ROM Sites DOOMED?

Nintendo went on to say: "money money money"

Oh Nintendo...I love what you make, but I hate who you are. Time to stock up on ROM's before all the sites disappear.

big titles i can understand. they are releasing them slowly on new consoles and want the money from them but for F's sake why take down roms that you have no intension of reviving. i never had any console as a kid and roms (later, after internet came to be) were the only way i could play those. now i do have a Nintendo and a bunch of oldies on it becouse i wanted to have them around with me and credit makers. sooo... it did make them money in the end. without roms i wouldn't have a way to know half of them existed. be thankful Nintendo, be thankful.

I sadly think no one will win in court because court is known to support sides with certain bias in civil cases (as much as they SHOULDNT) but there’s also the real legality issues of it. But then again, preserving an important part of our history is HUGE and gaming history is so different then any other because we can preserve the original game compared to fossils or deteriorating castles. History is far more important then copyright, imo and really. Nintendo is doing it for the money.

One of my fav SNES games Lufia and the fortress of doom has been long forgotten about by Nintendo (3rd party). If not for emulation and ROMs I'd never see it again (unless I want to play a Japanese mobile port). That's the reason these sites need exist not so much for Mario and Metriod.

Most copy rights have use it or lose it provisions so for the games that Nintendo no longer does anything with there might actually be standing to have the copyright revoked.

That statement towards the end doesn't sound like "please don't sue us Nintendo" to me. It sounds more like Nintendo already got ahold of them and they settled out of court. Othewise, I can't imagine why they'd bother including the part saying "we do so because we acknowledge that they infringe...". That just doesn't seem like something they'd bother saying unless they're being forced to.

You want to play games without spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars for a discontinued console and a rare copy of a game? Fuck you.

It alway nice when nintendo is so blatently non consumer friendly yet people defend them anyway, I think they're officialy the apple of video games

I feel the only games they'd have a case for- morally, at least, legally this would cover all- would be games that they currently offer either through their own sales services or authorized distributors. If they do not have a means for me to give money to their company for a product, I do not believe they should make a case to prevent someone else from offering it for free, even if they are receiving money from advertising on that page. It goes back to the GameStop conundrum where the game companies are not profiting from the sales of their games which they spent thousands if not millions of dollars developing- which I get- but again, in the case of older games that are no longer carried by retailers or offered as online sales from the company directly, there wouldn't be a means by which a consumer could provide profit. Perhaps if Nintendo released an emulator-like console wherein someone could purchase from the full catalog of games, perhaps have it be capable of streaming to promote streamers on Twitch and Youtube to release content- which does boost sales i.e. the reason RoosterTeeth as a company wasn't shut down by Bungie and Microsoft when they started.

I remember people used to always say that if you owned a game legitimately, it was legal for you to have a ROM of the game and play it on an emulator. I don't know if that's true or not, but I did it because it was just easier to play Phantasy Star IV on an emulator instead of hooking up the Genesis, especially since it doesn't really work with an HD TV, which is all I have anymore.

If devs and publishers want to be protected as art then they will have to acknowledge that preservation of that art is going to become a big thing that they will have to deal with reasonably (i.e. not just suing everyone) just as it is with writing, painting, sculpture and the rest. to loose that protection or the history of the art is not something its supporters will allow in the long run... just look at how frustrated dedicated fans have gotten over the loss of old movies and post-copyright early music despite maintaining collections being often "very" illegal.