Piracy softmod comes to the Wii

Author: Joe Martin
Published: 16th September 2008
Comments (11) Stumble
The Wii Homebrew channel allows players to run a variety of community created software.

The Wii Homebrew channel allows players to run a variety of community created software.

If you were one of the misguided games publishers who thought that games piracy was only a problem for the PC market then you might want to take a look at this and see the first example of a homebrew program that lets the Nintendo Wii play pirated games without a hardware modification.

And considering the sheer number of Nintendo Wiis that have been sold and how easy the homebrew is to enable - the details of which we aren't going to go into here, but our understanding is that it's based around the same Twilight Princess exploit as most other Wii homebrew programs - this could be quite a problem for Nintendo.

Ostensibly called the Wii Back-up Loader, the program allows users to run pirated Wii games in .ISO format without any trouble whatsoever. Though the program claims it is made for people who want to back-up the games they already own, the primary market is obvious.

What's most interesting about all this is that the exploit that the program is based around isn't new at all, and members of the Wii homebrew community had actually already discovered this and tried to contact Nintendo about patching the problem before it became widely known. Nintendo however repeatedly ignored emails from the community and did not respond to attempts to enter into a dialogue with the community.

So, you can't help but feel that Nintendo has shot themselves in the foot here.

Piracy is obviously something that concerns Nintendo massively, especially with the DS being massively pirated for too thanks to the popularity of the R4DS card system, so it'll be interesting to see if any official response comes out of this.

How do you think piracy is shaping the industry? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.
Quote Leitchy 16th September 2008, 13:17
Good if it works, now they just need a large storage solution to feed it!
Quote MrMonroe 16th September 2008, 16:22
Start the clock. You guys probably have 33 minutes until this gets shut down.
Quote boiled_elephant 16th September 2008, 17:22
I still don't feel piracy is Wrong (capital 'W'). I just hear no convincing arguments against it, which is a shame because the good half of me wants to be convinced that it's wrong, that it's in any way damaging.

I suppose those that might construct such arguments lack the necessary research and empirical data.
Quote McFlyinCA 16th September 2008, 17:41
OK where can I get this, lol. My son scratched his Lego Star Wars game and it does not play anymore so I could really use this. Anyone have any idea??? :D
Quote friskies 16th September 2008, 18:56
I don`t think it`s available for download yet, but it`s made by wananiko.
Edit: And don`t blame your son, we all know who just HAD to have that game.
Edit2: If it`s already scratched, you can`t make a backup of it.
Quote Volund 16th September 2008, 20:11
Quote:
Originally Posted by friskies

Edit2: If it`s already scratched, you can`t make a backup of it.

No, but he could DL it and then run it using the fix.
Quote themcman1 16th September 2008, 21:06
I was going to post something like 'but that would be wrong' but I don't really want to start a flame war.
TBH, piracy isn't going to go away.
Quote Buzzons 16th September 2008, 21:24
Why would Nintendo care? They still sell the Wii.. they don't make money from Non Nintendo game sales do they? Most people that buy a wii are not tech savvy anyway so it probably wont really matter.
Quote Darkefire 16th September 2008, 22:25
For most console makers. I'd say that this would be worrisome, as the bulk of profits come from game sales (which offset the console hardware losses). For Nintendo, though, this almost works in their favor. People buy the Wii hardware like it has the combined might of every Christmas fad toy combined, and Nintendo already makes a fair amount on each console. So why should they care? More incentive for people to buy the console (like they needed any more) and make them even more money.
Quote geneyess 29th October 2008, 15:36
Piracy, as the result of $60 games, is simply a consequence. A good game will turn a profit if sold for $20 dollars. If games were around $20-30, piracy would reduce considerably. The same people complaining about it, refuse to lower their ridiculous prices, so piracy will stay. Developers haven't convinced anyone that $60 for 1 game is a fair price. This is because it isn't, these @ssh0les need to stop making it seem like people who pirate games are destroying the market. Overpricing games is destroying the market, look what happen to wall street, I bet they think they can charge even more for games once the next cycle of consoles come out. They've already killed PC Gaming. It's simple, if u want to sell a product and all of your customers think your prices are heavily inflated, lower your price or only sale to those customers that have searched for an alternative (like piracy) and failed.
Quote Bladestorm 31st October 2008, 18:06
Quote:
Originally Posted by Buzzons
Why would Nintendo care? They still sell the Wii.. they don't make money from Non Nintendo game sales do they? Most people that buy a wii are not tech savvy anyway so it probably wont really matter.

All of the console manufacturers charge a licensing fee for every game sold for there consoles. It's the primary means that Microsoft and Sony use to make money and definetely a decent stream of income for Nintendo, so they have a very strong interest in stopping piracy.

And as for no negative effect of piracy, without sales games don't get sequels and/or genres are taken to be risky and not developed, in more extreme cases developers don't get wages paid and go out of business completely.

I'd like to see cheaper games, but as far as I know the actual developer only gets a small portion of most games sold, with the biggest chunk going to the store that sells it, the publisher then keeping a decent chunk, in the console cases the console company takes a decent licensing fee and the developers get whats left over.
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