BaDToaD posted on Apr 22 2005 at 03:34 PM said:bast525 posted on Apr 21 2005 at 10:00 PM said:Do you think Nintendo goes so far out of the way to combat piracy of even their oldest games because it's amusing to them to spend a fortune doing so?
I'm sure if you were to go to any game developer company and say "hey do you mind if I just download some of your older games for free since you dont profit from them any more" the reply would be "HELL YES WE FRICKIN MIND!"
Nintendo are just being Nintendo.
Small games developers are a different kettle of fish. Just about every small games developer would be happy for their old games to be available for download. To say otherwise is ignorant. If this was not the case then World of Spectrum and the Amiga Back To the Roots sites along with their thousands of legal downloads would not exist. I'm sure if someone were to start a console site dedicated to preserving roms and getting legal permission they would soon have a library of legally downloadable roms. Or maybe console developers are different to the computer developers? I think not! Maybe such a site exists already?
As I've said before I was briefly involved in developing for the Commodore 64 and I am happy that the few games I was involved with are available for download from the internet.
In fact I found a game I designed and had forgotten about only a few months ago. OK it's a crap game but at least I can play it if I want to and on the GP32
Sorry but I have a hard time believe that 'just about every small games developer would be happy for their old games to be available for download'. Some, sure... some people maybe just stop caring after a certain amount of time. But we're not talking about only the games from those small developers. I seriously doubt that there's more than a handful of guys, out of the who-knows-how-many with hard drives full of roms, that only have games that came from small developers or parties who just don't care. Their hard drives are filled with the Mario's and the Sonic's and the Konami games and the Capcom games, and all the other big name titles from companies that DO care because those games (in their eyes at least) still have a potential to bring them money at some point, or at least, they feel that given their legal rights, their games should not just be freely distributed to anyone with an internet connection. So even if you're right about many small game developers/companies not caring, it still doesn't make a lick of difference if you consider what ROMs most people probably have as part of their 'collections'.
What gets me is how anyone would sit here and try to defend any of this as being right at all... the hypocrisy just deepens and deepens. There is no argument here. Owning roms which you have not purchased or been given the legal right to own is illegal, period, in my country at least. If it's not in your country well then more power to you you lucky dogs, and you shouldn't be in this thread
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