Deleting digital games

[irixith]

20 years from now, I want to play that Dr. Mario WiiWare title, however the WiiWare service has long been shutdown. What do I do?

Compare that situation to the following:

20 years from now, I want to play Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii, so I buy a used copy. Done.

20 years from now, assuming you have a functional Wii, you would download the Dr. Mario WiiWare WAD file, install it on your NAND (or more likely, your emulated NAND -- your original NAND would probably be quite dead by that point) and play away. Thanks in part to piracy and the tools that enable it, these digital downloads will be backed up and shared for years and years to come.

Now, assuming your Wii 20 years from now has a functional optical drive, digital again will save you. You'll be softmodding that bad boy, and using a usb memory stick/hard drive/sd card/etc to load up Super Mario Galaxy instead.

[Inazuma]

20 years from now, I want to play that Dr. Mario WiiWare title, however the WiiWare service has long been shutdown. What do I do?

Compare that situation to the following:

20 years from now, I want to play Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii, so I buy a used copy. Done.

20 years from now, assuming you have a functional Wii, you would download the Dr. Mario WiiWare WAD file, install it on your NAND (or more likely, your emulated NAND -- your original NAND would probably be quite dead by that point) and play away. Thanks in part to piracy and the tools that enable it, these digital downloads will be backed up and shared for years and years to come.

Now, assuming your Wii 20 years from now has a functional optical drive, digital again will save you. You'll be softmodding that bad boy, and using a usb memory stick/hard drive/sd card/etc to load up Super Mario Galaxy instead.

It's great that piracy will save the day but it's a shame I have to do that in order to play old games. I'd like to just download Dr Mario off the internet, throw it on an SD card, stick it in my Wii and have it work normally. The fact that I have to hack my Wii in order to get it to work annoys me, and that's why I won't purchase Dr Mario.

If WiiWare worked more like GoG, I would buy Muscle March right now.

[irixith]

It's great that piracy will save the day but it's a shame I have to do that in order to play old games. I'd like to just download Dr Mario off the internet, throw it on an SD card, stick it in my Wii and have it work normally. The fact that I have to hack my Wii in order to get it to work annoys me, and that's why I won't purchase Dr Mario.

If WiiWare worked more like GoG, I would buy Muscle March right now.

..but you can just download Dr. Mario, (to your nand or your sd), and have it work normally. If you want to do it correctly and legally, it's called WiiWare. You can then take your download, and use a tool on your PC to strip the console specific drm and keep a backup copy for safekeeping (or your imaginary 20 year future), if that's what you want to do.

..and really, if you think about it, you've got to do something to just about everything these days to strip out any protection and keep a backup floating around.

You would only have to remove the signature check on the Wii to obtain games you didn't originally purchase on your own, assuming your imaginary 20 years into the future where the WiiWare service is defunct and you hadn't prepared in advance for it.

Anyhow, I still don't see how your imaginary future has any effect on buying digital things now.

[Inazuma]

It's great that piracy will save the day but it's a shame I have to do that in order to play old games. I'd like to just download Dr Mario off the internet, throw it on an SD card, stick it in my Wii and have it work normally. The fact that I have to hack my Wii in order to get it to work annoys me, and that's why I won't purchase Dr Mario.

If WiiWare worked more like GoG, I would buy Muscle March right now.

..but you can just download Dr. Mario, (to your nand or your sd), and have it work normally. If you want to do it correctly and legally, it's called WiiWare. You can then take your download, and use a tool on your PC to strip the console specific drm and keep a backup copy for safekeeping (or your imaginary 20 year future), if that's what you want to do.

..and really, if you think about it, you've got to do something to just about everything these days to strip out any protection and keep a backup floating around.

You would only have to remove the signature check on the Wii to obtain games you didn't originally purchase on your own, assuming your imaginary 20 years into the future where the WiiWare service is defunct and you hadn't prepared in advance for it.

Anyhow, I still don't see how your imaginary future has any effect on buying digital things now.

I only buy things that I want to support. Yeah, I can use PC tools to strip Dr Mario of its DRM, which sounds really awesome but I don't like the idea of giving Nintendo money for their DRM bullshit. If Dr Mario was DRM free normally, I would be happy to give Nintendo money for it.

What I will end up doing is resorting to piracy and such to obtain all of the Virtual Console and WiiWare titles later on, probably after Nintendo stops supporting the Wii with new firmware updates. That, or just pass on them altogether. The important thing is not supporting their DRM.

[Niode]

It's great that piracy will save the day but it's a shame I have to do that in order to play old games. I'd like to just download Dr Mario off the internet, throw it on an SD card, stick it in my Wii and have it work normally. The fact that I have to hack my Wii in order to get it to work annoys me, and that's why I won't purchase Dr Mario.

If WiiWare worked more like GoG, I would buy Muscle March right now.

..but you can just download Dr. Mario, (to your nand or your sd), and have it work normally. If you want to do it correctly and legally, it's called WiiWare. You can then take your download, and use a tool on your PC to strip the console specific drm and keep a backup copy for safekeeping (or your imaginary 20 year future), if that's what you want to do.

..and really, if you think about it, you've got to do something to just about everything these days to strip out any protection and keep a backup floating around.

You would only have to remove the signature check on the Wii to obtain games you didn't originally purchase on your own, assuming your imaginary 20 years into the future where the WiiWare service is defunct and you hadn't prepared in advance for it.

Anyhow, I still don't see how your imaginary future has any effect on buying digital things now.

I only buy things that I want to support. Yeah, I can use PC tools to strip Dr Mario of its DRM, which sounds really awesome but I don't like the idea of giving Nintendo money for their DRM bullshit. If Dr Mario was DRM free normally, I would be happy to give Nintendo money for it.

What I will end up doing is resorting to piracy and such to obtain all of the Virtual Console and WiiWare titles later on, probably after Nintendo stops supporting the Wii with new firmware updates. That, or just pass on them altogether. The important thing is not supporting their DRM.

Boycotting download services based on DRM is just unrealistic. You expect companies to just release their games without any way of stopping people just copying it easily? It's not going to happen. To be fair I don't think any companies are going to lose sleep because you won't buy their stuff. In fact I don't even know why I'm bothering to argue with you.

[irixith]

The important thing is not supporting their DRM.

..so back to my original point: do you therefore not buy physical media either?

[Inazuma]

Boycotting download services based on DRM is just unrealistic. You expect companies to just release their games without any way of stopping people just copying it easily? It's not going to happen. To be fair I don't think any companies are going to lose sleep because you won't buy their stuff. In fact I don't even know why I'm bothering to argue with you.

It doesn't actually stop anyone from copying it! Plus it pisses off people like me who hate being punished for legally buying a product. If they are gonna accuse an honest customer like me of being a pirate, then fuck them too. I will choose not to buy their products if that's how they are going to treat me.

I will pirate anything that has DRM and pay for anything that does not have DRM.

[GSZX1337]

In fact I don't even know why I'm bothering to argue with you.

Well it is the Internet...

[Ivo]

You expect companies to just release their games without any way of stopping people just copying it easily? It's not going to happen.

It (still) happens. As was mentioned GOG is a great example of how things CAN be done (and it is profitable). Also some (or even many) indie developers do that as well.

Niode, if I understand correctly you refuse to buy stuff on WiiWare because you can't transfer it to other machines because you do not like a situation where you have purchased the game, something happens and then you can not play it any more.

Inazuma refuses to buy digital games / stuff with strict DRM in general due to the worry that he won't be able to buy and play it later. It is not THAT different.

Frankly I can understand and relate here. It is true he is probably missing out on some stuff, but it his choice to not support the companies doing it in a way that he doesn't like. To Inazuma I can only suggest that he really supports GOG - they not only have a business plan you want to support, they actually are enabling many gamers today to play classics that can often be very tricky to run in modern machines. I think it is a perfect match for you.

Ivo.

[jfrost]

Except that Inazuma won't like any games that are on GOG. They aren't Japanese.