The Video Game Industry

I mean, yes, his crimes were crimes, and my own first thought from the headline was "okay, that seems fair enough...?", but, uh, deliberately and explicitly setting out to ruin the guy's life over software piracy is absolutely excessive and ethically questionable.

Edited by Perseus on Jun 7th 2022 at 6:40:46 PM

CANT BE JUDGED ON ETHICS IF YOU DECIDE THE ETHICS!

Also, a guy named Bowsers hacks a corporation run by a guy named Bowser. Huh.

Due the US Justice department being in on it, I wonder if this opens up Nintendo being more influential in the US government as lobbyists. Considering the amount of ego Nintendo gained after the Switch’s major success, this is kinda worrying to say the least.

Edited by M1gamiTensei on Jun 7th 2022 at 1:44:17 AM

Guys its mostly a suspended sentence. He's not going to jail unless he does this again.

Uh according to the indictment he lost the company 65 million.

His 11 charges include.

• conspiracy to commit wire fraud

• wire fraud (four counts)

• conspiracy to circumvent technological measures and to traffic in circumvention devices

• trafficking in circumvention devices (four counts)

• Conspiracy to commit money laundering.

A jail sentence like this is kinda inevitable with this collection of charges. So the fact he's not even doing that is kinda merciful.

Edited by miraculous on Jun 7th 2022 at 3:48:37 AM

Nintendo is notoriously aggressive with protecting its intellectual property and the like. I would actually call that a bad thing or at least a thing that rubs me the wrong way.

In this case it seems the guy did go above and beyond though, so I'm not sure if the response is necessarily disproportionate.

"im nintendo now I will copyright strike a pdf of a game guide of Super Mario 64 thats decades old!"

From what was said in the other thread he has to pay 10% from his monthly income so it's not that crippling. Honestly it's hard to tell how much overreacting is being done here.

From the article linked by x12:

I'd say it's pretty disproportionate. Nintendo has basically admitted that what they're doing is as close as they can get to outright revenge on someone with far less power than they have.

Edited by Ghostninja109 on Jun 7th 2022 at 6:34:26 AM

The guy apparently ran the hacking team's marketing and customer service.

...Why the fuck do pirates have marketing and customer service.

Cause pirates sell stuff. Pretty normal, really. That's why things like black markets exist, etc.

Bit of a tangent, but there's been quite a bit of evidence over the years that various criminal enterprises have their organization break down along roughly the same lines as established legit corporations. And it's not hard to see why, given that those tend towards having found a (practically, not ethically) ideal balance of operational efficiency and funneling profit to the people at the top of the pyramid.

So, no, I'm not surprised in the least a video game piracy group would have a marketing department.

I'm more familiar with the videogame piracy that has the pirates distributing the stuff for free.

Ah, fair. Pirating pretty much in context means any form of stealing, so.

I think the reason why it might be surprising can be explained by a joke I once made in a tabletop RPG:

I once had the players running into a "Black Market" that was a "Bad Guy's Walmart" in a rather literal way. "We're having a sale on cocaine! You can find it next to the bomb aisle!"

It's funny because it's prosaic and mirrors a legitimate business seemingly too literally.

Is it really any surprise that pirating has become more professional over time?

Putting the morality of pirating aside for a moment, which is another whole discussion, the current state of a lot of AAA games, riffled with DLCs, microtransactions and other nastiness, is an easy target for pirates to hack and unlock content while being given donations of people more than happy to play the full experience without dealing with said headaches.

Or, if you live in a corner of the world like mine, hackers and pirates can sell cracked copies of those games at a cheaper price to people who really can't pony up the cash to buy a lot of these games legitimately because games are made more expensive through import tariffs, and even with steam there's the whole DLC thing.

Why?

All you’ve linked to is the fact that it’s been called super harsh by some people. What’s actually so harsh about it? The prison sentence is a decent length, but doesn’t seem absurd for being a big player in an organised crime group. The Do J statement basically says that they’re not actively isolating him but that they’re removing him from his criminal associates and that’s then been spun to be a punitive social isolation.

The last line especially is irrelevant, a criminal sentence is based on the crime committed. You don’t get a lighter sentence because you picked a ‘deserving’ victim.

This all feel like people want to come out and say that stealing from game companies isn’t a ‘real’ crime, but they’re walking around it because it looks bad.

Edited by Silasw on Jun 7th 2022 at 7:48:00 PM

It's even worse because these pirates aren't even distributing the games for free. They're trying to make money off of this too.

It's a black market fencing stolen goods.

Edited by M84 on Jun 8th 2022 at 2:57:06 AM

I'd say my main thought is that it's disturbing if a private company's desire for extra punishment as a deterrence is playing a factor in the actual sentencing of a criminal case. Unless they were pushing for an acquittal, I don't see why what Nintendo wants should matter.

Counterpoint; the wishes of the victims in a case should be taken under consideration in all cases within reason. To immediately go to the extremes, if the victim wishes for a lighter sentence it'd be bad for the DOJ to go for the high end of the punishment scales, likewise if they wanted a serious sentence and the DOJ went for the bare minimum.

Unless expressed otherwise, it would always be expected that the victim will always desire a harsh punishment, including one that is excessive in terms of the norms for a particular case.

So, if a harsher than normal punishment is given out because a private entity wants it, that's really problematic.

Is that a fair assumption though? Because I know it's been a documented problem in places that the victim's wishes have often not been taken into consideration for sentencing.

And honestly, if cutting him off from his fellow criminals effectively socially isolates him, maybe that's a sign he needs new friends. Who aren't criminals.

I'll chime in here and concur that just because we don't like Nintendo doesn't mean that this person should get off lightly for what sound like very serious crimes. There is no such thing as a "they deserved it" defense, and hacking for profit absolutely needs to be harshly deterred.

Edited by Fighteer on Jun 8th 2022 at 9:16:27 AM

Besides, the guy is not being sentenced just for hacking but for a lot more of stuff.

PC Gamer: Saudi Arabia acquires a chunk of the Embracer Group:

I know the gaming industry is the biggest market of entertainment but I wonder what was the trigger that let the Saudi Arabian crown invest in gaming?