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Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

pretendo.network

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Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#71
post #42
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pretty sure that hasn't stopped Hollywood accounting for the last century, and I see no reason why EA can't pull off the same things that Warner Brothers has been doing.

Hollywood accounting is about hiding profit by making it look like all of the revenue was used for expenses. Hiding all of your revenue outright is a different ballgame and if it were easy to do legally Nintendo wouldn't be paying billions in taxes on it already.

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#72
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So we can play ut24k online again? Someone could setup a master server list?

No. The exemption only applies to circumventing access controls related to authentication servers that gate access to single player modes. Duplicating online multiplayer functionality (which was proposed and rejected because of industry opposition) is not in scope of the exemption so would not be protected against liability.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/victory-users-libraria...

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#73
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

Do they have one for smm2?

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the one company who owns a vibrant operating system: Microsoft. They dropped the original Xbox like a box of bricks. They shut down those old servers quite rapidly. With the Xbox 360 however, they will stop the ability to buy games on an original Xbox 360 next year. That's a long era of support! https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/08/17/xbox-360-store-will-c... I'm fairly convinced new credit card standards are…

I would argue Microsoft is one of the better ones with respect to backports and longer term support. Others (cough google cough) are on the other end of that spectrum. I would imagine Nintendo is somewhere in the middle. That said, i still grabbed Digital copies of games. Plan is i can put multiple switches on an account and when they are traveling (ie: not connected) my kids can play games without having to cop 2 co…

You can only share games between accounts on your "home" switch.

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#75
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve has the perfect setup right now. Your desktop, laptop, or Deck can connect to Steam.

Steam will drop Windows7/8 support January 1, 2024[1], Vista and XP support got dropped a long time ago. Meanwhile they still sell Win95/98 games on the Steam store, which won't run well or at all on a Windows10/11. So not exactly perfect either as far as backward compatibility is concerned. [1] https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4784-4F2B-1321-80...

They recently dropped support for MacOS 10.12. They're cutting it close since many Valve games only work on MacOS versions <= 10.13

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s what Nintendo said but the eShop was still hackable.

I don't think it was, there were unsuccessful attempts to revive FreeShop but you could always download CIAs from the web so yeah piracy was still rampant

No one talked about it because they didn’t want normies to know. Might as well just use CIAs though.

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#77
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve has the perfect setup right now. Your desktop, laptop, or Deck can connect to Steam.

Steam will drop Windows7/8 support January 1, 2024[1], Vista and XP support got dropped a long time ago. Meanwhile they still sell Win95/98 games on the Steam store, which won't run well or at all on a Windows10/11. So not exactly perfect either as far as backward compatibility is concerned. [1] https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4784-4F2B-1321-80...

It depends on what you think of as perfect. Microsoft stopped supporting XP in like 2009 and Windows 8 in 2016. I run all my windows games on my Deck using proton. Games that ran on Windows 95 usually aren’t supported by the companies that made them decades ago but fans patch them. I got Vampire the Masquerade running on my Deck with little effort. So “perfect”? No. But functional? Absolutely.

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#78
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve has the perfect setup right now. Your desktop, laptop, or Deck can connect to Steam.

Unless it’s a 32-bit Mac come January or a machine running windows Which I’m fine with, but it’s not like Valve is magical somehow. If your machine isn’t still getting Chromium builds they can’t build Steam for it, you still need to buy new hardware. And the game consoles (less) often let you play old games on new hardware.

My Deck just runs all those old windows games using proton. I mean, Windows subsystems runs Linux. You don’t even need VMs anymore. It’s not magic it’s just portability.

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#79
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam will drop Windows7/8 support January 1, 2024[1], Vista and XP support got dropped a long time ago. Meanwhile they still sell Win95/98 games on the Steam store, which won't run well or at all on a Windows10/11. So not exactly perfect either as far as backward compatibility is concerned. [1] https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4784-4F2B-1321-80...

They recently dropped support for MacOS 10.12. They're cutting it close since many Valve games only work on MacOS versions <= 10.13

Apple hasn’t support MacOS 10.12 for four years. That Steam still supports it is amazing to me.

Re: Nintendo Network shutdown – The beginning of the end

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Furthermore, these exemptions only cover unlocking DRM - not providing the unlock tools, which is illegal in all circumstances.

Yes, you are really expected to reverse-engineer and decrypt everything yourself. DMCA 1201 is a really fucking stupid law.

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