I feel that a lot of times, piracy is a bit of a service issue, because according to some statistics (I forgot the source qwq), the biggest fans tend to be the one who pirate stuff. This can be due multiple factors, such as the game not being made or distributed anymore, and the scalpers making the resale value be ludicrously high.

i mean the issue is less "nintendo wants you to buy their games" and more "nintendo will not sell you their games." i bought A Lot of eshop games back when that was a thing you could do, but now it's not so the only way to play anything is to hope it got a cartridge release (and pay scalper prices, it's not like nintendo or the devs are getting that money at this point) or pirate it. if it didn't get a cartridge release, your only option is to pirate it.

taking down the eshop was already kind of a dick move but following that up with the first software update in like 10 months exclusively to prevent actually getting any games for the gaming hardware that they've fully dropped support for is kind of pointlessly hostile. what do they gain from this? genuinely unclear. it's not money (you need to sell games to get money) it's just ideology. at this point, the 3ds is as dead of a console as the gamecube and i've never seen anyone but nintendo argue against pirating gamecube games.

So far the closest thing to a "generic open hardware platform" is the Steamdeck as a portable Linux machine if you can obtain one (was just talking to some Aussies who informed me that Valve didn't even have the courtesy to offer the damn thing in Australia), but the 3DS... I highly doubt we'll see another double-screen gaming handheld ever again. And Nintendo shuttering the eShop for older consoles was supposed to be the deathbell signalling the end of official support for the consoles, so I'd like to think it's the fact that they pushed one more update to render certain things unusable that threw some people for a loop.

Ultimately I'm kind of in the same boat as you though regarding this instance of less-than-legal activity. I will always get up in arms about people pirating games from active indie devs who are still working on projects however, because I'm sure most of us know that people outside of the larger industry are struggling just to make something.

i think some of the issue there comes with, like

they've physically taken the e-shop down. they do not sell games for that console anymore. 0 money from any used game purchase would go to them anyways, and the e-shop games are effectively just lost without the option to pirate.

at a certain point, it becomes the ethics of abandonware: is it ethical to pirate something a company refuses to let you buy legally.

and when they actively still abandon putting the work in to let you purchase but still put in work to not let you pirate, it just feels petty. what does that gain nintendo to put that money in, the 3ds is end of life anyways, they're not making anything off of it anymore.

a used game purchase makes nintendo exactly as much money as a pirated game - 0. i fundamentally don't think one is less ethical than the other on a dead console.

Other people have commented better than I can but I just don't see the utility or value in performative guilt over jailbreaking a device I bought to play games that Nintendo is actively refusing to sell me. I also don't see how "some random artist on Patreon" and "international multi billion dollar company Nintendo" is a remotely valid comparison except in that international multi billion dollar company Nintendo - or one of their peers - is likely the one actively stealing from said random artist which is why they need a Patreon.

I think there's a point to be made here about the comfort in which many people pirate, and how "Oh, but I only pirate from corporations" can be a hollow promise, specially with the advent of patreon scrappers which have been a real problem to creators I believe. (even if pirated copies aren't necessarily lost sales, someone barely making rent but still being "famous" on one of those is pretty indicative of an issue [which I've only heard about happening, don't quote me on that as I haven't done the research, hehe]) (as for indie games, I haven't heard piracy being a problem since like, World of Goo, but updated data would be nice)

But I would suggest pivoting the point away from nintendo because they deserve to be burned in a lake of fire, hehe.

Let's all try our best.

tbh in a time when all media anyone actually buys or plays or watches is owned by like three companies I'll take my vague anti-corporate hostility where I can get it

the patreon thing is wack but yeah lots of people get insanely shitty when even physical objects that have an obvious time and material expense associated aren't sold at cost or cheaper. And who do you supposed instilled that expectation, hmm

If you're gonna pirate, can you at least not do this elitist crap? Some of us can't afford to pirate. It is a surprisingly expensive prospect.

What bothers me so much about their action is that it's at present (pending further exploits being found), making the 3DS a less useful console in the coming years. To my knowledge, nothing they've done has changed the functionality of already hacked devices, it's ONLY making a difference to consoles currently unhacked. My 3DS is already hacked, this makes no difference to me, but there's tons of unhacked 3DSes out there that are potentially becoming a lot less useful if they get this update installed. It's not quite bricking them or turning them into e-waste, but it does feel in that vein. Scalpers and people that treat would be software or would be e-waste as speculative assets annoy me the most and I get an extremely bitter taste at the thought of someone buying into the currently way overvalued used game market than pirating an old game and having that money for anything else.

On top of as others have mentioned, doing this after effectively killing support for the console.

Yes they're allowed to do this, it's not illegal and there's some good business reasons to do it from their standpoint. That doesn't make it any less shitty. I'm still bitter about N DMCA'ing third party fan art works, that's what made me stop giving them any money to begin with. Some people just really wanna play game and I'm glad they can do it without spending money, having the option to do so at least feels like one of the few actions one can take that make at least the smallest impact against companies that really can do whatever the fuck they want, regardless of how much it ultimately does in isolation.

I am very familiar with the "grr dont paywall art" types, I can see the similarities but I personally make the assumption that at least around here, folk are mature enough to know the difference between "fuck you, big company that has already told me to go fuck myself" and "fuck you, person drawing art I like online that wants to make a living".

I think the DS and 3DS are cool, in concept, and the idea of writing homebrew games or software for them that can take advantage of the touchscreen has some appeal. Why not mobile phones, you ask? Because of the way the graphics modes work and stuff. The restrictions they impose are interesting. Also they still have physical buttons too. They're more advanced machines than a GBC or GBA or SNES or Genesis or the like, so you can do more with them.

I even found a (very anti-piracy) guide to making homebrew software for the DS, and a library for it (libnds) and a program you can install which will set everything up for you. I haven't found anything like that for the 3DS, but it must exist, since there seems to be homebrew stuff for it.

Also third party shells firmware adds the ability to back up your save data, which sounds incredibly useful even if you just want to play the games you already own.

And as others have said, if I were to buy a 3DS now, Nintendo would refuse to sell me any software for it. And for the cherry on top, they expect you to rebuy your games in the virtual console with every new console.

I don't know. This just feels like them kicking the dog after they already shot it.

to me, the comparison between pirating nintendo and pirating an indie artist sounds a bit disingenuous but i think i get what you mean. in the end, even if we're pirating for arguably good causes, there's a whole community who doesn't give a shit about these nuances and just do it because they can; as a aspiring artist myself, i ressonate with the discomfort. but then again, i don't think that the people talking about pirating nintendo right now are the same that'll indiscriminately do this to any small creator. or maybe this is just me being too innocent and hopeful

or maybe i just misunderstood everything you said! i do be dumb like that sometimes

personally even though I've had a hacked 3ds for years i never pirated anything. i just used it to customize the background/music, startup screen, take screenshots, backup saves, and make hacked pokemon back when i played that.

i think I also personally get annoyed by the fact that the anti-piracy updated are always called "stability/security" updates or whatever. have the courage to admit what you're doing lol.

also yeah i generally have the money to buy the games I want so I do so. the only stuff I pirate is like stuff that's a decade out of print.

agree

i feel like the idea that corporations act in ways that are shitty and lame to deal with is such a truism it's only worth mentioning if you're trying to bait out the kind of person who will try to defend the moral righteousness they cannot have (because they are corporations)

if a callout isn't about that but is about ownership and payment rendered for services under capitalism or even some inalienable right to free shit, well that's a lot weirder to say and harder to apply in a nuanced way isn't it. sadly we can't always just act as if we live in a utopian post-scarcity society, because we don't

I see so many people going through contortions to justify piracy of independent artists, too, like there's a huge scourge on VRChat of people getting their paid, lovingly-crafted avatars ripped and an entire economy of people who relish in doing so (and even paying money to get the ripped versions).

Or like, as a musician, people seem to feel like I should just be happy that anyone is listening to my stuff at all, and then at the same time demand that I spend a lot of money to get vinyl pressed or CDs manufactured, when there's absolutely no way I'd be recouping my money on that. Or like, "why should I buy your music when i can listen to it on YouTube for free?" and I'm like, "maybe because you want me to be able to afford to make more of it?"

uhh literally any product with any kind of accessory products will, eventually, hit a point where the accessory products are no longer sold