3DS Piracy Revisited!

I would like to thank those who took the time to read my post regarding 3DS piracy and respond with support, different view points, and interesting comments. It wasn’t pleasant, however, reading the rude and hateful comments, but I won’t dwell on those. Piracy is a very emotional topic; one with many facets.

I have always been a huge supporter of Nintendo, the Nintendo DS, and the Nintendo 3DS. If you have followed my vlogs, blogs, and tweets over the past 6 years you will know this. What saddens me is that some people have taken my comments as an attack on Nintendo, the 3DS, and the players. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I wrote this: “If piracy gets bad on the 3DS, we will have no choice but to stop supporting the platform with new games.”

This does not mean I am taking a stand against piracy. This does not mean I am taking my business elsewhere in an action of protest.

What this means is if we cannot make money from developing games we can no longer develop games. That is what can happen if piracy gets bad. If enough people choose to illegally obtain copies of my games for free instead of paying for them, it directly affects my business and my home.

Many claim the Nintendo DS market was not affected by piracy. Nintendo themselves blamed piracy for a 50% drop in European sales in 2010, reported the Asahi Shimbun.

I understand that piracy is always going to exist, and that every market has some form of piracy. I accept that piracy will exist on the 3DS. The question is how much is it affecting the market? Some markets maintain a healthy business environment alongside piracy. I believe this is due to many factors, not least of which is the service provided in that market.

I don't think there is a solution to piracy. It will always exist in some form. We just need to make sure the price of games is affordable. We need to make it easy to buy and own games. The availability and access player's have to their games needs to be at least as easy and convenient as the ROM sites make it to illegally download a game file. Ideally, it should be better. If the player's only question is, "buy or not buy?", and not dealing with issues such as, "how do I transfer ownership of this game to my new system?" then we'll have minimized the appeal of piracy.

I hope this helps explain where I was coming from a little better. We have games planned for the 3DS into 2014. Our support of the 3DS platform couldn’t be stronger. I expect the cynics out there will discard my words as an attempt to just smooth things over. No. I just want to try and get my original intent communicated. That is all. 

Thanks for reading.