Comments on: Modding, piracy, homebrew, and you

By: Nintendo DS Mods & Repairs

Nintendo DS Mods & Repairs — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:27:45 +0000

use the video game without pirated Software to get the accuracy and protect your sytem from out side viruses……………

By: Simon Windmill

Simon Windmill — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:46:27 +0000

Oh I know Mike, there’s too much room for abuse if you remove all legal obstacles to implementing an existing idea. There is no easy answer. I do think software (and games in particular) should be treated differently to tangible products however, especially when it’s a case of someone having more vision than the original creator and taking initiative with their own implementation. Companies like Red Octane/Harmonix and PopCap saw the potential in Japanese titles that had little exposure in the West and created superior implementations of Guitar Freaks and PuzzLoop for example. If we applaud them (and defend their legal position) then I don’t think we should condemn the bedroom developer for bringing a commercial game to a new platform, or creating an homage to their favorite title or genre.

By: Rich Neves

Rich Neves — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:19:21 +0000

Simon: Very well written article. And timely since I just found out about Good Old Games (as Mike mentioned) which I think is an awesome idea. I also just read an blog post by one of the founders of Stardock (Sins of a Solar Empire and Galactic Civilizations) about why they release games without DRM. The most interesting point he made was target markets. Take a game like Crysis. It could only run well on maybe 5-10% of the computers out there. So you limit your market right there. If you focus on games that the largest number of customers can run, you will get bigger sales. Look at Popcap games and Peggle for an example. Or even Sins of a Solar Empire which sold more than 200,000 copies, with no DRM.

Companies like EA and others who have implemented rather draconian DRM solutions are almost as blind as the RIAA is to what their customers want and have lost sight of reality when it comes to piracy. Very much like the RIAA (and MPAA) they quote these enormous dollar amounts that are lost to piracy because they saw that X number of people were downloading a game from torrent sites. What they are missing is two very important facts. Fact 1: Pirated games (music, movies, etc) does NOT equal lost sales. Fact 2: Many people download games to try them out before they drop $50-60 on them. This is especially true of games that do not have demos released.

I am not condoning piracy, I agree that it is wrong and a problem, but I think that is the companies in question simply listened to their customers and focused more on making a product that the market wants, there would be less problems.

By: Mike Anderson

Mike Anderson — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:35:05 +0000

“Should a potentially superior product be stopped just because someone else did it first?”

That is the very basis of copyright and intellectual property protection, because there is a slippery slope between what you are implying and someone reverse-engineering a just-released product and releasing a cheaper knock-off that didn’t require the same up-front research and engineering costs.

By: Mike Anderson

Mike Anderson — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 03:05:36 +0000

Very nice reply Simon – I understood your intent and wasn’t clear enough in my post.

Some people complain – if homebrew is so good why doesn’t Sony (& Nintendo, etc) just support it? Well, I tend to say that it is because 99% of those using ‘homebrew’ are doing it to run pirated stuff, effectively ruining it for the creative people making cool and legit apps.

By: Simon Windmill

Simon Windmill — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 23:11:44 +0000

Uh.. “I don’t pretend” should be “I agree”

By: Simon Windmill

Simon Windmill — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 23:08:09 +0000

Mike (Anderson), I don’t pretend that many people use “I want to play homebrew!” to cover the fact that they just want to play commercial games for free, I just want people to know that having a modded console does not automatically mean piracy. I plan on writing further spotlight articles on homebrew applications and games without even mentioning piracy. But the two sides definitely feed off of each other – it’s typically the hardcore homebrew people who are first to get custom code running on a machine, effectively giving the pirates the tools they need to run copied games. The flip side is that piracy drives the commercial availability of the devices that are often needed to run homebrew. And I don’t kid myself – the tools I use to legitimately back up my games come from the pirates.

Mike (DeSanto), the game is Video Games Hero, and it came second in the recent NeoFlash homebrew competition in the DS category. Great stuff, and a perfect segue into GamerDad’s question..

There’s no question that the homebrew world is filled with knock-offs of commercial games, and that in most places are thus infringing on copyrights and/or patents. The question is whether you believe in open competition. Should a potentially superior product be stopped just because someone else did it first? Tetris is an interesting case because many Tetris fans believe The Tetris Company, responsible for the official Tetris games, has ruined the game with the infinite spin mechanic. Homebrew comes to the rescue with Tetris games that remove that “improvement”

By: GamerDad

GamerDad — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:32:28 +0000

Nice article, really well-done.
Devil’s Advocate: What about the legally-murky problem with homebrew remaking games? There was a Tetris clone that got zapped on iTunes called Tris and I know various arcade patent holders go after the Munchers sometimes.

By: Mike DeSanto

Mike DeSanto — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:08:39 +0000

What is the Guitar Hero clone in the homebrew example pic?

I use the “Games-n-Music” card from Datel, who claim that it will not load ROMs of pirated games. I’ve never tried, so I can’t say if it is true.

By: Mike Anderson

Mike Anderson — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:41:59 +0000

Nice article – it is tough to navigate without moralizing, but you did a pretty good job. I like the ‘sneaking into a theater’ comparison. I was talking to my kids last night at dinner about this, and they clearly see the analogy.

I have always been strongly anti-piracy, but as a PC gamer the draconian DRM that has been creeping into gaming is getting out of hand. I have been playing games as old as 25 years recently, including ones 15 years old from the original CD’s … the companies behind most of the games I’m playing are long gone, and if they had the current DRM there would be no way I could play. I applaud GoodOldGames for what they are doing – and have already started voting with my wallet there!

I am suspicious of the whole homebrew thing … I understand and appreciate that there are creative and talented folks making cool stuff as you mention, but I see it largely as a smokescreen for piracy. Everyone on PSP forums should ‘homebrew, homebrew’ … when they are really just loading up ISO’s from P2P and torrent sites.