Now where will you play those totally fine I own the cartridge back-ups and ROMs?
A high-court judge has scored one for the developers today, ruling the popular R4 cards illegal to import, advertise and sell in the United Kingdom. R4′s are used by thousands of British gamers to play pirate and ‘back-up’ DS ROMs, as well as for emulation and homebrew. A shame for the legitimate DS homebrew developers, but this can only be a good thing for the many developers that have shied away from this generation of handhelds because of low sales and high piracy rates.
It is now illegal for the R4 card to circumvent the security systems implemented in the Nintendo DS in order to play whatever content the user wishes on said platform. This includes homebrew, which many R4 owners have insisted using the card for is not piracy.
“Nintendo promotes and fosters game development and creativity, and strongly supports the game developers who legitimately create new and innovative applications,” read a spokesperson from Nintendo, “Nintendo initiates these actions not only on its own behalf, but also on behalf of over 1,400 video game-development companies that depend on legitimate sales of games for their survival.”
There was no mention of any of the alternate cards used for similar purposes, such as the M3 DS cards, so not all is lost for homebrew developers without the resources to go into legitimate publishing.
Do any of you own an R4? Do you plan to destroy it violently with a slippery hammer now it is illegal? Will you carry on regardless? Comments in the comments.
July 28, 2010
#1
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i think most ppl that have them will keep on using them,change of law won’t make any difference.
July 28, 2010
#2
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The law has made many things illegal over hundreds of years, it doesn’t really make a difference. Plus, the R4 isn’t even the best card to use nowadays. While I’m not in the UK, I do have a knock-off R4, but I still try to support the developers and buy the games that I really like.
July 28, 2010
#3
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That’s absolutely ridiculous! I thought we were going ahead with legal modification rights when jailbreaking was ruled legal but now this is just stupid.
July 28, 2010
#4
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@Marco forte
I think the main difference is the uses. Jailbreaking is used less to pirate and more to expand capabilities, whereas R4s are mostly used by pirates.
July 30, 2010
#5
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The only thing this is going to change is, it being harder to buy an R4 card. Making it illegal really isn’t going to stop people using them.