Hacker News Reader

Comment by lilbigdoot | Hacker News Reader

FWIW Nintendo, I refuse to give you guys any support after you went after Bowser. I genuinely found that to be awful behavior

Probably not worth losing lifelong customers and PR over piracy concerns.

View on HN

Yep, similar. Was big into Switch 1, but have moved on permanently from Nintendo.

I'm willing to bet that the number of people who would genuinely boycott nintendo over that, along with the crossover with people who pirate software is an absolute drop in the bucket for nintendo to care about

Edit: Also Gary Bowser he had a criminal case brought against him by the US before he got sued by Nintendo and was sentenced to 3 years in prison

Same here. The switch 1 will be my last nintendo console.

Yeah I gave up on them for the multiple DMCA and copyright bullshit they keep pulling. I'm not really a console guy, but my friend gave me a Switch 1, and that was wonderful at a time I was in the hospital. But ever since then they've just become another rentier trading in their games, but attacking users and fans over and over. Screw em. I wish more people understood and felt like that, but most people don't care about the politics. They just want another Mario game for their kids.

The sad part is I would gladly fork over money, the new Zelda looks really nice, but, I'm not that desperate. I'll pay for another yacht for Gabe over Nintendo these days.

It’s funny that in gaming circles, the sentiment is the exact opposite: in the time of live service games, microtransactions, pay-to win schemes, premium currencies, gacha games is Nintendo taken to be one of the last big gaming companies that will sell you a complete, single player, physical game made as a labor of love for the craft.

wdym ever since

this is like their entire business model since they started selling console games

Here is a video of the gaming historian “Tengen: Atari Games vs Nintendo” as one of the early examples.

https://youtu.be/fLA_d9q6ySs?is=j-b9CGIUo9JHzkGw

Yes, same here.

I thought they have to protect their IP or risk losing the ability to defend it later.

Went after Bowser? Isn’t Bowser like the central villain character?

Gary Bowser, dev behind Team Xecuter https://www.theguardian.com/games/2024/feb/01/the-man-who-ow...

GP may be referring to Doug Bowser [0], former president and COO of Nintendo of America, but a brief search didn't turn up any reasons why Nintendo would have ousted him.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Bowser

I have absolutely no sympathy for Team Xecuter. They knowingly bricked consoles, misled customers, stole GPL software and shipped buggy software leading thousands of users to getting banned. This goes way back to the Gateway 3DS days (same team) where they did the same shit.

Bowser didn't belong to the core team, he was someone that helped maintain the site and handled customer support and feedback

I read all of these comments and was feeling absolutely outraged. The more I read about the actual case, the less I felt that way. He wasn't just some random guy screwed for handling a landing page and customer support, he did that and:

- Operated rom-bank.com, which provided downloadable libraries of >10k ROMs for the users

- Handled additional product marketing sites, distributor reviews, and advertising.

- Received ~$320,000 in direct payments and website ad revenue, which he fully knew came from this company selling pirating hardware/software as he operated the above to enable them to do so

- Probably more, I lost interest in trying to find actual details over repetition of minor pieces of it

This operation made 10s of millions, he made hundreds of thousands and clearly knew what was going on for many years. I'm not saying I'm happy with the punishments handed to him, but I also don't buy the claims he was just some dude that got fucked out of left field because Nintendo was pure evil (emphasis on the pure). I still feel like they could throw the dude a bone at this point though, but maybe the popular 5 minute take is already so set in people's minds that Nintendo just sees bringing the topic up in people's minds again as a massive liability for backlash. Or maybe they just don't care and wanted more. Either way, he's no martyr for those who just want fair use of what they buy and it doesn't make me hate Nintendo.

320k for the period of time he worked for the group amounts to a meager 44k a year, it's a low salary.

Also piracy doesn't work like that, it's a speculation on damage but no real damage is done. It's not like people stopped buying games and consoles because they could emulate. Quite the contrary, emulation works almost as advertising. Those that stay on emulation wouldn't purchase the console and games anyway, and those that would is always exaggerated in these kinds of plea.

In https://www.theguardian.com/games/2024/feb/01/the-man-who-ow... Bowser says that fighting the charges would cost a lot of time and money and pleading guilty is simpler to deal with, so I would take information from the plea deal with a pinch of salt.

And the people before Bowser didn't bother you?

I mean 6/7 right? What do you expect? Nintendo never allowed it, always went for these 'projects'.

I don't think Nintendo lost any lifelong customers because lifelong customers don't need what Bowser and co did. so

Reply on news.ycombinator.com