Posted by Strider on 6/2/2009, 9:18 am, in reply to "Re: Because then a C&D letter will give way to an actual lawsuit. ~nt~"
: Right, but my point remains that what
: they're doing in this case is extremely
: trivial. You're going to let your whole 300
: fans download an unofficial sequel to a game
: that we're never going to make another cent
: from since it's the better part of two
: decades old
Ummm... Except they are selling it, and making money off of it. Like, right now. It has shipped 220,000 copies, according to Wikipedia.
This, I suspect, is the crux of why Square has taken action here: playing this game requires you to steal from Square something that they wanted to sell you for $30. Do I think that this will cause huge losses? No, of course not- but are people who might be tempted to buy the DS version going to decide not to after they've played the ROM of the original for free? Yes, a certain number are. Is your contention that Square should allow piracy of their games, or not care when people steal from them?
As a counterpoint: if this ROM hack was going for five years, then it was around in 2004. Maybe the hackers in question should have applied a little pattern recognition and saved themselves a lot of trouble.
Again- I personally feel that Square made a bad call with this one, but a lot of what has been posted here has been so wrongheaded that I feel the need to play devil's advocate for Square.
- HC
