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For those who don't know, Emuparadise is a website where you can download ROMs for games to play on emulators. And earlier today, Nintendo sent a cease & desist notice to the owners to the site, leading to almost all first-party Nintendo titles have been removed from Emuparadise.

So yeah, we have ourselves another instance of Nintendo going C&D happy on a bunch of ROMs. Not really anything new, but I feel it's important to notify this for people who use emulators.

Damn. Good thing I'm keeping the games I found. Besides, I can find other ROM sites. Sucks for Emuparadise though.
also, most of the games are pretty old. Unless these games are gonna be on the VC, I'm pretty sure there's really no value for today at least..

I mean it sucks, but ROMs and Emulators always have had fairly grey area in terms of legality.

There's probably other websites you can use. I don't think Nintendo is tenacious enough to constantly send out C&D to every single site that hosts roms.

Nintendo going C&D happy on a bunch of ROMs

You're shocked a company would C&D a website distributing illegal copies of their games? That seems like a perfectly reasonable thing for any company to do.

yummines said:

ROMs and Emulators always have had fairly grey area in terms of legality.

The emulation of a console (especially when related to developing a game for said console) is legal. It also helps your case if you have to purchase a legal copy of the game in order to play it on the emulator.

Distributing full copies of copyrighted games is always going to be illegal, even if the owner refuses to release an update of the game. They are, after all, the ones who have the right to copy it or not.

Have there been actual evidence of those games damaging Nintendo in any way?

Ironically, I bet they hadn't done this if Nintendo had been a tiny company.

Nintendo is constantly releasing their old classics in their online marketplace, so they were still getting profits out of them.

Any lad easily offering an alternative on PC emulators for free is gonna cost them downloads (and to an extend maybe, console sales).

Evidence would depend on Nintendo Eshop sales compared to emulator downloads, but I don't have such info.

Like you said @RandomMan the they own the rights to these old games but it really sucks that they didn't have them always available for purchase.

About your second point, we would could make a parallel with the free anime sites and the office sites. Look at pageviews between the two, may not mean the amount of cash they can make but it shows what most people use.

So it would indicate that retrogaming access to titles on the Switch from Nintendo officially might be more likely to arrive.
Considering AM2R took down in favour of Samus Returns, it might potentially follow the same pattern.

This makes plenty of sense. Pokémon Gold and Silver are coming out soon on virtual console, and within a few years Ruby and Sapphire likely will too. Given those were top games downloaded on emuparadise, it's pretty reasonable Nintendo would finally take aim at them so they can make sure their legally distributed old games are gotten instead of illegally distributed ones.

Whether it's their legal right or not doesn't concern me. I can't afford any new games, and the option's there. I don't consider my actions any more immoral than "stealing" a sip from a drink fountain before you pay for it. Meanwhile, I fail to see any ethical reason to stop the sites from existing and hosting stuff. They're still well in the black, so my sympathy for these actions remains zero.

Yeah, this angers me, and I know my opinion is contentious. I am also unwavering in it and the karma score of this post is of no consequence to me speaking my truth.

[me wears a "Fuck The Police"-shirt while using a public drinking fountain]

I have no problem with Nintendo doing this, but I do wish they would reconsider their game pricing and download policies. Emulations may be a violation of copyright, but it is also widespread and has irreversibly changed the value of old games. When consumers can download a twenty year old game for free in a matter of minutes and Nintendo still wants to charge $8 for it to be downloaded to a single machine, that only encourages emulation. Personally, I don't feel like I should ever have to pay for Super Mario Bros. again because I already own it a good five times over. Ideally, Nintendo would take a page from Microsoft and Sony's playbook and let people download as many of their old games as they want for a monthly subscription fee.

I guess I'll play Robopon then.

Hey i payed 60$ for shaq-fu. You know you cant really play them unless you own the original copy.
B^)

Judging by Nintendo's recent history of being the copyright gestapo, I expect things to worsen yet. at the moment on Emuparadise only games made by Nintendo have been taken down. SNES and GBA roms made by third-party companies are still available for download.

Download them while you have thye chance as now that Nintendo succeeded in removing thier games with a developers rights claim, they will get the other roms of all their platforms (Nes GB GBC GBA, SNES GC Wii DS, etc) taken down with a publishers rights takedown claim.

THE BELOW PARAGRAPH IS ONLY MY SUSPICION ABOUT THINGS TO COME, AND NOT A CLAIM OF ABSOLUTE FACT.

I wonder if Nintendo will spearhead a consortium of publishers with the aim to have all Emulation/Rrom sites taked down entirely, and the owners/paid subscribers (who's personal info is on the main servers for the sites), charged with racketeering and copyright infringement, like what happened with KickAss Torrents and MegaUpload in the past. If enough publishers bitch and whine about 30 year old games, and there is a conglomerate behind them (like Music industries RIAA and the Movie Industries MPAA) and the U.S. Department of Justice would investigate like movie and music piracy. Maybe Nintendo of America plans on forming the VGAA (Video Gaming Assosiaction of America) to aggressively, and ruthlessly go after people that download one 30 year old game and sue them for millions over it?

Nintendo may be persistent, ruthless and tenacious, but I'd like to se them be able to remove the roms that are on Torrent.

They'd have about as much chance of stopping Torrented Roms as they have at Stopping AM2R now that it's out on torrent!

Buckleys Chance that is!

People will be seeding like crazy as a giant middle finger to Nintendo for sure! XD

I would love to see People power trounce Corporate greed here.

How many people would rather be playing Roms on a PC in HD with all the filtering goodies, then buying their crappy hardware? You can but the game cartrige and just use the Rom on better hardware, with better visuals and a higher framerate.

And I will never own one of those crappy Switch things either, nor a Wii/Wii-U Absolute crap!

I wonder if Nintendo's latest fail is called the "Switch" because when you sink your cash into one, and are majorly dissapointed with your purchase you switch to a rival company forever?

Nice bait, while you do make one good point in how people will prefer to play on computers, you just end up sounding like a tinfoil hat theorist. People forget that Nintendo is a company, and as much as I agree that taking down roms is stupid, they are in the right.

As for you comment about the hardware, I am not gonna explain why you are wrong, sine you come off as one of those kids that only think power is better. It's just sad how you are missing on one of the most convenient, comfortable and in unique system this generation, with some of the most fun games and plenty more to come down the road.

[me plays a 16-Bit classic on my NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 of 800 bucks]

What a fucking shocker