Poll of the Day > If you have 3ds or wiiU remember to download

(+) Yeah! (+)

Download any previously purchased games that you want to keep.

Even ones we have on cartridge?

I forgot to download the last Shovel Knight DLC

Metalsonic66 posted...

I forgot to download the last Shovel Knight DLC

get the Treasure Trove version on a different console

But wouldn't I have to replay the first three campaigns to get to the King Knight one?

I mean, the game is worth a replay anyway

Just make your 3DS or Wii U custom firmware and download anything that isnt available for purchase. Devs wont get money from used games

Entity13 posted...

Even ones we have on cartridge?

well, their update packages i guess

Lokarin posted...

well, their update packages i guess

Particularly relevant for Xenoblade X, since the extra data you can download improves the loading times quite significantly.

adjl posted...

Particularly relevant for Xenoblade X, since the extra data you can download improves the loading times quite significantly.

Can you still download if you didnt download it previously?

Devil_May_Cry posted...

Can you still download if you didnt download it previously?

nope. unless you're working with a modded Wii U like you mentioned previously re the 3DS

I bought X before everything shut down just because I haven't modded my Wii U....yet

If Nintendo doesn't get their shit together with online with their next console, I'm just going to skip them from now on.

dragon504 posted...

If Nintendo doesn't get their shit together with online with their next console, I'm just going to skip them from now on.

I'm sure you won't and neither will 100 million+ other people.

dragon504 posted...

If Nintendo doesn't get their shit together with online with their next console, I'm just going to skip them from now on.

You say that like this is an accident. Nintendo's not exactly the most competent when it comes to online stuff, but they know enough to be able to maintain an consolidated eShop that would last forever if they wanted to. That, however, would prevent them from selling remakes or ports of games they've previously discontinued, while providing very little in terms of additional revenue from people buying the older stuff. This is quite deliberate, and I'll be very surprised if the Switch's eShop and servers don't start shutting down by 2030 (assuming we see a successor in the next year or two).

Personally, I think copyright law should be amended to formally identify abandonware by making any media that hasn't been officially for sale for more than a couple years automatically pass into public domain. In the age of all-physical media, that would have been unthinkable, but digital distribution means the only cost to keep any given work available for sale is the storage cost (which is already being spent in the vast majority of cases because copies are being kept). That means the only reason for old media to be removed from sale is if the publisher doesn't want to sell it anymore, and if the publisher doesn't want to sell it anymore, there's no harm in pirating it. But that would require copyright law to A) Realize that it's not the 19th century anymore, and B) Care about consumers and artistic preservation more than corporate profits, and neither of those are overly likely.

SomeUsername529 posted...

I'm sure you won't and neither will 100 million+ other people.

How do you know he in particular won't?

adjl posted...

Personally, I think copyright law should be amended to formally identify abandonware by making any media that hasn't been officially for sale for more than a couple years automatically pass into public domain. In the age of all-physical media, that would have been unthinkable, but digital distribution means the only cost to keep any given work available for sale is the storage cost (which is already being spent in the vast majority of cases because copies are being kept). That means the only reason for old media to be removed from sale is if the publisher doesn't want to sell it anymore, and if the publisher doesn't want to sell it anymore, there's no harm in pirating it. But that would require copyright law to A) Realize that it's not the 19th century anymore, and B) Care about consumers and artistic preservation more than corporate profits, and neither of those are overly likely.

Blame Disney. Before they started trying to get copyright to last forever, things used to fall into the public domain after 20 years. Now that it takes 96 years for things to fall into public domain, they finally realized "Oh wait, we want to fight for TRADEMARKS, not copyright. My bad..."

Dikitain posted...

Blame Disney. Before they started trying to get copyright to last forever, things used to fall into the public domain after 20 years. Now that it takes 96 years for things to fall into public domain, they finally realized "Oh wait, we want to fight for TRADEMARKS, not copyright. My bad..."

The annoying thing is that Disney should retain full copyright control over everything they've made. They're not wrong to have fought for that, they just fought for it the wrong way. If they'd fought for "we're still using that thing we made, so nobody else should be able to use it until we're done instead of some arbitrary time limit" instead of "we're still using that thing, so we want the arbitrary time limit extended," copyright law would be in a much better place.

Though even 20 years is longer than I think is reasonable to wait these days. With digital distribution, I'd say even 2-3 years without the product being officially for sale (or a clear plan for when it will be on sale, to account for potential hiccups in developing an emulator or something) or otherwise commercially available (e.g. streaming) should qualify it for public domain. There's absolutely nothing stopping Nintendo from keeping the eShops running for the 3DS and WiiU, especially if they just use the same storefront for all systems moving forward. Subsequent to that, there's absolutely nothing stopping Nintendo from making their entire historical library available. That they aren't selling it means only that they've chosen not to sell it, and if they're choosing not to sell it, they have no basis for objecting to people pirating it.

adjl posted...

The annoying thing is that Disney should retain full copyright control over everything they've made. They're not wrong to have fought for that, they just fought for it the wrong way. If they'd fought for "we're still using that thing we made, so nobody else should be able to use it until we're done instead of some arbitrary time limit" instead of "we're still using that thing, so we want the arbitrary time limit extended," copyright law would be in a much better place.

Though even 20 years is longer than I think is reasonable to wait these days. With digital distribution, I'd say even 2-3 years without the product being officially for sale (or a clear plan for when it will be on sale, to account for potential hiccups in developing an emulator or something) or otherwise commercially available (e.g. streaming) should qualify it for public domain. There's absolutely nothing stopping Nintendo from keeping the eShops running for the 3DS and WiiU, especially if they just use the same storefront for all systems moving forward. Subsequent to that, there's absolutely nothing stopping Nintendo from making their entire historical library available. That they aren't selling it means only that they've chosen not to sell it, and if they're choosing not to sell it, they have no basis for objecting to people pirating it.

I would be good with that, but I think in order for it to happen the whole "Company X owns the copyright and company Y owns the trademark" stuff needs to be worked out as well. That is another thing that makes games go into sales "limbo". See Prey (2006), which Bethesda owns the Trademark and 2K owns the copyright. Oddly enough, the other example I used to point to (Wolfenstein 2009) is now a non-issue since Activision owns the copyright and Bethesda owns the trademark. Now it is all under Microsoft.

Yeah, there's definitely some nuance that needs to be worked out, such as how remakes factor into it and what happens to characters and other elements of an IP, but I don't actually know how much trademark disputes like that would interfere with the idea. If it's not for sale because two companies are fighting over who gets the sales revenue, that still counts as "not for sale" and it would lapse into public domain at the end of the specified period. That opens up the potential for one owner to screw the other one out of future revenue by stalling those disputes until the copyright lapsed, and there'd need to be some provision for handling historic cases, but moving forward I expect that would just create an incentive to negotiate that *before* releasing the game to avoid having issues later.

adjl posted...

You say that like this is an accident. Nintendo's not exactly the most competent when it comes to online stuff, but they know enough to be able to maintain an consolidated eShop that would last forever if they wanted to. That, however, would prevent them from selling remakes or ports of games they've previously discontinued, while providing very little in terms of additional revenue from people buying the older stuff. This is quite deliberate, and I'll be very surprised if the Switch's eShop and servers don't start shutting down by 2030 (assuming we see a successor in the next year or two).

Personally, I think copyright law should be amended to formally identify abandonware by making any media that hasn't been officially for sale for more than a couple years automatically pass into public domain. In the age of all-physical media, that would have been unthinkable, but digital distribution means the only cost to keep any given work available for sale is the storage cost (which is already being spent in the vast majority of cases because copies are being kept). That means the only reason for old media to be removed from sale is if the publisher doesn't want to sell it anymore, and if the publisher doesn't want to sell it anymore, there's no harm in pirating it. But that would require copyright law to A) Realize that it's not the 19th century anymore, and B) Care about consumers and artistic preservation more than corporate profits, and neither of those are overly likely.

Their online purchases not transferring was definitely done by design. Why sell something once, when you can keep reselling it. Consoles keep trying to go full digital like pc, but until they demonstrate to me that they're going to support it fully and not screw over their customers, I won't do more than dip my toe in. Consoles have gotten better with digital and I hope that keeps trending up with Nintendo getting on board with their next system/gen.