EmuParadise, an 18-year-old website offering downloads of classic computer games, has voluntarily shut down following legal action by Nintendo against two similar online portals.
All three offered a wide variety of old games in an unauthorised format.
In its legal action, Nintendo is seeking $150,000 (£117,000) for each Nintendo game offered and up to $2m for each trademark infringement.
EmuParadise said it could not risk “potentially disastrous consequences”.
It said it intended to remain online but would be taking the site in a new direction.
“We run EmuParadise for the love of retro games and for you to be able to revisit those good times. Unfortunately, it’s not possible right now to do so in a way that makes everyone happy and keeps us out of trouble,” wrote founder MasJ.
The two websites named in Nintendo’s legal action, filed in Arizona, were LoveRetro and LoveRoms, and were both registered to the same company, Mathias Designs.
Both sites are now closed but offered games originally designed for a number of classic consoles including those by Sega, Sony, and Atari.
Lol Nintendo, for real? You’re monetizing people’s nostalgia now?
Nintendo is launching a subscription service for its latest Switch console in September, which will include access to some of its retro titles.
Obviously people won’t be getting neither Switch nor subscription just for these retro titles. And if they wanted they would had done it anyway for reasons.
In its legal action, Nintendo is seeking $150,000 (£117,000) for each Nintendo game offered and up to $2m for each trademark infringement.
And here is probably the real reason. Highly doubt that Rom hosters have THAT high income from ads though.
“Let’s view this from the position of the average retro gamer,” wrote Ernesto van der Sar on the news site TorrentFreak.
"Obtaining Roms, in order to play retro games, does no harm. The titles themselves are often decades old, run on obsolete hardware, and have already covered their costs 1,000 times over.
“With all that in mind and considering many gamers are currently buying new games, they’ll be wondering what the hell the problem is.”
In its legal action, Nintendo is seeking $150,000 (£117,000) for each Nintendo game offered and up to $2m for each trademark infringement.
And here is probably the real reason. Highly doubt that Rom hosters have THAT high income from ads though.
IRC Nintendo is in debt spiral of dead. They probably accounting these “law” money as “projected income” and increase the capital ratio of "intellectual property"™.
I gave up on Nintendo after the N64, I haven’t really been impressed by any of their offerings since then. This doesn’t surprise me either, as I believe Ptirodaktill is correct in that the big N is having debt issues.
They lost it long ago, what they are doing right now is like putting ducttape(?) on big leaking pipe.
They simply cant and never will overwhelm most of the users especially on the internet. Already there are ppl with gigs of roms all over the place…
And even if they add 10 ads per download it wont reach the $$$ they are asking for
Nintendo…jeez
Whats next?
The article isn’t clear on how long those companies were selling the Nintendo games. Only that the companies have been in business for 18 years. Considering that Nintendo is suing over IP issues, this seems fairly recent in terms of Nintendo. Perhaps they just became aware of it.
However, I don’t know all the logistics around this particular case, other than Nintendo is defending their IP which is their right.
These companies weren’t selling Nintendo games. At best they had some from donations and ads, but I doubt it was much - retro is a niche thing. Technically it’s piracy but on the other hand the vast majority play retro stuff out of nostalgia so Nintendo already got their money.
There’s literally no way Nintendo weren’t aware all these years - it’s like Disney not being aware of torrents. Except that torrents post new releases before they are out in the cinema while rom websites mostly had stuff that is out of retail for years.
But now Nintendo decided to include “a few retro titles” as a part of subscription and under this pretext attempt to grab some cash via lawsuits.
It’s the case when legally they have the right but putting it into practice feels wrong on so many levels.
Brb filing a lawsuit on guys who copied my uni homework and put it online ten years ago cuz I’m now including part of it in my new book. They’ll probably have to sell all their property, children and organs, but money don’t smell, kek.
Then it seems odd that Nintendo’s IP claim will be valid. Guess the courts will decide if it’s challenged. Oddly, it wasn’t, or it wasn’t mentioned in the article.
If you want to check the legal stuff - the link was in the article. Here.
I don’t doubt that the resolution will be 100% in Nintendo’s favour.
Does this include OSTs or just games?
Yes, from the legal document I linked above: “In addition to Nintendo’s video games, Defendants reproduce, distribute, and publicly perform a vast library of Nintendo’s other copyrighted works on and through the LoveROMs and LoveRETRO websites, including the proprietary BIOS software for several of Nintendo’s video game systems and thousands of Nintendo’s copyrighted musical works and audio recordings.”
Also:
Nintendo continues to produce, market, and sell many of the video games originally developed for its earlier video game systems, including NES and SNES. In 2016, Nintendo released NES Classic Edition,a miniaturized version of the NES console that features pre-installed copies of many of the most memorable games designed for NES.
In 2016, mind you. And with 21 pre-installed games. Out of hundreds released back in it’s glory days. In 2018 they are releasing an updated version with a whooping 30 pre-installed games.
Nintendo also continues to produce, market, and sell many of the video games it originally developed for earlier systems digitally through official Nintendo online platforms.
This seems to be true, although I admit I have never heard of this. If the numbers on the wiki are correct then it’s a substantial amount but still just a fracture of what was available on rom websites. It’s still only for their consoles and not PC users. Yes, it’s their right, but fuck them.
