Nintendo convinces eBay and Amazon to ban DS flashcarts
by JC Fletcher 
{ May 22nd 2009 at 12:30PM } 
Nintendo has announced that it has reached an agreement with Amazon and eBay through which the shopping sites will prohibit the sale of the R4 and other DS flashcarts. "Nintendo is pleased with the co-operation it has received from both eBay and Amazon to prevent the sales of game copying devices," Nintendo's global head of anti-piracy, Jodie Daughtery told MCV. eBay has actually pulled auctions for copying devices for years (presumably as an "item encouraging illegal activity), so if there is a policy update, it involves even more vigilant policing of auctions.
Amazon UK games director Chris Poad told MCV that Amazon has a "notice and take down" process for its third-party Marketplace. "So where a third party believes that their IP has been infringed, they can highlight it and we can take it down. This is what happened in the case of the R4."
Now Nintendo just has the rest of the Internet to deal with in its efforts to curtail DS piracy (and, as an extremely unfortunate side effect, homebrew).
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
nutman @ May 22nd 2009 12:36PM
Ah that's too bad. I got an R4 on amazon for a very good price. $35 for the R4 and a USB MicroSD reader.
It is kind of an odd thing to ban it. I mean, don't a LOT of people use blank DVDs to store copyrighted media like movies, music and games? Should we ban those too? What about SD cards?
madhat @ May 22nd 2009 12:42PM
Dang it, replied wrong the first time.
That's not a good price, a quick google search can find you a DSTT for $6 with free shipping.
Mr Khan @ May 22nd 2009 12:47PM
slightly different, as DVD is a standard format. R4 is operating off of a proprietary format, so its much easier to target legally
Latin_Trident @ May 22nd 2009 1:10PM
You can get an R4 card with a 2gb micro SD card for $35 on Craigslist. Really convenient and cheap! cut out the middle man ebay and amazon and help your local seller.
nutman @ May 22nd 2009 1:11PM
@madhat
I bought it in early 2008 or late 2007. I dont remember.
peepoop @ May 22nd 2009 1:52PM
R4DS are all clones these days and you can get better carts like Acekard for $12 shipped.
BigD145 @ May 22nd 2009 4:14PM
I've never bought a flash card on ebay or amazon. Thanks for not hindering me at all, Nintendo.
TareX @ May 24th 2009 3:01AM
Actually your deal wasn't so good.
I got an Acekard 2.1 + 2GB microSD + USB Card reader + shipping.... all for $23.
Got it from stuffsfromkids.com
I don't know if they still have this offer. It's been working amazingly the past 2 months...
nutman @ May 24th 2009 8:14AM
Like I said, got it a long time ago.
Cammy @ May 22nd 2009 12:41PM
Why spend the money to make your own system piracy-free when you can have other companies do your dirty work for you, all the while stomping on the rights of users?
Nintendo sure knows how to throw their legal muscle around!
Phinehas @ May 22nd 2009 1:05PM
Exactly what rights do users have to proprietary formats again?
Rob @ May 22nd 2009 2:04PM
Downloading games you did not pay for is not a right, it is theft. You are depriving the person/persons who made the game of the compensation for their time and effort. God damn it! I hate this generation!
Punishment4Gluttons @ May 22nd 2009 3:49PM
The R4 is not just for piracy. You can run fan made homebrew games with a R4. That's the rights that are being offended here. Let's keep it real though. People buy it for piracy not homebrew.
raindog @ May 22nd 2009 7:22PM
Actually, the "person/persons who made the game" receive their "compensation for their time and effort" usually before the game is ever released, through the magic of a paycheck. But far be it from me to wipe the foam from someone's twitching lips.
BlackDogAssault @ May 22nd 2009 10:37PM
Piracy ain't theft. When you steal, you steal the object itself. Piracy is making a copy.
And then again, developers have a fixed salary. Whether the game sells a million copies or just ten thousand, the amount they receive is the same. Sakurai (Brawl fame) himself said so in an interview.
CrossTheAtlantic @ May 23rd 2009 9:38AM
Yeah, they get paychecks. Then the studio can't afford to develop more games, though, because it's not making money off the ones it has out, and then, WHOOPS, said developers and programmers are on their asses without jobs.
raindog @ Jun 4th 2009 2:11PM
And companies should be rewarded for having poor business models why, again?
madhat @ May 22nd 2009 12:42PM
That's not a good price, a quick google search can find you a DSTT for $6 with free shipping.
Persian @ May 22nd 2009 12:44PM
holy shit, you can pirate DS games with that?
Amazing, I'm going to order me up one right now.
Thanks Joystiq!
FluxWaveZ @ May 22nd 2009 12:46PM
You're an asshole, you know that?
Skorpeyon @ May 22nd 2009 12:51PM
THIS is exactly why I don't get all the press surrounding this issue. I've known about these for years (and their predecessors for the GBA), never bought one, and if I had it would've been for homebrew not for piracy. You guys bring attention to it here at Joystiq, and you've now given anyone who likes to pirate games a way to pirate DS games, a system that many people wouldn't think you COULD play pirated games on.
Ranelar @ May 22nd 2009 6:15PM
... ... Thhhhhhhhhhhhffffffffffffftttttttttt !!! ... ....
The sound of sarcasm flying over your head.
nutman @ May 22nd 2009 1:12PM
LOL
cloud858rk @ May 22nd 2009 4:39PM
Sarcasm doesn't work on the internet without a tag or italics or something. Basically something to compensate for the lack of being able to detect sarcasm in a persons voice, like in real life.
AshStampede @ May 24th 2009 9:52AM
@ cloud858rk
"Sarcasm doesn't work on the internet without a tag or italics or something. Basically something to compensate for the lack of being able to detect sarcasm in a persons voice, like in real life."
If we use your statement as a marker for the Norm. Sarcasm or any form of emotion doesn't work when its written or printed say in a book. It completely inhuman to think that humans have the ability to discern written dialog and only truly understand it in vocal form.
Storm Eagle @ May 22nd 2009 12:43PM
Nintendo has more money than god and they're worried about this little piece of plastic? They're only hurting themselves by turning off the Homebrew community and hardcore gamers.
Massmass @ May 22nd 2009 12:52PM
lol, yeah hardcore gamers...
They kept them alive during the N64 but abandoned Nintendo during the Gamecube era, pretty much. If Nintendo truly cared about "hardcore" gamers, I'd question their judgment. Hardcore gamers were never part of their demographic unless you consider the early years of gamers to be hardcore.
Nintendo has always made money off families. Not angsty individuals who have to call their hobby "hardcore".
Cody @ May 22nd 2009 3:30PM
LMAO @ massmass' reply.
THE best rebuttle against TEH HARDC0REZ!11! I've read yet!
Meh @ May 22nd 2009 4:12PM
"Nintendo has more money than god and they're worried about this little piece of plastic? They're only hurting themselves by turning off the Homebrew community and hardcore gamers." No, they actually care about OTHER DEVELOPERS.
FluxWaveZ @ May 22nd 2009 12:45PM
Maybe Nintendo has confirmed it today or something, but it's been at least a couple of months since the R4DS has not been on Ebay or Amazon anymore.
atastysammich @ May 22nd 2009 12:47PM
Yeah, it seems like eBay had been axing R4 auctions for a while already.
ManekiNeko @ May 22nd 2009 12:45PM
Oh well, looks like it's back to DealXtreme and Jandaman for me! Wait, I never bought any flash cartridges from eBay or Amazon. Never mind!
emperorzeroxx @ May 22nd 2009 12:47PM
I agree with the nutman, we need to get rid of every possible way of piracy, we should ban all burnable cd/dvd discs as well as sd cards and flash drives in general. If we want to end pc piracy as well, maybe we should ban hard drives too!! Although that might cause a problem considering that's needed to actually do anything....
atastysammich @ May 22nd 2009 12:48PM
And monitors! Can't pirate if you can't see.
sonicspike41 @ May 22nd 2009 12:54PM
@atastysammich
Go ahead and ban me monitor. Seein aint never stopped me from wearin an eyepatch and sailin the four seas like a real pirate ought!
What do you mean there's more than four seas? Arggh... guess only havin one eye kinda made me miss the other half of the map. Yargh. Well 'ey, least now I gots another three seas to sail!
XBL: Burritoclock @ May 22nd 2009 1:36PM
They are all just buying time until they can stream all software to us and nobody actually owns a damn thing.
Mr Khan @ May 22nd 2009 12:49PM
Here we see the benefits of proprietary storage formats. Nintendo can just cut these off at the source to severely cripple DS piracy, instead of releasing one impotent firmware upgrade after another, like they're doing for Wii (or like Sony did for PSP)
Matthew @ May 22nd 2009 12:58PM
Banning the sale of bongs doesn't really prevent marijuana use, so I'm reeeeeeally pulling for Nintendo on this one.
Shagittarius @ May 22nd 2009 1:03PM
I think you need to put down the bong.
rowd149 @ May 22nd 2009 1:07PM
You NEVER put down the bong.
Phil Fauble @ May 22nd 2009 1:01PM
This is what bugs me about piracy.
I love homebrew, and if it were just homebrew I'm pretty sure Nintendo wouldn't be to worried about it.
Did I mention I love homebrew?
Piracy is hard on these companies, maybe people should just stop. For now anyways. Wait until we get out of this recession and then do it again. Maybe they won't worry about it as much then.
nutman @ May 22nd 2009 1:14PM
Why would people wait until the recession is over? They're more likely to do it now than ever before. You can get a flashcart and a MicroSD card for the same price or less than one DS game.
Phil Fauble @ May 22nd 2009 1:19PM
Agreed, I'm just saying for the sake of the game developers. It's the same with movies and music just because it's so much cheaper, I understand. But they don't produce those things to give them away.
The only real problem I have with it as that so many companies are laying off so many people, and I understand that a lot of people that pirate games probably wouldn't buy them regardless, so they just wouldn't play the game, because those games are so damn expensive.
Maybe if they lowered the cost of games? You know... 35 dollars for a DS game. and 50 - 60 for the others is pretty steep if you think about it. With the hardware being so expensive cheaper games would be nice. Maybe they'd get more sales then, and piracy would slow down a bit?
I don't know! I just know I don't want the video game industry to start falling apart. I love my games
d2137686 @ May 24th 2009 10:01PM
Maybe when games arent $90, yes, NINETY OR MORE bucks where i live..
Phil Fauble @ May 25th 2009 12:21AM
Ugh.. that's horrible
I completely understand pirating then... that's freaking obnoxious
d2137686 @ May 25th 2009 7:54PM
The hardware here is about $385 american dollars! Only one Nintendo DS costs this much.. It really is an absurd, to buy for a reasonable price only the second handed ones or used ones, that costs much as a new one in any other place in the world (a used costs about $205 american, and i´m talking about the DS Lite). Being a gamer in a country where the taxes rules, is outrageous =/ The people works 145 days per year ONLY to pay taxes, the rest of the year is for themselves..
rowd149 @ May 22nd 2009 1:05PM
I love Nintendo, but this is going too far. Those carts can be used for homebrew, which is completely legal and doesn't hurt their business in anyway. This is really akin to the MPAA getting Amazon to stop selling blank CDs because they can be used to store pirated music. It can't possibly be good business to admit to bowing to the whims of one company in order to destroy the business of another. What are the R4 producers to do now?
AshStampede @ May 24th 2009 10:17AM
"those carts can be used for homebrew, which is completely legal and doesn't hurt their business in anyway."
OK, what are use basing this on? While the act of a developer at home making a game with his own Intellectual property is not illegal. Circumnavigating the proprietary format and not being a license SDK(Software Development Kit) holder for Nintendo thus hacking into the DS is. They wont prosecute for the homebrew apps out there but the developers that have the license for the SDK would have to sign alot of documents. Which not being a lawyer I would have to assume would roughly translate into:
if(SDK reviled to public)
{
Nads + saladshooter = YOU;
}
The only way that homebrew would be legal on the NDS is if Nintendo made a gateway/public SDK ala XNA for 360. Which on a side note, THEY FRAGGIN NEED TO DO, the ndsi was the perfect place for that.
"What are the R4 producers to do now?"
Well they made the product solely to profit, the ds cartridge not being a open format and if it was a true game they would need to pay nintendo a license fee, they would also have to buy the cartridges from nintendo to "print" x copies of the game for retail. But now these "R4 producers" are not licensed and make their own cartridges which is patented product. They now allow millions to download illegally pirated games which cause published to lose money and no longer fund developers to make games for that market. (see PSP)
"This is really akin to the MPAA getting Amazon to stop selling blank CDs because they can be used to store pirated music. "
This doesnt really add anything to the argument because this statement is akin to Kitchen knives being used for cooking and preparing food. But because wives can kill there cheating husband with them,they shouldn't be sold on amazon.
jsut @ May 22nd 2009 1:10PM
This is troubling. I know the majority of these devices are used for piracy, but that is not their exclusive purpose. Do we need to ban the sale of tape recorders and CD/DVD writers too?
Nintendo should work on thwarting the pirates themselves, e.g. some robust copy protection in the carts, or the DS itself (yes, I know the DSi attempted it -- not robust enough). Getting a third party to do your piracy policing for you is a sloppy solution.
Rob @ May 22nd 2009 2:08PM
Yes, copy protections that will be cracked almost immediately after the pirates get their hands on it.