Piracy Plagueing the Wii

[wraggster]

As a homebrew fan im really encouraged by the recent events and articles from the likes of brushing and TMBinc, the Zelda exploit could be the best way to get full on Wii homebrew yet.

The mouthwatering games that could be coded by the homebrew community to make full use of the Wii could really open up the mainstream even more to hobbyist coders.

But with every good news comes the bad, now there are Wii Modchips out there and im sure at some stage that the first homebrew will only be available via using a modchip so they are a neccessity in that respect.

The downside to this is the Piracy aspect and the recent postings on many sites of how to get Super Mario Galaxies and Super Smash Bros Brawl working.

This may bring Scene sites many visitors but ultimately gives Nintendo and the likes the green light to clamp down even more on any hacking or homebrew done on their consoles.

Does Piracy harm the homebrew/hacking community give your honnest views via comments

[ICE]

Two sides of one coin in a sense. Homebrew is great but it has its other sides and purposes.

[Eviltaco64]

Piracy is hurting the homebrew community while homebrew encourages it at the same time.
I'd say pirating in any generation of consoles is hurting Nintendo the most.

[cid]

Zelda exploit?

[Joel92]

why cant people just be decent enough to buy the game?

[Anonymous D]

can soemone explain what the zelda exploit is? i seem to have missed that one.
on topic i think the only way to get homebrew without piracy is to release legal dev tools for enthusiasts, and if these were quality enough im sure most people would be happy with updates to plug piracy holes once in a while.

[king-killa]

Do I think this will harm homebrew today? Well, yeah, obviously. But do I think it will harm homebrew today more than it will later? No.

Action will obviously be taken soon, but, I believe it will affect "tomorrow" more for this reason:

Obviously, Nintendo will take action against all this piracy crap. Nintendo will (try to) come up with a way to stop the piracy with later consoles, and, I believe they'll do it with homebrew, too. Therefore, a larger amount of players who buy consoles later (and are interested with modding their Wii) will miss out on the chance that those people with Wiis today have..

[goity]

Rubbish. This is even more apparent with the wii, where a drive chip couldn't even allow you to run homebrew much more easily than a factory wii.

As for it affecting the eyes of Nintendo, remember that emulators are also piracy if you're using commercial roms; again more apparent thanks to virtual console. Also, companies don't really like people running homebrew unless it's in a controlled environment, so regardless of piracy nintendo will probably want to patch any exploit.
Was Sony aggressive towards those psp fanjita picture hacks that didn't allow isos? i can't remember, but that's probably the best example of a company's actions towards homebrew-only.

[phsychokill]

sony has patched every exploit ever found on the psp but alot of places complain about chips being used for piracy make the consoles reigon free and then people wont need a chip for imports and wont have the option to play pirate games.

as for homebrew tools nintendo has some out fairly soon and suposadly some coming for the ps3 using linux from the actual firms but to be honest this isnt anything new does any1 rember the black ps1's they sold for a while.

[cal360]

If Nintendo starts pressing down on the homebrew scene it could be devastating. We already have Sony completely against us and any other forces upon us could slowly discourage coders from releasing their creations. As long as DCemu stays to anti-piracy we will be fine. Nintendo's going to make a come back soon though. Both their main products the Wii and The NDS are at risk from extreme piracy and this may effect their sales greatly. People need to realize that if you don't actually buy the games Nintendo can't make a major profit which could mean that certain games and products could be effected.

[Sonny_Jim]

From what I've seen, the Zelda exploit really isn't an exploit at the moment, it's more of a savegame hack that can crash the machine. I've not seen what I would consider homebrew code running on a Wii yet.

Homebrew and piracy on the Wii are two completely different things, really. From what I've read, the disks are signed with a key which hasn't been broken, so the only thing that the chips allow you to do is to run backup's of game disks, not homebrew code.

[phsychokill]

when the psp hack was done all the edited save game done was cause a crash its the crash that opens the console up to the home made code.

[JKKDARK]

well that happens on every homebrew console. not many people get a modchip for homebrew...

[phsychokill]

I get mod chips so i could play imports since the uk release is always so late and is rarly differant to the american version. the fact is this is what the ps3 has done well is no reigon codes on the games and the blue ray discs are mostly no reigon.

its the reigon code that lets chips get through as people claim the chip is only so you can play imports but let people play pirate games as well if all consoles did either universal launches or took out the reigon code to allow importing chipswould be easier to clamp down on as people wouldnt beable to say well this is for imports.

[Accordion]

Part of the reason the Wii and DS have such large amounts of piracy is the type of software available. The majority of games are only meant to be played in short periods per day, meaning more games are wanted for a gaming session and usually the complete lack of depth leads to lack of value.

It is also very very easy to use them.

[Eviltaco64]

If Nintendo starts pressing down on the homebrew scene it could be devastating. We already have Sony completely against us and any other forces upon us could slowly discourage coders from releasing their creations. As long as DCemu stays to anti-piracy we will be fine. Nintendo's going to make a come back soon though. Both their main products the Wii and The NDS are at risk from extreme piracy and this may effect their sales greatly. People need to realize that if you don't actually buy the games Nintendo can't make a major profit which could mean that certain games and products could be effected.

Yeah, Nintendo has a right to do though.
Most people that modify consoles or play PC Emulators are playing NES, Super Nintendo, and Nintendo 64 games. So that takes some of their VC profits. And people probably pirate DS games more than anything (it might be PSP who wins that, im not sure).

Lets just hope they dont lockdown.

[tobione]

I'm sure I've missed something here, has anyone seen Nintendo's profits lately?

Quote - "Operating profit at Nintendo came to 205.3 billion yen ($1.93 billion) in October-December, up from 100.5 billion yen a year earlier, according to Reuters. Nintendo only gave results for the nine months to December."

Whilst I agree it can harm developers there is always the point that (and from personal experience) that the majority people who do chip & download / copy would not have bought the console or the games in the first place!

[toxinz]

When we see a cool advert for a game and look forward to playing it.
Buy the game.
play it for 5 min and feel scammed.

Nintendo complain about supposed loss of profit.....and being robbed ....

What are they doing to us by not letting us try games before we we buy.

I feel robbed when I buy most wii games.

Seriously where are the game demos for wii ?
Why are nintendo charging us for vc games that are nearly 20years old ? ( most of us own those games anyway )

[slitchfield]

Agree 100% about charging for the old Virtual Console GC games - these should be a freebie as a thank you for staying loyal to the Nintendo Brand.

Also agree about the pricing of Wii games. In the UK, many are around £40, which is scandalous. Make them £15 and the piracy issue goes away. Sales triple, no need for piracy, (nearly) everybody happy.....

[feddon]

have to agree, remember way back when when VC was first annouced i always thought ud get wii points with nintendo games at some point, like buy mario galaxy get a free mario game download ect but never quite panned out. I havnt bought a single VC game (i still own a nes snes n64 and cube) but i have wated lots of money on bout 15 mostly very mediocre wii games, granted the nintendo games are the picks of the bunch but £40 ($80) a pop is rediculous when the quality mostly isnt there at the mo. VC should definatly be a perk and homebrew wont hurt wii sales (DS is still storming and you can spend 40 quid and never have to buy another game with some of the cards)
Thanks.

[sonikku88]

Well, it gives the homebrew and hacking community a bad image, that's for sure.