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And by "potentially billions", I mean "$150,000 for each case of copyright infringement found on the sites as well as up to $2 million for each infringement of one of its trademarks. Nintendo also seeks “compensatory damages” and an award to cover its legal fees."

This is honestly kind of just a dick move on Nintendo's part. Sure they have "the rights" to protect their business, but these are ROMs. They're incredibly old, classic, minuscule files that should not cost more than, say, 3 dollars, and Nintendo is suing for up to $150,000 for each one. Imagine having to pay that much money just to play Balloon Fight on your 3DS. It's absolutely not worth it, and this just feels like obscene greed.

I wonder, is there any people who got DMCA or something like this instead of bowing down and take down their stuff they decided to tell the one who sue them to "Take a hike and go fuck yourself"

NiNtENdo nO!

this actually hurts to hear tbh

What? They've been doing extremely well, no? Splatoon is huge in Japan, a ton of hype is being generated by Smash Ultimate, BoTW and SMO met critical acclaim. This is a shitty thing they're doing, but I don't think they're failing commercially.

That's what I said. Nintendo needs to be doing poorly commercially to have at least some evidence of those ROMs putting a dent on their cashflow.

This issue is spreading like wildfire across the internet, from 4chan to Twitter.

I know it's just Nintindo trying to protect their IP but damn, how hard is it for them to have a Virtual Console for the Switch? People would gladly pay money for a legal downloadable copy of an old game if it means not having to resort to any "grey" (or possibly illegal) methods to have access to a game they want to play.

You know….I wish there was a law where you could actually lose your copyright if you don't do the best of your abilities to give the customers what they need and if someone can prove they're better distributors of stuff than they are. And using copyright and trademark laws destructively wouldn't count towards protecting your copyright or trademark.

But copyright is more universal than right to live. And that's a big problem.

I bet majority of current Nintendo employees haven't done anything to make those games that were released decades ago anyway.

One big mistake those sites is doing is the message they display. Such complacement only encourages Nintendo and other companies to continue their consumer-hostile practices.

If those sites (and fangame sites) would actually start to rebel and call for revolt against such practices, maybe we could see other results.

Here's the problem with your "ROM hosting sites revolting against Nintendo" idea: At the end of the day, Nintendo is the one with the money and power in this situation, and would win against the revolution. Now I'm not defending Nintendo at all for what they did to ROM sites, but trying to stage a revolt for something like this would simply fall on deaf ears on Nintendo's part.