James Burt to pay Nintendo $1.5m for illegal uploading of New Super Mario Bros.

[Khamsin]

Why does he have to pay 1.5m$ That's probably 3 time the production cost of mario Wii.

Lost revenue, totalling $1.4 mil plus the $100k in legal fees, I'm assuming.

According to wiki, the game sold a million copies in the first four days after release in Japan alone. And another 500k by the following week.

At $50 a pop, that's $50 mil in half a week at the start, just in Japan. There's no telling how much a pre-release leak may have cost in terms of initial hype and desire to get copies the moment they come out. It may have taken the edge off and caused a few people to wait before buying, or decide they don't care to buy at all. As for the people who wait, and don't buy the instant it became available, that's lost interest!

I'm mostly just pulling these arguments out of my ass, but I'm betting their attorneys came up with something similar.

Simply put, though, if you assume the potential for lost revenue is directly proportional to and increases with the actual revenue a game generates (i.e. a small percentage of actual revenue can be assumed to be equivalent to "lost revenue" due to piracy), then the more money a game makes the higher the absolute dollar amount it has potentially lost. And Nintendo games, especially the Mario series, tend to have pretty high revenue.

Had this been Party Babyz II, he'd probably only be paying $150k instead of $1.5 mil.

[Kaylia]

Lost revenue, totalling $1.4 mil plus the $100k in legal fees, I'm assuming.

According to wiki, the game sold a million copies in the first four days after release in Japan alone. And another 500k by the following week.

At $50 a pop, that's $50 mil in half a week at the start, just in Japan. There's no telling how much a pre-release leak may have cost in terms of initial hype and desire to get copies the moment they come out. It may have taken the edge off and caused a few people to wait before buying, or decide they don't care to buy at all. As for the people who wait, and don't buy the instant it became available, that's lost interest!

I'm mostly just pulling these arguments out of my ass, but I'm betting their attorneys came up with something similar.

Simply put, though, if you assume the potential for lost revenue is directly proportional to and increases with the actual revenue a game generates (i.e. a small percentage of actual revenue can be assumed to be equivalent to "lost revenue" due to piracy), then the more money a game makes the higher the absolute dollar amount it has potentially lost. And Nintendo games, especially the Mario series, tend to have pretty high revenue.

Had this been Party Babyz II, he'd probably only be paying $150k instead of $1.5 mil.

It was just a joke comment. I'm pretty sure they used tactic on par with the one used by the music industry to get their numbers, I just wanted to bitch about production value being really low, and points out the irony of asking so much for a game that was relatively cheap to produce (compared to most game that also get pirated).

[Meresgi]

lol @ that picture of him. Looks like a total tool.

[Mayareira]

Bitch probably dumped him as well.

[The Stig]

He probably whored that bitch out as well.

ftfy

[miokomioko]

Too bad a vaaaaaaaaast majority of the people who buy Wii games whatsoever probably had no idea it leaked nor the ability/means/knowledge to modify their Wii's software to play it.

I'm convinced their sales weren't affected more than a couple hundred dollars. Those who pirated the game were not going to buy it in the first place.

[Flarega]

Nintendo said in a statement on Tuesday it was able to trace Burt by using sophisticated technological forensics after the game was uploaded to the internet.

Hacking Mama...?

[Arnwulf]

http://kotaku.com/5468379/somethings...-aussie-pirate

So, that story the other day about an Australian man being ordered to pay Nintendo AUD$1.5 million? Yeah, something's not quite right about it.

A day after the news broke, there was a piece in Australia's Sydney Morning Herald profiling the man in question, 24 year-old Queenslander James Burt. It leads with a pic of Burt looking terribly contrite.

There was also a report on Australia's "A Current Affair" program, in which Burt himself is interviewed, again looking like a kicked puppy. The segment wields a heavy tone, warning families not to pirate games, and features Nintendo of Australia's Rose Lappin coming down from the mountain, laying on a thick anti-piracy message.

Now, this show - and the Australian media in general - normally loves what we call an "Aussie battler". Especially when they're being run into the ground by a local government body, or even better, big business. It happens with banking stories on an almost weekly basis, even when the person in question has, like Burt, broken a law or guideline. Nine times out of ten, there'd be serious questions raised as to how fair a punishment this was. But here? The media has served as a broadcast tower, repeating Nintendo's strong anti-piracy message to millions of Australians who would otherwise have been unaware of the issue.

It's been the biggest human interest story of the week down here, but as the circus draws on, something doesn't feel quite right about it. See, the $1.5 million dollar fine wasn't handed down by a judge. Burt settled out of court with Nintendo on this. Would a 24 year-old man who works part-time at a freight company and lives with his parents really shake hands on a settlement that sees him willingly ruin the rest of his financial life? Then spend the week becoming a temporary "celebrity" as his name is publicly dragged through the mud as a criminal?

I don't think so.

Consider this, then, as a potential scenario: Burt isn't going to owe Nintendo a cent. Or, at least, won't owe them anywhere near $1.5 million. As the publisher is so fond of public displays of aggression against game pirates, I think they settled out of court, slapped a gag order on him, let the media parade him around for a week showing how sorry he was and how hard Nintendo has cracked down on a single, lonely "pirate", and will then let him be, his punishment served, Nintendo's point, well and truly made.

Or am I just looking at this a little too closely?

tl;dr version: He's probably not going to have to pay anything. Nintendo's just parading him around making him say sorry.

[Neoscrilla]

Hacking Mama...?

lol

[Tharen]

What do people do when they have to pay that kind of money? He's a gaming shop manager that might make 2% of that in a year.

It's just an attachment to his paycheck. When I was on probation I had restitution and they just attached my paycheck. I was talking to my P.O. and he told me there are people paying $50/week for the rest of there lives.

[Dragir]

Safe to say I am officially off Nintendo products for the rest of my life after reading this. What the guy did was wrong, but what Nintendo is doing is far, far worse. This guy ought to sue whoever acted as his attorney for the money.

[AoE]

lol

[LinktheDeme]

Safe to say I am officially off Nintendo products for the rest of my life after reading this. What the guy did was wrong, but what Nintendo is doing is far, far worse. This guy ought to sue whoever acted as his attorney for the money.

anything settled outside court is NOT public record which means as the kotaku argument stated, THAT THE 1.5M IS AN ARBITRARY NUMBER WHICH MEANS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING

though you probably just didn't actually read the thread just read the title and wanted to post about it so grats you +1'd your post count, at least you tried harder than the person below you.

[Eanae]

http://canuckjihad.files.wordpress.c...ng?w=300&h=425

k

[Saga]

I was starting to get worried Nintendo wasn't going to make it this year. Thank Tyr there is some truth and justice in this fully corrupt world, so that the little guy can stand a chance.

Yeah, I think everyone should be free to pirate games from publishers and not suffer any consequences for it, because game publishers' profits - as we all know - are completely unaffected by mass illegal distribution of their products.

[Shojin]

because game publishers' profits - as we all know - are completely unaffected by mass illegal distribution of their products.

I know,

right?

[Saga]

I know,

right?

Wow, that's awesome, but I think I missed the article where Nintendo intentionally distributed their game online for everyone to download. Still, I can't believe that strategy is successful for every publisher and not just one of them!

[Shojin]

I'm glad you think so.

EDIT: Nice edit there. Obviously I posted it to refute your blanket statement.

You can see I don't give a shit what happens to the guy from the first response, but I mean Nintendo are really suffering because of this.

[Saga]

I don't care what happens to him either, I still think he deserves whatever he got even though it's not a 1.5 million dollar debt, according to the updated article. There was nothing remotely legal or defensible about leaking a full game a full week in advance. Guarantee you people's reactions would be different if it was ME2 instead of Mario. Pirates have such a hilarious sense of self-entitlement when it comes to anything, whether it's video games or e-books. If Bioshock 2 was leaked everyone would be screaming "EPIC!!!" before 2K Games slapped a huge lawsuit on the guy, then everyone would bitch and moan "oh cmon man, not like 2K Games is missing the money from that week!" before happily turning back to the TV and playing their leaked copy.

Like any other huge corporation, it's Nintendo's job to make money. When someone illegally, albeit ineffectively, tries to get in the way of that goal, the gloves come off. Welcome to the corporate world, no one cares.

[Shojin]

ME2 and Bioshock 2 were leaked like a week before they released, and ME2 sold 600k copies on the 360 alone in the 6 days it was released according to the January NPD's, this is just America alone.

If the same thing happened to their uploaders, I'd react the exact same way, with a "lol owned". Corporations like to think that 1 illegal download = 1 lost sale, this is not the cast as people will play shit if it's free, just like people will watch shit movies because they're free. I'm not getting in to a piracy argument with you, as it has been done to death on thousands of other forums. All I did was show you proof that piracy can be used to help publishers and market the game, if done right.

If piracy is hurting anyone, it is the smaller independent companies who release new IP's, as they have a lot riding on the sales and gamers will use the excuse of "Oh, well I'll download it and try it out and if I like it, I will buy it", then never do.

But yeah, the review the guy did seems like it would be the case. Out of court settlement, just dragging his name through the mud and putting a gag order on him. He probably doesn't have to pay anywhere near $1.5m, if anything.