Gamers, generally, are not the wealthiest of clientele. By this logic, a large portion of gamers would, if they had the opportunity, rather play many games for the price of one. Unfortunately, the quick solution to this problem is our good friend piracy. Arguably, no piece of piracy software is more popular today than the R4 for Nintendo’s DS. Unless that is, you live in the UK where the R4’s popularity will undoubtedly start to wane do to officially becoming illegal to sell, advertise and import the device as of today.
The R4 card, which works somewhat similarly to a flash drive, has become the victim of a London’s High Court. “Nintendo initiates these actions not only on its own behalf, but also on behalf of over 1,400 video game-development companies that depend on legitimate sales of games for their survival,” said Nintendo. Obviously, Nintendo has the best interest of their company and it’s partners at mind. However, could the ban lead to gamer outcry?
Many would argue that the R4 is legitimatized in that one can make home-brew games or store games in one cart for convenience. On the other hand, to say the R4 is one of the most recently popular tools of video game piracy may be an understatement. In fact, with the exception of torrent sites, the R4 is perhaps the most widespread used piracy device in the video game industry today. In that case, will this UK ban be indicative of bans in the future?
