![Is Nintendo Erasing Its Own History In Its War On ROM Sites? 1](https://cdn.statically.io/img/images.timeextension.com/a3e18aeab58e5/is-nintendo-erasing-its-own-history-in-its-war-on-rom-sites-1.900x.jpg)
Nintendo is famously hard on ROM-sharing sites. In the past few years it has taken legal action against a wide range of sites, including LoveROMs, Rom Universe and – most recently of all – Vimm's Lair.
However, could this heavy-handed action be putting video game preservation at risk? That's certainly what Modern Vintage Gamer thinks, as he's published a new video that examines why Nintendo's action could end up erasing its history.
"The recent DMCA takedown notice from the ESA on popular ROM-sharing site VIMMS Lair is another blow to the preservation community," says MVG in the video's description.
"Nintendo believes ROM sites are [a] haven for illegal activity, copyright infringement, and piracy and they have a history of taking down sites in the past, including LoveROMs, Rom Universe and more. Can Nintendo be trusted to do it themselves? The Nintendo Switch Online (NSO) service is a fraction of the size of the Virtual Console and its unlikely it will ever exceed it. It's my view that Nintendo is effectively erasing their own history as more games are lost to time. In today's episode, we take a closer look at why I believe the only true preservation in the video game industry is ROMs."
This might seem slightly melodramatic, but let's not forget that Nintendo itself was once accused of downloading a ROM online and selling it back to consumers via the Wii Virtual Console. While that particular story seems to have been an isolated case, it illustrates a very good point – if ROM-sharing sites are the only place these games are being preserved, what happens when they vanish?
As MVG points out, Nintendo – and any IP holder – is perfectly within its rights to try and prevent its games being downloaded for free online. In Nintendo's case, there's a more pressing need as the company has made efforts to ensure its classic titles remain in active, legal circulation, either via special hardware (like the NES Classic) or via a subscription service (like Nintendo Switch Online).
However, many ROM sites host games which are now no longer available for sale, due to the closing of the original publisher or the expiration of licencing deals. There's also the matter of prototype and fan-translated ROMs – vital gateways to a world of gaming that would be totally lost were it not for the sites offering them for download.
Nintendo is clearly in the right legally here; it still generates revenue from its older games and ROM-sharing sites have no legal right to offer them for download. However, the flipside here is that there's no real appitite in the industry to make sure all of gaming's history is properly preserved and accessible – so, like MVG says, "the only true preservation in the video game industry is ROMS."
[source youtube.com]
Comments 27
Yes, the draconian actions of software companies are very much putting preservation at risk. Current copyright laws are so long-lasting, they outlive the physical media these games are stored on. Floppy disks and ROM chips do not last as long as paper or vinyl. They are a fragile medium - especially anything on magnetic media.
I love this article on the topic:
https://www.technologizer.com/2012/01/23/why-history-needs-software-piracy/index.html
"If you care about the history of technology, in fact, you should be thankful that people copy software without permission. It may seem counterintuitive, but piracy has actually saved more software than it has destroyed. Already, pirates have spared tens of thousands of programs from extinction, proving themselves the unintentional stewards of our digital culture."
To be clear, I am not advocating that people be allowed to steal the latest Zelda release on Switch and emulate it.
But right now the law is not nuanced. It's not clear or precise. And it makes zero delineation between a game released today, and a dying 40 year old floppy disk from 1984.
The Internet Archive has special government dispensation to preserve them, and we are lucky for this! But that might be taken away should a corrupt or incompetent politician start meddling.
Japan is the absolute worst for copyright law. In certain instances the preserving of game data, before it decays into nothing, is actually very illegal and carries severe penalties, and so it needs to be done clandestinely, or it needs a laborious technical workaround to make it "technically legal" - which is so insane.
Yes. Nintendo, the ESA, all of these companies are destroying history, due to a lack of understanding, not caring, and chasing profit above all else.
Preserving history does not mean they have to lose out on profit.
Preserving history requires intelligent and nuanced clarification, with exceptions made for age and fragile media.
It also desperately needs funding, stewardship, co-operation, and experts in the field being allowed to influence or advise on legally binding decisions.
Right now the whole thing is a trainwreck of competing ideas, and rampant predatory capitalism and greed.
Can't erase the roms from my SSD or Anbernic devices.
And the same fate is happening to any licensed videogame when its license expires.
This WILL backfire on Nintendo eventually.
The only ones really preserving video game history is well...us.
The people who care and dump and back up the games, the physical game hoarders, along with the archive for making it possible.
With the exception of Switzerland whose government seem to give a damn for now.
Governments come and go after all.
Nintendo might be preparing another half assed VC store attempt for their next machines storefront.
But that's all it has ever been, half assed.
But as always : Money talks, integrity walks.
"Is Nintendo Erasing Its Own History In Its War On ROM Sites?"
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: yesssss.
I hope Nintendo understands this is not a war they cannot win. The files are out there. They exist on hard drives all over the world. Emulation cannot ever be stopped.
This wouldn't be such a crap-show if not for all the people out there "preserving" games still in active circulation.
Lawyers have ensured that corporations have a lot of rights. We don’t have any lawyers ensuring that we have a lot of ROMs. Well, game publishers, including Nintendo, don’t have much use for the wealth of ROMs that exists. In fact, the trend in the industry for a while now is that more money has to be made from fewer games than ever. So, what’s happening? Well, if you’re an old video game, rightfully nothing.
I think we may see the end of consoles as we know them. The whole reason Sony/MS and even Nintendo to a smaller scale have been pushing cloud gaming is because it avoids all these things. Games will only run in data centers making it much harder to pirate games. Yes, even handheld devices as stuff like 5G becomes more available. I'm not advocating this, just saying there are reasons these companies are pushing cloud and what it means for preservation. We're going to suffer more problems like game servers getting shut down. However, in an ideal world, you'd also think games should expand to take more advantage of cloud power vs single console CPU/GPU constraints. MS tried to pitch this that games could partially run in the cloud, but we've not really seen that beyond basic multiplayer games - not running whole parts of the game for bigger world destruction like in their pitch video. The point being EVERYTHING is based on profit and shareholder value. It's unavoidable.
Does anyone remember the NES game:
Caveman Games?
@Daggot Hard disagree, Internet infastructure can't support cloud gaming and the biggest markets for gaming have the the worst internet. Germany is Europe's hottest market and their internet is garbage.
Cloud is never happening.
Nintendo can't touch the romsites hosted in China and Russia.
Who's to say Nintendo themselves haven't already preserved every single game from each of their consoles?
I don't understand why so many people feel the need to do this themselves... it's all going to end up in landfill when we're gone you know!
@Spider-Kev Yes, actually. Hope I'm not ruining your point by saying that!
@smoreon
No.
I'm glad. It was a great game!
It was funny and very competitive!
My best friend's mom hated it and got rid of it.
I would love to play it again!
I wasn't that good at it, but I had a blast.
@smoreon
Did you play it on the original NES?
Or did you emulate it?
@nocdaes
They've had to use some fan preservation to use on the Mini systems.
They didn't keep a lot.
they arent erasing their own history by taking down roms their erasing their own history by providing legendarily bad services for their older games with absorbent prices nowadays that dont even include the whole lineup of their own d@^^m games and in the n64's case especially barely function due to how badly the nso emulator for it was slapped together lmfao. Like it is 2nd hand embarassing how bad the n64 emulation on that service is oh my lord
@Spider-Kev They've chosen to use that for NSO, but they didn't necessarily have to. Could be a commercial decision as its no doubt a cheap option.
I find it hard to believe that Nintendo don't have multiple copies of every single game that released on every single system safely tucked away in a huge archive at their HQ. I also find it very unlikely they haven't digitally preserved it all too.
It is strange they don't talk about it... but this is Nintendo. What about Microsoft, Sony and SEGA? I remember Sony were always sent multiple copies of a game when it went gold - as standard practice. That's all versions too - including collector's editions! Of course it doesn't necessarily mean they keep it all... but I think it's unlikely they send it to landfill!
I guess the point I'm making is just because WE the consumer don't have access to all the games doesn't mean it hasn't been preserved.
Similarly, if some random guy has bought every game for the NES off ebay over a decade and keeps them all in his lockup... that also doesn't equate to preservation. His kids will likely send it all to landfill when he passes!
@LadyCharlie
great comment! I came here to say something similar but assuredly less clever. 😆
btw, I am sure you meant "...I hope Nintendo understands, this is not a war they can win." or similar. ✌️
@Spider-Kev On the real NES, even if I admittedly haven't played much of it.
Sorry, though, I don't quite follow- where are you going with this?
@smoreon
Almost no one knows the game. It needs to be talked about and played.
Game preservation and all...
Ninty needs to put EVERYTHING on a real Virtual Console or even better, a Retail Purchase Archive volume series!
@Spider-Kev Oh, yeah, I get that!
Some have criticized the obsessive "hoarding" mentality around preservation, and while I get that a lot of games and materials have seemingly little historical relevance, I still have to disagree with the idea that these lesser-known things should just be dropped.
We each have our own favourites: games that we might remember fondly, and treasure as part of our collection. Maybe we want to see them remastered or re-released, or we're craving any development materials and prototypes that may turn up. And not everyone has the same short list of favourites!
My most-wanted prototype is an obscure one, as are many of my most-wanted games: games that other people may think are unimportant and not worth preserving!
@nocdaes Even if Nintendo has a copy of every game ever published for their platform, which they don't, Nintendo should not be the only archivist of that culturally and historically significant data.
What if Nintendo accidentally deletes it? What if they get hacked and it's deleted? What if the storage it's on fails? What if a rogue internal employee modifies it? What if the site it's stored at is targeted by a physical attack? And so on...
Or what's most possible: all of the collection falls into the public domain (after an embarrassingly long wait) and they decide not to release any of it. They don't have to! Even though they don't own it at that point, there's no law requiring them to give it up.
That's why we need sites like the archive and people like me and others here that meticulously maintain physical and distributed electronic backups. We can't trust Nintendo as the sole source. And as illegal ROM sharing is... It's an insurance plan, just in case everything else fails.
@nocdaes
Sadly Nintendo has not preserved all their games. Despite manufacturing all Famicom games, when it came to the FC anniversary they didn't even have certain first party (!) titles for photographing. Nintendo had to go begging Ritsumeikan University to ask if they could find some titles. Developed by Nintendo. Because Nintendo did not have physical copies. Of games Nintendo made. At Nintendo. Nuts!
Source: Pr Nakamura at Ritsumeikan.
EDIT: I was replying to your first comment then read others.
Please, I need to shatter your illusions and everyone else's, who think Nintendo or any other company has physical or digital copies.
They absolutely do not.
Dev computers are routinely junked. Dev hard drives erased. Legacy hardware scrapped. Even big companies like Nintendo are absolutely missing large portions of their own archives.
I know from first hand sources.
When they started doing digital or retro releases, or anniversary photoshoots, these big companies had to go to fans, universities, preservation groups, and ask if anyone had these items mint and complete.
Pause for a minute and consider this: Nintendo developed, manufactured, and published games, and 20 or 30 or 40 years later, they have zero trace of them in any office and had to rebuy them back on the aftersale market.
I was sitting in Ritsumeikan Uni, in Pr Aki's office, and he was telling me how the big N had, quite literally, lost stuff! And then he and others had to find and loan them back games they had made!
Also look up the story on one of N's earliest arcade games. Sky Skipper. That was almost, quite literally, lost forever. It was only thanks to fans it was saved.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/games/2023/sep/11/the-quest-for-sky-skipper-the-rarest-nintendo-arcade-machine-in-the-world
Games companies could not care less.
They only care about appeasing shareholders at the next quarterly profits meeting.
@avcrypt You're part of the movement preserving these games? You're doing the Lord's work - may your data remain uncorrupted.
Hold on... LuigiBlood debunked that theory about Nintendo downloading ROMs online and selling them back to consumers (https://x.com/LuigiBlood/status/1378736192875810818). If they have the NES ROMs in their archíves, why would they rely on a random online site to get the NES ROMs back?
(P.S. - Nintendo probably has some and i say SOME stuff lost, especially from their early days such as the arcade game EVR Race, but when the gigaleak occured in 2020-2021 they had various unreleased localizations and full games that were never published. I would like to think that, as a Virtual Boy fan, have a collection of unreleased ROMs stored but who knows, considering how Nintendo sees the platform).
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