Nintendo 'Wins' $12 Million From Pirate ROM Site Operators

The owners of now-defunct ROM sites LoveROMS.com and LoveRETRO.co have agreed to a $12 million judgment in favor of Nintendo. The operators, a married couple, admit to both direct and indirect copyright and trademark infringement. Both parties requested the court to sign off on this unusual judgment, which will end their legal battle.

[PhoenixUp]

I wish Virtual Console was still a thing on NS

[drpepperdude]

If rom sites actually damaged Nintendo they would have been out of business over a decade ago. I don't agree with the reasoning that it injured them.

[sprinterboy]

Totally agree, Rom sites hasn't aquated to NIN losing out on 12m.

[Shiken]

The bigger issue is that the site was generating ad revenue by providing IPs that were not theirs, and therefore illegally profiting from them.

It has nothing to do with "losses" that may have affected Nintendo in the past.

[DarXyde]

ROMs provide save states and often provide extra features such as MSAA, anistropic filtering, etc.

For free.

They can easily make the argument that it's cutting into their business model. Keep in mind that there is the VC and classic consoles.

I don't agree that they would have gone out of business. Their platforms now simply can't be practically emulated and their games are often must haves that don't depreciate in cost.

[SegaGamer]

Nintendo only care now because they have seen how much money can be made from those crappy little plastic emulators. If those things sold like crap then they wouldn't have cared. To Nintendo, this isn't about protecting what they own, it's about the money and releasing the same old Mario and Zelda games over and over again.

[rainslacker]

Nintendo has chased after more pirate tech or sites than any other company in history, long before they had those crappy little plastic emulators, and long before they were selling remasters and such.

So, I'd say that it was about protecting what they own....because they've always taken a hard line approach to this matter.

And whatever their reasoning is, it is their right to do what they are doing, whether we like it or not.

[rainslacker]

I don't think it has to damage them for copyright infringement to be called damages in a court settlement or ruling.

Some of the ROMS they were distributing through the years were made available, sometimes rather easily, through official channels. In business, that's considered damaging.

[FallenAngel1984]

Nintendo doesn’t provide gamers a way to legitimately the vast majority of their classic library and go after the people who do?

Wtf either make a legitimate Virtual Console on Switch or fk off Nintendo. Quit trying to ruin the preservation of the industry

[Shiken]

A big part of it was that the site was generating ad revenue, and therefore making money off of their IPs.

No one is saying that it does not suck, but Nintendo and any other dev/publisher that follows are well within their rights to do so.

[Neonridr]

ahh so because you can't play the game because you don't have a gameboy or the cartridge means that you should just be able to go illegally download and play it for free. Gotcha.

[Platformgamer]

nintendo ruining the fun once again

[EddieNX]

The everyone should just pirate everything and not pay for anything, cus that's how society works /s

[Platformgamer]

no, just nintendo ahahah
and no, it's not /s

[monkeyfox]

I would argue that rom sites actually helped keep old games relevant.

[Cobra951]

Yes. Emulation in general opened some eyes. I doubt we'd see 30-year-old games reissued today if the whole idea of emulating old systems hadn't come to light, and proven both doable and popular.

[chris235]

not one penny from my side to the n-house anymore. i‘d rather put the money down the drain than supporting these geeedmeisters.

[Sirk7x]

While the ruling makes me upset, you wouldn't have given them a penny anyways lol. I've seen your comment history, you're one of the most bitter, anti-console trolls on this site xD

[CorndogBurglar]

Right. You were never going to give them a penny anyway. You've been complaining that Nintendo has been ruining the video game industry for a very long time lol. You aren't fooling anyone.

[Shiken]

He complains about everything, regardless of who it is. Hard to take anything he says seriously anymore.

[Shiken]

How dare they enforce their rights to their own IPs. How dare they!

/s

[Neonridr]

to think they stopped an illegal practice. Heaven forbid.. mean, mean Nintendo.

[ApocalypseShadow]

Doh!! New tv show:

"When Nintendo Attacks"

[LoveSpuds]

This is a really complex issue in my opinion.

On the one hand, I totally appreciate the concerns and more importantly the right, for the companies and people who made the games in the first place to control what happens to them. It is settled in the sphere of Trade Marks that not protecting your IP rights can have damaging effects and consequences for your Trade Mark registrations and future applications.

However, there are real issues surrounding the preservation of and access too old video games. I am a 70's kid, I grew up playing on the Atari 2600 before moving onto Commodore and Nintendo machines in the 80s and early 90s, so I have a very strong attachment to those early libraries of games and I would be more than willing to pay for access to those libraries if possible. The problem is, 'legitimately' playing most of these old games is becoming more and more expensive and difficult, a problem which will only be exacerbated by the march of time.

I think part of the problem is, the people often arguing for preservation are often only 'preserving' games they actually want to play, your Super Mario's or Pokemons etc rather than poorly received games and this completely undermines their argument. These people should be honest with themselves, they just want free stuff.

[BlackRaven85_1]

I buy into this whole preservation thing that people claim this is. I think people are confused by the word. Besides, there's going to be preservation because states like Texas are going to help solve the issue.

[rainslacker]

Preservation, and access are two totally different things. Nintendo isn't going after preservation efforts are they? And as far as I know, none of those preservation efforts would be so bold to put out copyrighted work for easy consumption.

I get where you're coming from, because I'm much in the same boat, but the truth is, it's not hard to get retro consoles or games. It's easier today than its ever been. And its less than 1% of the games that are over 10 years old that would cost you more than $5 each....if that.

Time may well indeed lessen the availability, but thats assuming that more people actually get into this kind of thing, which they really aren't. The market for collecting or retro gaming has been relatively consistent for the past 20 years. About the only thing that has changed is the people who prey on the desperate, and artificially inflate the price of games beyond what they're really worth, which makes them not sell, and gives some people a false idea that collecting is a good way to make money by doing the speculative thing....which can drive up demand, and shorten supply, but it's usually short term, and comes and goes in waves.

That being said, I'm all for preservation, but what we have here is piracy. Call it what you want, but it's the distribution of copyrighted material without permission. Whether they do it for profit or not, that is the actual definition of piracy, no matter how its justified for people to feel good about themselves for breaking the law when they distribute, or consume that material.

[CrimsonWing69]

Thanks Nintendo, clearly these people were such a thorn in your side because y’know you still sell Lufia 2

[Relientk77]

Nintendo are such A holes when it comes to ROMs and their copyrights

[CorndogBurglar]

If you owned a business would you want someone else giving your products away for free?

[2pacalypsenow]

Keyword 'Their".

It's their property.

[BlackRaven85_1]

So, would you be against Sony or Microsoft for doing the same thing? Because they have the same right. And are against sites like these that give away their property for free.

[Einhander1971]

It’s ok for Nintendo to sell us the same NES games over and over. Killing sites like these your killing the whole legacy of what came before. Luckily I have plenty of retro stuff in original form and emulation. But the industry should be preserving the precious history of gaming as well.

[2pacalypsenow]

"But the industry should be preserving the precious history of gaming as well."

Nintendo does that, I'm sure they have roms stored safely somewhere.

[rainslacker]

Whether its OK or not is a subjective matter based on what it is you want.

It's better to say that its perfectly legal for Nintendo to sell us the same NES game over and over.

Nintendo isn't against preservation efforts that don't distribute their work. They're against sites that distribute their work illegally.

people are acting like its a fine line between preservation and piracy, and its really not.

When preservation is condoned by the copyright holder, then its legal. When its not, it's illegal. When a preservation site distributes, or sells, a piece of copyrighted work not in the public domain, where that copyright is active and likely has a trademark attached, then it is illegal.

Not really a hard concept to understand, and Nintendo in no way is trying to kill the whole legacy of what came before. They're trying to kill the rampant piracy that exists in the world, and don't really care about the moral justifications that people make to excuse piracy....which are plentiful.

[Shikoku]

Well now Im glad I use the Wii U emulator and ill pirate as much Nintendo stuff as I can.

[zodiac909]

They are quick to crack down and grab $12 million, a tiny amount for them, yet they wont make an effort to make alot of these games easily accessible digitally. They'd rather make you re-purchase them with each console they launch.

[BlackRaven85_1]

I guess it's okay for these sites to steal images from Nintendo and use them without permission to you then? I guess you're okay with these sites profiting off ads then? Besides this wasn't Nintendo's decision. These sites agreed to settle for a lot less than the original amount. They knew what they were doing was a mistake.

[BlackRaven85_1]

They shouldn't have been using Nintendo images on their site. Plus, these sites were also profiting from ads on their pages much like EmuParadise, which if many remember got the hell out of dodge before they were next to get sued and lose their ad revenue. They were loosely making money off ip's and iso files that aren't theirs, and you can bet they were making a butt load of money from those ads, because they agreed to settle instead of dragging out the case that Nintendo were originally wanting to sue for much more. When the Playstation Classic launches do people honestly believe Sony are going to be okay with them getting iso files of their games?

No. They would shut them down just like Nintendo have been doing because that's their right. Microsoft would do the exact same thing. These sites knew they were in the wrong. It wasn't a case of Nintendo wanting to crush the little guy because there was no little guy in this.

[Tankbusta40]

Another reason to dislike Nintendo...as another user said, if these rom sites were hurting Nintendo, Nintendo would have shut down 15 or so years ago

[King_Noctis]

But like other users had said as well, it is their IPs. If you were the owner of a product you wouldn’t want people to steal it too.

[ShadowWolf712]

Except not all NES/SNES games are their IPs, hence why they can't legally resell them all either. Some are genuinely lost to time without emulation.

[inxine]

aand the Nintendo purge is still going strong. listen, i get it, but if u don't want us to download YOUR old games, make all of them available for us to enjoy. as long as u can't or won't provide such service, i will continue to download my favourite Nintendo games.