
Breath of the Wild and the ethics of amiibo hacking - Tomte
https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/12/15223338/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-nintendo-amiibo-hacking-ethics
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ColinDabritz
This is a wonderfully complicated mix of in game rewards, but they aren't DLC,
some have exclusive in game rewards you can't get elsewhere. You can buy some
Amiibo retail, but others which unlock exclusives in a brand new game are
locked behind owning collectibles which aren't retail-available any more (and
expensive from third party resellers). Some of the items are cosmetic, nice
callbacks to older games and similar. Others provide in game advantages.

That makes the ethical questions very challenging to address. Personally I
feel more 'ok' with hackery for the items that aren't available retail, but I
hate 'pay to win' in games as well. It's hard to articulate how I feel about
the situation. I think the article is spot-on that making these available in
DLC packs or something as well would clarify the situation a lot.

~~~
christoph
Nintendo are clever with how they limit the availability of some Amiibos. The
real value of the Amiibo is really in the actual collectability/rarity of the
figurine. You can then make the figure more collectable as time goes on my
linking it to specific, valuable in game rewards. All giving more value to
brand Nintendo as time goes on.

What's a real stroke of genius though is that they make the packaging in a way
so that you can't scan the Amiibo without unboxing it - therefore reducing
it's monetary value. You end up with the real Nintendo fans feeling very
compelled to purchase two of each - 1 for keeping boxed and 1 for actually
using in games.

~~~
eridius
Why must "real Nintendo fans" keep a boxed copy?

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khedoros1
Collectors' items are often considered higher value when they're kept new-in-
box. Someone who buys them as much for the collectibility as for the in-game
use might buy two so that they can have their cake and eat it too (by buying
two cakes).

~~~
eridius
Yes, but someone who buys items and holds onto them in mint condition for
resale value is no more a "real" fan than someone who buys them for personal
enjoyment.

~~~
khedoros1
Agreed, but I was answering as if you meant your question literally, rather
than as if you were just nitpicking the other commenter's phrasing. Your
implied meaning was just "I disagree with the way you're defining 'real fan'",
but that's a pretty boring comment to respond to, so I took what I judged as
the more interesting interpretation.

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jmcdiesel
I see no moral delimma.

This is nothing more than a cheat code... They are, in effect, rewarding you
for having a correct NFC code, thats all. If you obtain that, you have it.

~~~
SerpentJoe
As an implementation detail that's true out of necessity, but the simple
English explanation of the mechanic would be "they are rewarding you for
having an amiibo", not for having an NFC code. You wouldn't say "the passwords
on Apple's databases are there to reward intruders who possess the correct
password", right?

~~~
saghm
I guess I just feel like there's a lot less harm done in hacking Apple's
database than there is in giving your video game character an extra outfit to
wear or horse to ride.

~~~
ballenf
It's more than cosmetic in these games -- there are entire realms accessible
only if you have the right Amiibos or combinations thereof.

So really more like the Pro vs. Home metaphor with the code for both being on
the disc you bought.

This doesn't help answer the debate directly, but is relevant to understanding
the question.

~~~
saghm
That's fair, but my point was more than the consequences of hacking a database
with information valuable in the real world are much more worrisome than
cheating in a game (no matter how much it affects the artificial world). In
the latter, it's debatable about whether it causes real-world harm; in the
former, it's unquestionable.

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gpawl
This is equivalent to a software program where the basic and Pro versions are
the same code, but some Pro features are locked by a software gate.

Ammiibo hacking is buying the basic version of a software program, and then
bypassing the security code that protects the pro features.

It's the same as piracy, which you may considered a vice or a virtue.

~~~
pythonaut_16
Except in this case there exist(ed) far less keys than demand, with the
original company (Nintendo) selling them for a flat price regardless of supply
vs demand, i.e. if Nintendo sells 1000 Amiibos at $25 each, they'll have
$25000, even if those same Amiibos end up being worth $5000 each on the
secondary market.

~~~
eridius
So what? That's not a rebuttal the parent comment. In fact, this argument
seems strikingly similar to the normal piracy defense of the content being too
expensive to purchase.

~~~
wink
But it's not too expensive to buy from _the original creator_ \- I think this
is the point the parent made.

I'm not sure the majority of people would pay Nintendo 50 bucks for this
certain Amiibo, but I'd bet it would be quite a few more than those who will
pay a reseller.

~~~
eridius
It looks like pythonaut_16 has edited their comment to say something
completely different than what it did when I posted my reply. It used to be
excusing NFC hacking on the grounds of Amiibo being limited, and therefore not
everybody who wants one can necessarily get one.

~~~
pythonaut_16
I have not edited the comment, maybe you confused mine with someone else's or
misread it?

Anyway my point wasn't to support or deny Amiibo hacking, just to highlight
the contrast between basic/pro software versioning and Amiibos.

~~~
eridius
Ok now I'm confused. I know I was trying to reply to a comment that was
basically saying that it's ok to do NFC hacking because of the limited
availability of Amiibo, but I don't see any comment like that anymore.

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Fej
I don't see anything wrong if the particular amiibo is out of production.
Nintendo can't get your money.

If you can get it, it's a bit more murky... the content is on the disc, you're
just telling the game to unlock it. You can do what you want with your
hardware. On the other hand, other publishers do this with on-disc DLC, and
few people say that acquiring those without paying is acceptable.

~~~
mcphage
Most of these you can only get second hand off of sites like eBay—at
significant markup. Real originals are hard to come by.

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rocky1138
I have no problem with this whatsoever. You bought the game. The bits are
yours. The fact that you can send it NFC signals to unlock the hidden stuff is
kind of neat!

I would never buy Amiibo.

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silveira
I really like the Amiibo idea. It's like a DLC but I'm actually buying
something real, a physical token that has value in itself regardless of being
on game or not. In BOTW the Amiibos are specially good because they offer a
good reward without fell that you are cheating. You save some time, but
nothing that completely changes the game. Yet, as pointed in the article, some
Zelda amiibos are impossible to get or way too expansive due to low offer and
high demand. I don't care about having a "rare" Amiibo.

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cwkoss
In the 90's, if a developer made a game with a cheat code that was 'exclusive'
to buying a particular strategy guide, would it be unethical to share/use that
cheat code without buying your own copy?

I don't think so.

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joshu
Googling for rfid toaster does not get much. Where do I find out more, and are
they useful for non-amiibo tinkering?

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bnolsen
amiibo's are a lame money grab by nintendo. I see zero problem with using an
NFC hack to get around nintendo locking access to features already in the
software you bought from them.

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lillesvin
> More than anything, the way Nintendo has structured these Breath of the Wild
> exclusives speaks to how woefully outdated its digital strategy is.

That may be true but that still doesn't change the fact that the author is
unlocking paywalled content without actually paying for it.

There are many instances of games shipping with DLC already bundled and buying
it will merely unlock the content locally with no download necessary. Would
anyone argue that unlocking that content by other means than buying it was not
piracy?

It's the same argument we hear about "abandonware". "Well, they're not
planning on selling it digitally and obtaining a copy is difficult and/or
expensive so it's alright to download it." Well, legally it's still piracy —
no two ways about it (at least until it falls into the public domain, but
that'll be a good while still for many of the games listed on abandonware
sites).

The whole piece reeks of post-rationalization. I don't care if he pirates
stuff or not but this feeble attempt to rationalize it is honestly a bit
tiring to read. You can take up the debate about Amiibo availability etc.
without also arguing that this is the reason why it's OK to pirate it. And the
fact that he rounds it all off by putting all of the blame on Nintendo
(despite his weaving back and forth earlier) just cements it for me:

> If only Nintendo would let more players in on the fun.

Finally (and now I'm just splitting hairs because I've gotten all worked up
about this), I think he needs to revisit his definition of cheating:

> I’ve been cheating in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I don’t mean
> that I’m running an illegally obtained version of the game on an emulator,
> or that I’m exploiting the game’s design flaws to skip over parts of the
> story I’d rather not deal with.

The former isn't cheating, that's just pirating it, it's a completely
different thing. The latter is up for debate I guess. No speedrunner would
consider it cheating (obviously, if it saves time and it's in the game code
then it's alright) which leads me to a thing many people could learn from
speedrunners' approach to games: Don't make any assumptions about how you're
intended to play a game. Unless you have the devs right there to tell you, you
really can't know or infer it.

/rant

Edit: I'd be happy to hear opposing views since there appear to be some.

~~~
cwkoss
>It's the same argument we hear about "abandonware". "Well, they're not
planning on selling it digitally and obtaining a copy is difficult and/or
expensive so it's alright to download it." Well, legally it's still piracy —
no two ways about it (at least until it falls into the public domain, but
that'll be a good while still for many of the games listed on abandonware
sites).

Law should be based of morality, not the other way around.

Just because something is illegal does not mean it is wrong: Laws, and IP laws
especially, have a bunch of side effects that were not anticipated when the
laws were created because they were written before digital technologies
enabled free and pervasive transmission of information.

Since patent law was created with the purpose of encouraging innovation, I'd
argue that the author who teaches himself the skill of NFC spoofing is acting
pro-socially, building his own human capital in an innovative way that
encourages others to use technology to find new solutions to existing
problems. (Arguably, the person who made the amiibo scanner is even more
righteous, and the game maker who enabled this learning opportunity even
more).

