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Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

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Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#21

Post by advael »

nine_k wrote: post #17
advael wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A tax small enough to not harm indie publishers is almost tautologically unlikely to affect big publishers at all. The incentives created by fines and taxes are greatly overestimated. For something like this to work, it needs to be achievable without the continued cooperation or even existence of the original business

To the opposite, the tax should kick in if the operation is large enough. If your revenue from the game exceeds $10M, you should do some minimal continuity work. If it exceeds $100M, you should do much more serious continuity work.

So you'd like to incentivise more obfuscation of revenue to boot?

I think an effective remedy for this kind of situation can't just be fiscal, we need requirements to publish adequate technical specifications and strong IP carveouts to make it likely to move the needle. Forcing companies to maintain continuous support is a non-starter. We should instead focus on enabling unofficial support from outside the companies, and remove legal threats from those who choose to do so

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#22

Post by acdha »

advael wrote: post #11
acdha wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish there was some way to tie it to copyright where if you want to lock the rights up, you have to provide the game in a playable form at a reasonable price. I’ve seen proposals which would implement that as a kind orphan works tax with a threshold so a small indie game wouldn’t be expected to provide unlimited support.

A tax small enough to not harm indie publishers is almost tautologically unlikely to affect big publishers at all. The incentives created by fines and taxes are greatly overestimated. For something like this to work, it needs to be achievable without the continued cooperation or even existence of the original business

Imagine if the tax was, for the sake of argument, based on the inflation-adjusted lifetime revenue over $500k and had different rates based on the total sales, each increasing over time so the cost of locking up a 20 year old game is more than they ever made for it. I don’t see how what wouldn’t have a strong incentive to release things they aren’t actively commercializing.

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#23

Post by jaylittle »

This is one reason I'm over and done with proprietary consoles. So tired of shitty company's like Nintendo being able to call any kind of shot. They may still know how to make fun games and do that on accessible and reasonably priced hardware, but beyond that they are an objectionable and ass-backward company on so many levels.

I vote with my dollar. I vote against Nintendo.

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#24

Post by amlib »

zeta0134 wrote: post #12
bhpm wrote: post #4

I'm heartened, at least, to read that StreetPass will still work after the shutdown. This is such a fun feature, being able to see Mii's from strangers all around the world. Just having a stopover at an international airport was enough to fill my Mii queue with dozens of cool characters.

This is almost certainly because Street Pass is device-to-device, based entirely on proximity to other users. There's no server to shut down, so Nintendo would have to go out of their way to turn it off by releasing some sort of update to have devices kill the feature on some date.

I'm surprised the 3DS hasn't been hacked trough this functionality. It would be an awesome opportunity to create some kind of worm that quickly spreads around the world and you also get to name it with a trendy name like "Fail Pass".

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#25

Post by semiquaver »

henriquez wrote: post #8
acdha wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish there was some way to tie it to copyright where if you want to lock the rights up, you have to provide the game in a playable form at a reasonable price. I’ve seen proposals which would implement that as a kind orphan works tax with a threshold so a small indie game wouldn’t be expected to provide unlimited support.

The DMCA allows reverse engineering of copy-protected code for abandonware. As a copyright holder you’re not necessarily obligated to maintain working game services, but if you sell a multiplayer game and abandon it, it’s basically free rein for others to make it work again.

To clarify, the DMCA does no such thing. The exemptions you refer to are the result of the Librarian of Congress exercising a statutory “fail-safe” role to specify circumstances that the (otherwise very broad) anti-circumvention provisions in the DMCA will be construed not to apply to.

https://copyright.gov/1201/2015/fedreg-publicinspectionFR.pd...

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#26

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

jaylittle wrote: post #23

This is one reason I'm over and done with proprietary consoles. So tired of shitty company's like Nintendo being able to call any kind of shot. They may still know how to make fun games and do that on accessible and reasonably priced hardware, but beyond that they are an objectionable and ass-backward company on so many levels. I vote with my dollar. I vote against Nintendo.

Consoles are not the only place where this is happening. More PC games are requiring always-online access even for singleplayer content. User experience be damned.

I just had to refrain from a Steam purchase because I saw that it requires the Origin launcher, an EA account, and is always online. For a singleplayer game. Madness.

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#27

Post by nine_k »

advael wrote: post #21
nine_k wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the opposite, the tax should kick in if the operation is large enough. If your revenue from the game exceeds $10M, you should do some minimal continuity work. If it exceeds $100M, you should do much more serious continuity work.

So you'd like to incentivise more obfuscation of revenue to boot? I think an effective remedy for this kind of situation can't just be fiscal, we need requirements to publish adequate technical specifications and strong IP carveouts to make it likely to move the needle. Forcing companies to maintain continuous support is a non-starter. We should instead focus on enabling unofficial support from outside the companies,…

Obfuscation of revenue is a really bad idea, all the way to a federal criminal investigation.

The idea is that the continuity requirements should not be onerous, given the revenue, say, less than 1% of it, "a good problem to have".

Publishing a reasonable spec would be a part of that.

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#28

Post by andrepd »

charcircuit wrote: post #19
GaggiX wrote: post #18

I hope there is/will be a backup of all the levels uploaded on Mario Maker or it will be an unfortunate loss and Nintendo does not care of course.

Yes, they are all archived https://archive.org/details/super_mario_maker_courses_202105

Incredible!

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#29

Post by tombert »

jaylittle wrote: post #23

This is one reason I'm over and done with proprietary consoles. So tired of shitty company's like Nintendo being able to call any kind of shot. They may still know how to make fun games and do that on accessible and reasonably priced hardware, but beyond that they are an objectionable and ass-backward company on so many levels. I vote with my dollar. I vote against Nintendo.

I don’t disagree in principal but what exactly is the alternative? Playing SuperTuxKart and Pingus or some other open source games all the time? I hate the “service-ification” of everything, but I think it’s a near-monopoly that’s kind of hard to avoid.

There’s sites like GOG that give DRM-free versions of games, and I like GOG a lot, but it’s still fundamentally a proprietary service that could shut its doors down tomorrow. I know that I personally do not have all my GOG games backed up, and I am one of the rare people that has enough disk space to actually do that, so I doubt I am weird here.

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#30

Post by unleaded »

amlib wrote: post #24
zeta0134 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is almost certainly because Street Pass is device-to-device, based entirely on proximity to other users. There's no server to shut down, so Nintendo would have to go out of their way to turn it off by releasing some sort of update to have devices kill the feature on some date.

I'm surprised the 3DS hasn't been hacked trough this functionality. It would be an awesome opportunity to create some kind of worm that quickly spreads around the world and you also get to name it with a trendy name like "Fail Pass".

That was discovered a few years ago but they reported it to Nintendo who patched it before people knew about it: https://mrnbayoh.github.io/36c3/
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