Nintendo is sick of pirates illegally downloading its games, and it’s going to court to stop some of them.
The Japanese gaming company today announced that it is suing online modding and pirating retailer HackYourConsole.com. Nintendo claims the site willfully and knowingly sells devices that enable pirates to play illegally downloaded games on the Wii and Nintendo DS consoles.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":790801,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"games,","session":"C"}']We’ve reached out to HackYourConsole.com for comment, but the website’s operators are not returning our calls.
These devices, called flashcarts, are relatively cheap. The software, or ROMs, are also readily available on file-sharing websites. Nintendo claims that these hacking carts hurt its bottom line.
“Piracy on the Nintendo DS system has a huge impact on games sales,” Mutant Mudds developer Jools Watsham said in a statement. “It can affect everyone involved, including the many honest players out there. If independent studios, like ours, are unable to recoup the money they invest into game development, through the sales of their games, we will unfortunately see fewer independent games developed in the future.”
Hackers have had little success in cracking Nintendo’s latest hardware, but a group is currently selling a flashcart that promises hacking on the 3DS. That cart, called Gateway 3DS, is available now, but Nintendo has already blocked it with a software update to the 3DS.
HackYourConsole.com is an authorized distributor of the Gateway, and one of Nintendo’s goals is to shut down the website before it can begin selling the device.