FBI says it's now seized "multiple" ROM piracy sites, claims downloads resulted in $170m losses in just three months
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Reminds me of the math used by cops when they seize drugs to come up with an absurd amount of money to make it look like they’re having an impact on the never-ending war on drugs.
Don’t know how accurate it is, but I’ve heard of even CSAM being inflated this way in police busts, where if there’s a video that’s X seconds long and has a framerate of Y frames per second, it will be described as X * Y “images” (so a 10-second 60 fps video is treated like it’s the same thing as 600 photos) instead of plainly describing a video as being a video.
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Bummer, I used that site a lot back when there were actual Switch games I wanted to play. Guess I’ll have to get Metroid Prime 4 elsewhere when the time comes!
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the FBI acting like when you were home alone all day and you did jack shit, but your hear your mom pull in the driveway and remember the chores she asked you to do, so you set the trash can on fire to make it look like youre doing something
Lol. Perception becomes peoples reality.
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One of the pirate party guys made a Raspberry pi doohickey that did exactly that to show how stupid these calculations are. It constantly downloaded to a null device, or moved it to a null device once compete so the file never existed except incredibly briefly. I think it also tracked how many times it was downloaded so the “cost” could be calculated.
That’s brilliant. It’s a shame it will have no impact and the copyright mafia will continue their relentless assault until we are all microchipped at birth with neural inhibitors that physically prevents us from consuming digital material we haven’t purchased. Brain-implant DRM is the end goal.
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So Nintendo is gonna become richer by that amount in just 3 months?
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It also claimed these websites had seen cumulative downloads of 3.2m in just three months this year - from 28th February and 28th May - resulting “in an estimated loss of $170m”.
In other words:
- They assumed that every download was by someone who would otherwise have paid over 53 USD for it, which by itself is an absurd delusion.
- They described imaginary money that they never had in the first place as “losses”, which is a plain lie. You can’t lose something that you never had.
Given that both these blatant falsehoods match the propaganda that big media parasite corporations started pushing a few decades ago, it seems pretty clear who the taxpayer-funded FBI is working for.
I mean, it’s a Trump appointee. Was there ever any doubt?
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fwiw, modchips for the Switch are commonplace and while I haven’t been on any of the listed sites there are plenty with similar sounding names that offer Switch games for download.
I might have bought more switch games if Nintendo made the switch actually usable by fixing drift on their controllers. I would be playing Nintendo games (I legally own) on my switch instead of emulating them but I can’t.
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It also claimed these websites had seen cumulative downloads of 3.2m in just three months this year - from 28th February and 28th May - resulting “in an estimated loss of $170m”.
In other words:
- They assumed that every download was by someone who would otherwise have paid over 53 USD for it, which by itself is an absurd delusion.
- They described imaginary money that they never had in the first place as “losses”, which is a plain lie. You can’t lose something that you never had.
Given that both these blatant falsehoods match the propaganda that big media parasite corporations started pushing a few decades ago, it seems pretty clear who the taxpayer-funded FBI is working for.
there is a reason humble bundle’s pay what you want model worked, lol. I bet if humble bundle allows company to get data back for pricing analysis, it would greatly help the indies.
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Fuuuuuck Nintendo. No one hates their fans more than Nintendo.
They are bricking brand new consoles, locking their USB ports to approved hardware, charging for the tech demo that would customarily be free on an $800 device. And that’s just this year.
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Do they only target torrent sites or something? Because there’s places that have been around for decades that are still up and fine.
Usually just fools from the USA hosting within the USA under their real names and payment information.
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What losses? Why do these people assume that pirates were ever going to purchase the goods they pirated?
Especially Nintendo. I wouldn’t be surprised if Nintendo is less affected by piracy than games on PC just because of the barrier to entry to even be able to purchase a Nintendo game with the console being first required.
And Nintendo is the most expensive console too with how sales are so rare for their exclusives compared to the other consoles, so likely not even on the radar for pirates who are already looking to not spend money. Console doesn’t award even patient gaming with games not dropping much even after years go by for their exclusives.
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It also claimed these websites had seen cumulative downloads of 3.2m in just three months this year - from 28th February and 28th May - resulting “in an estimated loss of $170m”.
In other words:
- They assumed that every download was by someone who would otherwise have paid over 53 USD for it, which by itself is an absurd delusion.
- They described imaginary money that they never had in the first place as “losses”, which is a plain lie. You can’t lose something that you never had.
Given that both these blatant falsehoods match the propaganda that big media parasite corporations started pushing a few decades ago, it seems pretty clear who the taxpayer-funded FBI is working for.
Exactly. When I “used to” pirate games (dear me! I would never dare break those little laws now) it was originally because I was way too broke to pay for them. When I had more pay I later bought nearly everything I had pirated and actually played on gog or steam. Since then it’s just easier to use steam or GOG than to pirate and scan and install and mess with my firewall and install the crack and diagnose wtf I messed up. Since then I only ever pirated games I’d never ever buy. If you count every game I pirated (sometimes up to three times based on if there were issues, virus scanner pings, lost the file and reinstalled on another drive, etc…) as a lost sale I’ve potentially caused up to 10k or more in losses over the hundreds of games I’ve illicitly downloaded. Most of which, again, I downloaded with a bank balance that hovered near 0$.
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Focusing on the important issues…
Like installing fascism in 🇺🇲
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the FBI acting like when you were home alone all day and you did jack shit, but your hear your mom pull in the driveway and remember the chores she asked you to do, so you set the trash can on fire to make it look like youre doing something
They are also abducting citizens, just cause.
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The government fights this hard over labor’s lost wages too, right?
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It also claimed these websites had seen cumulative downloads of 3.2m in just three months this year - from 28th February and 28th May - resulting “in an estimated loss of $170m”.
In other words:
- They assumed that every download was by someone who would otherwise have paid over 53 USD for it, which by itself is an absurd delusion.
- They described imaginary money that they never had in the first place as “losses”, which is a plain lie. You can’t lose something that you never had.
Given that both these blatant falsehoods match the propaganda that big media parasite corporations started pushing a few decades ago, it seems pretty clear who the taxpayer-funded FBI is working for.
RIAA math
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Fuuuuuck Nintendo. No one hates their fans more than Nintendo.
They are bricking brand new consoles, locking their USB ports to approved hardware, charging for the tech demo that would customarily be free on an $800 device. And that’s just this year.
I refused to buy anything Sony due to the dodgy shit from the PS3 days. And that’s anything, no TV’s or phones. Nothing. If a film is made by Sony I don’t go to the cinema to see it.
Microsoft is the same. I have only once bought anything from Microsoft and that was a licence for a windows operating system but I can’t even remember which version it was. I know it was from before Windows7. However, never again.
And now Nintendo is on my shit list.
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I have torrented Mario Kart World one thousand times since it launched and have thus cost Nintendo 70,000 dollars. If I can keep up this pace, Nintendo will be bankrupt within the next year or two.
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These loss figures are always fun. Me pirating a game i would NEVER have played otherwise is not a 50€(with todays game prices, 80€) loss for the company. On the other hand there are games that i pirated first because i wasnt sure it would be worth it for me to buy it and then actually bought it when i decided it would be fun to play and wanted to support the company.
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How much is that in increased sales due to piracy?
The EU Suppressed a 300-Page Study That Found Piracy Doesn’t Harm Sales
The European Commission paid €360,000 (about $428,000) for a study on how piracy impacts the sales of copyrighted music, books, video games, and movies.
Gizmodo (gizmodo.com)
