.com.au/legal/information).
|
| With their stance it's no wonder their own first-party emulators
| are so poorly made.
| PebblesHD wrote:
| > Also, the limited right which the Copyright Act gives to make
| backup copies of computer programs does not apply to Nintendo
| video games.
|
| That seems like quite an assertion, largely untested in
| Australian courts I would assume, as our consumer watchdog is
| usually pretty good at ensuring we're able to exercise what
| relatively few rights we do have in regards to purchased
| products.
| prvc wrote:
| What is the legal theory under which they are asserting ownership
| of such videos? Could this be avoided by excluding all footage of
| in-game cutscenes?
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