Nintendo Fight Back Against Piracy

[wraggster]

It seems Nintendo are now fighting back against piracy on the Nintendo DS, heres the details:


Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates shipped to North American retailers today, and interestingly enough include a new copy protection scheme that attempts to discourage players from using unauthorized copies of the game on certain DS flash cards.

People using the R4 and M3 flash cards will be greeted with a “Thank you for playing!!” screen after twenty minutes of playing.

http://akayuki.com/2008/03/12/ffcc-ring-of-fates-includes-new-copy-protection/

Looks like Nintendo are at last having a go against piracy on the DS, thankfully it doesnt harm homebrew.

[JKKDARK]

Great decision, Nintendo. Pirates should not enjoy this beautiful game.

[mariocdl]

More than fair, and to be honest, it should be on alot more DS games. Except the shovelware. That no one would want to play anyway

[Graxer0419]

lol. It's like they are playing a game with pirates. They allow them to play 20 minutes worth before taunting them with this screen. Go Nintendo!

[wiggy fuzz]

taunting little w***kers :rofl:

seriously, i find that brilliant, :thumbup:

[____anders____]

hehe that's fun, you play the game for 20 minutes and you think, MAN this game if fun!

and then you see the screen, thank you for playing.. hehe that would really piss me off, as i use r4 but thank god i don't play the FF games..

EDIT: but it's the best one i've seen so far :D

much more fun than completley blocking the game to be played on R4 :D
hahahah

[masterchief929]

i think the game sucks anyway... i think that nintendo should come out with a handheld that has upgradeable firmware that way when they release new pirating devices all they would have to do is release a firmware update. and u should only be able to play ur games after u get the update, but the update would have to be free. im going to stop talking now. :thumbup:

[KaliKot]

are you guys living under a rock?

this has been hacked 3 days ago so no use laughing.

And this was news like 1 week ago, obsolete

[Pandonetho]

This isn't anti piracy, it's a bug in the M3 and R4 firmware. They're pretty much the same cart anyway right? That's why it only happens to those 2 carts. When an update is released, the bug will be fixed. This is why the game still works on other carts like the Cyclo Evo. There is NO way to identify whether a cart is commercial or not.

EDIT: Also, what KaliKot said too is true. I'm surprised this news hasn't been posted on here, since this site usually has everything updated very quickly.

[ZH_Darkstar]

This isn't anti piracy, it's a bug in the M3 and R4 firmware. They're pretty much the same cart anyway right? That's why it only happens to those 2 carts. When an update is released, the bug will be fixed. This is why the game still works on other carts like the Cyclo Evo. There is NO way to identify whether a cart is commercial or not.

EDIT: Also, what KaliKot said too is true. I'm surprised this news hasn't been posted on here, since this site usually has everything updated very quickly.

Actually, this isn't a bug in the firmware. It's not just R4/M3Simplys that not affected. Other cards have the same issue.

Also, the Moogle of Death screen does not appear at the end of the credits. It only shows up when played in one of the affected cards. Hence, that's why it's an anti-piracy measure and not a bug.

Coincidentally, the newer cards are not affected. It plays just fine on my M3Real. Internal memory cards seem to be unaffected as well.

[NoQuarter]

lol,it never ends.
No one can ever truly win this battle until market strategies change.
I like playing my OWN backups on my systems,no reason to prevent fair use.Unfortunately this enables piracy to a large extent.This indicates to me something is wrong with our copyright/intellectual property system as a whole,not to mention peoples morals.

[KaliKot]

Its just about the money especially for people in Asia.

Asian salaries are only about 1/10th of Europe and USA so when an opportunity comes to acquire media for cheaper and sometimes even for free of course it will be popular

Morality? its not moral to sell $60 dollar games is it

[Nold]

Thats cool,
so it's like a demo that you can play and then buy the game, pretty cool idea nintendo!

[wiggy fuzz]

just to let everyone know, the real game works :rolleyes:

anyway, it's an interesting argument - but is it really nintendo or square enix messing about with people?

anyway, the argument is that ds games - whether old or new - will pretty much always cost £30 in the uk. and that's pretty steep considering the ds lite (brand new) is worth 3 ds games. and the price remains the same, for decent stuff or shovelware. many pc games can be had for cheaper. i probably won't stop buying ds games, but personally i hope to see an all round price drop to £20 as the rrp. i hate relying on shop offers to get good deals, a lot of the time it can become all too tempting to download it...

but then you won't get a free stylus, like with phantom hourglass :p

[iceman100]

lol. It's like they are playing a game with pirates. They allow them to play 20 minutes worth before taunting them with this screen. Go Nintendo!


Go nintendo lol didn't they crack this sad excuse for protection the other day? Go hackers :thumbup:

[madcat1990]

http://forums.exophase.com/showthread.php?t=6159

ownt!

[TeenDev]

I love you Nintendo! R4 users can rot in hell.

[da_head]

hm. at least this shows nintendo is trying. they had a good run, how long has it been, 5 days (the previous record was 3 days i think lol)? don't ask me where to download the patch. though they should stop with futile efforts like this to stop hackers, because hackers will always get around it. case in point, they need to reevaluate the system as a whole so that people won't want to download games in the first place. how? lower prices? :S who noes. the battle continues.

[mcdougall57]

ah thank god i bought a G6 ;)

[marzsyndrome]

I love you Nintendo! R4 users can rot in hell.

I think you're going just a tad too far there. I have an R4 and I enjoy using it for allsorts. ZXDS FTW and all.

[Xcliber]

played the rom and it cut off after 20 min one my Supercard ONE. @_@

oh well,
it'll be hacked in days

[Aryn]

i think the game sucks anyway... i think that nintendo should come out with a handheld that has upgradeable firmware that way when they release new pirating devices all they would have to do is release a firmware update. and u should only be able to play ur games after u get the update, but the update would have to be free. im going to stop talking now. :thumbup:

Why, yes, that is EXACTLY what Nintendo should do. I mean, just look at how well it worked for the PSP. No, wait a minute...
Mandatory firmware updates worked for awhile, but annoyed regular gamers and reduced game sales, as well as alienated those who choose to run unsigned code enough to make them develop a firmware that both allows the unsigned code to run and allows people to run pirated games with no need for any form of conversion or software. And to keep homebrew working all web sites that involve PSP homebrew HAVE to make news of these hacked firmwares public. Well, so much for that idea.

At any rate, I applaud Nintendo for implementing this non intrusive security measure, and hope that they continue to develop it and at least delay the piracy of NDS games long enough for people to actually buy them. And best of all, homebrew sites (at least the ones who are against piracy) do not even have to mention any workarounds or patches that bypass the copy protection.

[linkenski]

it could also be the HugeCock release group who made a bad dump!!!

[limming]

Oh, so that is what that screen was!

I got it and I'm like "wtf, why did my pirated copy of this game just go to this screen?". I just turned it off and the next day I played it again and nothing happened, lol. It only happens when the total power on time is over 20 minutes. Once you turn it off and back on, it is greater than 20 minutes so you can keep playing again. All it really did was make be redo a few minutes of a dungeon because it doesn't let you save when it goes to the screen.

[acn010]

thats awsome... hope it doesnt affect on super cards... does it???

[iceman100]

Umm this game has been hacked to work a while back, so just to let nintendo and those other companies know.....
Hackers: 3
Game Companies: 0

[adhdyoshi]

I seriously doubt that it is an anti-piracy measure. I know that in the gaming store I go to, there are demos of games that run for exactly twenty minutes then give the "thank you for playing!" message. Probably a glitch in the flashcard's design which is activating the demo function when it's not supposed to...

[kill17777]

they have made software to fix it, and it was just a bug in the r4 and m3

[kill17777]

no, mine just freezes :/

[kill17777]

it has, on the day after it came out :D

[LustForBlood]

r4 has updated their firmware so this issue has already been fixed =P