Nintendo seems to always be battling against hackers, homebrew artists and anyone who does something they don’t like. Now they are targeting people who exchange save data from games. This is basically untested legal water, so I’m not sure where it will end up going. This may eventually lead to the banning of sites that allow save data sharing (for profit or for free).
According to Nintendo, “Even by just copying save data using whatever method, and selling it, they’re criminally infringing our copyright.” There’s no mention of free exchanges, but if they are claiming copyright on game save data entirely, free exchange sites will probably be the next target. Nintendo’s problem arose from a situation in Japan where gamers are purchasing Pokémon save data (in copied, original or modified form) on Yahoo! Auctions. I’m not sure where I stand on the issue yet. While it is a little shady to sell save data, I’m not really sure if it’s illegal or not. As far as trading save data for free, I could care less. It will certainly be interesting to see where this goes.
Via Sankaku Complex
It certainly makes sense, Nintendo has a point
I can understand the pokemon deal, but surely with many games its alright, eg. wanting to skip a temple in zelda or something like that?
I can understand the pokemon deal, but surely with many games its alright, eg. wanting to skip a temple in zelda or something like that?.
I’d assume that exchanging save data (with no money exchanged) would be ok, but if Nintendo is claiming copyright on all save data, they might be against that too. There was no mention about it though.