
How Nintendo DRM trapped $400 of downloaded games on my failing Wii - vectorbunny
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/11/how-nintendo-drm-trapped-400-of-downloaded-games-on-my-failing-wii/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arstechnica%2Findex+%28Ars+Technica+-+All+content%29
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MichaelGG
Transferring via SD should be an optional optimization/convenience for folks
with large collections. Otherwise, it should be as simple as
activating+downloading your account on the new device, with the old device
deactivating next time it connects.

Is Nintendo really worried folks are going to go around downloading onto
devices and never connect them to the Internet again? If folks are willing to
put up with workarounds like that, they'll probably also be willing to flat-
out pirate things.

This moronic DRM implementation ignores that he could take money and put it
towards a tiny cube PC running an emulator. Then he'd get better graphics and
an overall better experience (play whatever he wants, however, wherever).

Nintendo had a great chance to create an enjoyable system that encourages
people to freely spend and use their accounts all over the place. Instead they
lock it down and annoy folks, which will most definitely cost them more in
lost sales than the handful of people who'd download a game twice.

~~~
ekianjo
Especially seeing the price people paid for these 15+ year old games. For
Nintendo it is like a mine of Gold: zero work needed to make them run, and
full profits for almost no bandwidth cost. The simple fact that people are
even willing to buy such old games at that price is baffling to me.

~~~
alanctgardner2
Zero work isn't quite a fair assessment. There's NRE associated with
implementing the emulator, and probably a fair amount of play testing. Games
might have specific quirks that depend on the hardware implementation. As
anyone who's ever done emulation on a PC knows, it's can be very good, but
rarely perfect.

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AUmrysh
You should pirate all of your software you previously purchased. If you've
already paid for it, there's no reason you shouldn't have access to it. Laws
be damned, that's my opinion.

~~~
TheAmazingIdiot
This is a legal question:

If I go buy X content (DVD, music cd, random playstation game), and the medium
is destroyed, what happens to my license under Copyright law? In what
instrument is my license under Copyright law located?

Do I still retain the right of a copy and to procure a copy elsewhere? If not,
why not?

~~~
noonespecial
This always reminded me of the dualistic nature of light. The entertainment
industries seem to want the product to behave both as a physical item or a
license depending on what benefits them most in any given situation.

Lost it? Its a particle. Buy it again, full price.

Want to sell it used to your bud? Its a wave. License doesn't transfer.

There's my thought of the day: DRM is like a Huygen's slit: the weird
interference pattern makes your "purchase" cease to exist in some places.

~~~
jacquesm
What a beautiful insight!

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myko
Nintendo's handling of purchased digital goods is a disaster. I just wish I
had the will power to stop throwing money at them.

I'm hoping I don't have similar issues transferring my (relatively meager)
Virtual Console library to the Wii U - though it seems I'll have this same
problem if a new Nintendo comes out in the future.

~~~
samspot
I also initially purchased a lot of games on the Virtual Console before I
realized how behind the times they are on digital goods. Since then I've been
able to restrain myself from buying any more digital content from them. I
really like the company in general, and would love to keep purchasing their
products, but they are going to have to prove to me that I won't need to
repurchase digital goods in the case of hardware failures or upgrades.

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meaty
Due diligence.

If you buy ANYTHING poisoned with DRM, expect dragons like this. There is
nothing than can come from DRM other than eventually losing what you paid for
through device death, key loss, service shutdown. It's not about will but
when.

~~~
ekianjo
I have been wondering the same thing about Steam, actually. Do you think we
will be seeing a Steam "scandal" like that in the future, where a game
suddenly becomes unavailable and you lose access to it for one reason or
another? So far Valve has been able to keep things straight with everyone to
make it almost feel like you owned the games, but it's just a licence to play
them in the end.

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nekojima
It is because of this licensing arrangement with Steam that I have not
purchased a single game from them where I did not get at least a 75% discount
off the normal sales price. I don't care if I have to wait, like I did when I
finally purchased a game last week for 75% off after waiting a year for a
sale, but since I don't own a copy (physical, transferable & with DRM) of the
game, I don't see the point of paying full price to Steam or any other games
provider.

~~~
ekianjo
Funny, I have the exact same behavior towards Steam. And on the other hand, I
fully embrace the Humble Bundle and GOG as they provide you with executables
without DRMs - I just wish they would expand in more recent games (GOG
especially).

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gnu8
Take them to small claims court. They will respond almost instantly with a
generous settlement and a NDA to protect their corrupt DRM house of cards.

~~~
chrischen
With a Wii U at least, there's a clause in the license agreement that you
waive your right to sue unless you send written notice.

~~~
gnu8
The agreement found at
[http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/systems/wiiu/en_na/account_...](http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/systems/wiiu/en_na/account_your_account.jsp)
excludes two cases:

1) protection of intellectual property rights (by either party)

2) small claims court

So if you just want your money back for your games it shouldn't be a problem
to get it.

The exception for intellectual property claims is perhaps more interesting.
Nintendo insists on stacking the deck and forcing anyone they've screwed to
individually go through their rigged kangaroo court(1), except when enforcing
their own intellectual property rights. I wonder how effective they would be
pursuing pirates with mandatory binding arbitration, which the pirates haven't
agreed to in any case, rather than filing DMCA complaints.

Perhaps though, if you've purchased licenses to their games and now you can't
play them, that could be considered to be an intellectual property related
dispute: interference with your right to use your legal licenses of their
intellectual property.

(1)Not hyperbole, mandatory arbitration clauses are patently unfair and should
be illegal, or legally made to have the effect of optional arbitration
clauses.

~~~
MSM
As others have said, this is probably easily solved by calling and just
explaining the problem. It was mentioned multiple times in the article that
this case was a fringe scenario (he had old software, first gen, etc). It
doesn't even sound like Nintendo is trying to employ DRM to do anything dirty,
it sounds like there were simply issues with early Wiis that weren't
addressed.

If you decide to skip all that crazy talking-it-out nonsense and take Nintendo
to small claims court, you pretty much deserve to lose your filing fee and
time screwing around with the courts.

~~~
gnu8
Aside from the fact that all DRM is dirty and should be fought wherever it is
found, I never suggested that the author should not attempt a diplomatic
solution first.

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bcRIPster
I'd post a reply there but there's really no point with the volume of comments
already. Most likely he simply has a corrupt binary on one of his games. The
"quick" way to resolve this is actually go through and launch all of the games
and see if any fail. Delete the ones that fail and then try the transfer. I
would bet 99% that that's the problem.

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pixie_
What is it about Japanese companies and their inability to create good online
services. 3ds, ps3, psp, wiiU, etc.. so much potential.. xbox live is already
a good example of how it's done. A simple copy of that would be 1000x better
than what's there now.

~~~
minikomi
Although the attitude is starting to show a chance of waning, the truth is
that software is simply not valued over hardware.

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Raticide
Why can't downloaded Wii apps work like iPhone apps? I've never had an issue
transferring those to a new device.

~~~
Jare
How many times have you done that? I recall iDevices had a limit of 5 or so.

~~~
wmf
As long as you unregister each device before it breaks you can stay under the
limit indefinitely.

~~~
arjunnarayan
You can unregister devices even without the devices present, i.e. if they
break, like in this situation.

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TheAmazingIdiot
If you are interested in Virtual Console games, instead check out different
emulators:

NES: Nestopia, FCEUX SNES: bSnes, Zsnes, Snes9x Game Boy: VisualBoyAdvance
N64: 1964, NEMU64

Roms (file archives copied from cartridges) are easy to find. Some systems,
you will need a bootrom, which is also easy to find.

Just post if you have questions how to set this up.

