The past few weeks have been pretty bad for fans of the retro gaming scene. Following action by Nintendo, two ROM platforms shut down in response to a lawsuit and another, EmuParadise, voluntarily stopped providing game downloads.

While these events have probably resulted in congratulations being shared among colleagues back in Kyoto, few gamers will join in the celebrations. Quite simply, most don’t understand why the company chooses to be so aggressively protective.

For the purposes of this discussion, let’s work on the assumption that distributing and obtaining ROMs in order to play retro games is the same as any other kind of piracy. It breaches the rights of gaming companies and can result in a copyright lawsuit, like the one leveled at LoveROMS.com and LoveRETRO.co.

Now let’s view this from the position of the average retro gamer. Obtaining ROMs, in order to play retro games, does no harm. The titles themselves are often decades old, run on obsolete hardware, and have already covered their costs a thousand times over.

With all that in mind and considering many gamers are currently buying new games, they’ll be wondering what the hell the problem is and why gaming companies are being such assholes?

It is this disconnect, between the positions of gaming companies and fans of their historical creations, that causes so much confusion. Surely, if gaming companies like Nintendo or former arcade giants like Taito or Namco want to exploit their catalogs, they would already be doing so with comprehensive game packs and devices?

Of course, over the years this has happened to a limited extent, with games companies digging into back catalogs to create products like the NES Classic and Atari Flashback, but these barely scratch the surface of what is already available unofficially.

It cannot be denied that Nintendo has produced some of the greatest games of all time, with titles such as Super Mario 64 guaranteed a spot in history for being both ground-breaking and absolutely magical. But despite its incredible ability to manipulate players’ emotions in ways other developers never have, Nintendo seems to underestimate the emotions experienced by retro gamers every time they play.

This week, when EmuParadise ceased offering downloads, site founder MasJ revealed some of the touching stories emulator fans have shared over the years.

“We’ve had emails from soldiers at war saying that the only way they got through their days was to be lost in the retro games that they played from when they were children,” he wrote.

“We’ve got emails from brothers who have lost their siblings to cancer and were able to find solace in playing the games they once did as children. There are countless stories like these.”

As these examples show, classic games from many years ago have the ability to trigger waves of nostalgia that can be beautifully overwhelming. From associating a particular title with a specific time and place in personal history to stirring memories of long-since disappeared yet cherished friendships, the emotions are like nothing else in the gaming world.

“When we experience nostalgia we tend to feel happier, have higher self-esteem, feel closer to loved ones and feel that life has more meaning. And on a physical level, nostalgia literally makes us feel warmer,” explained psychology lecturer Erica Hepper, Ph.D. in a 2013 interview.

One has to understand the power of this emotional attachment to appreciate why retro gamers are so passionate about their pastime. Retro games provide a fix that no modern game – despite their technical brilliance – will be able to provide for another 10 or 20 years, until they too become old and soaked with distant memories.

Retro games are able to transport players back in time, from stolen moments in high school to the arcades that first exposed many of us to video games themselves. From the moment they view the intoxicating attract mode on the brilliant Hyperspin, they’re transported back. And when that first coin hits the virtual slot of any number of emulators, nirvana has truly arrived.

It is this shared appreciation of the beauty of retro gaming that holds communities like the one found at EmuParadise together. While the site no longer offers ROMs, its members have entire libraries of games at their disposal and nothing short of Nintendo physically turning up at their homes will stop them from enjoying them.

“People absolutely love and adore these games. They are a part of their personality, their childhood, their culture,” MasJ told TF. “These tiles are also a part of our shared human history. People will find a way to get their game on.”

More importantly, perhaps, those players will also share their ROMs with whomever they like which, according to experts, seems more likely when nostalgia is involved.

“In strongly nostalgic states, individuals are shown to be more likely to commit to volunteering or other expressions of altruism,” a 2014 piece in the Guardian notes.

“In group situations, those with induced nostalgia not only tend to feel more closely bonded with the group but also more willing to form intimate associations with strangers and to be freer in their thinking.”

This sounds like the perfect breeding ground for ROM sharing but it’s just a small taste of what drives communities like EmuParadise. It’s also important to note that the mindset behind ROM ‘piracy’ is unlike that commonly associated with movies, TV shows or music.

While the latter are largely available to potential purchasers, most ROMs only exist in unofficial form. There is no way of paying games companies for the pleasure of playing most of them since they’re simply not for sale and especially not in the required all-you-can-eat format.

“Unfortunately the video game industry is quite fragmented so unless the big publishers get on board, a Netflix-style system is nigh impossible,” MasJ says.

“However, the industry and the technology at this point in time is mature enough and consumers are also primed to pay for something of this sort. The only thing left to do is build it. I’m pretty sure either Nintendo, or Sega, or anyone else would be successful if they tried to do it.”

This glaring lack of legal alternatives means that most ‘black market’ retro gamers don’t think they’re committing a crime, which is a huge stumbling block for enforcement. When there is no respect or support for the law, people have few qualms about breaking it. Indeed, due to the massive time invested in retro gamers’ ROM collections, prising ROMs from players’ cold, dead hands might be the only forceful solution to this problem.

So with three major sites now out of the ROM equation and no sensible legal options available, is it now ‘Game Over’ for retro gamers? Will they walk away defeated or will more resources appear to fill in the gaps?

“I don’t think ROMs will be harder to find,” MasJ predicts.

“Perhaps it’ll take a while for another reliable resource to come up and become popular but the bottom line is that people want to play these games. So if you don’t offer than any legal way to do it, they’ll figure out another way.”

Unfortunately for companies like Nintendo, retro gamers have grown accustomed to everlasting credits and it won’t be long before the familiar yet depressing minor key tones associated with character death transform into the chirpy and optimistic tones heralding “Ready Player One”.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdvfz7dfGfY&w=560&h=315]

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As one of the oldest torrent communities online, the Demonoid tracker has gone though many ups and downs.

The site has suffered long stretches of downtime, faced legal threats, dealt with internal struggles, but survived nonetheless.

Earlier this year the tracker processed its ten millionth user registration. Things were relatively calm and the original founder, Deimos, was back in charge, working on several improvements.

“I want to to see the community we had back. Don’t know if it’s possible but that’s my aim,” Deimos told us last year when the site started to recover from a long stint of downtime.

The community indeed started to grow again, but roughly a week ago Demonoid ran into what appears to be a technical issue. Suddenly, the torrents started to ‘disappear’ from the site.

Instead of seeing the usual flood of fresh content, users saw a “no torrents found” message.

Strangely enough, the top torrents list is working normally. Also, torrents may occasionally appear and disappear after several refreshes, as shown here, but there’s clearly something wrong.

While this could be a relatively simple database issue, there’s a more serious concern. It’s not just the torrents that are missing in action, Deimos is also unreachable, even for members of the site’s staff.

“Deimos is nowhere to be found for the last few days and I can’t reach him,” Demonoid staffer Phaze1G says, noting that it’s a major problem.

Phaze1G says he last spoke to Deimos over a week ago and hasn’t been able to get a hold of him since. Demonoid’s founder was dealing with some personal issues and a business trip, but the lack of communication is unusual.

TorrentFreak also reached out to Deimos a few days ago through our usual channel, but we haven’t heard back since.

While there’s reason for concern, without more information, there’s no reason to panic. Phaze1G informs us that all torrents are still showing up in the test version of the new design, so they’re on the servers somewhere.

This means that there’s likely a small issue that needs to be fixed. However, Deimos is the only person with server-side access, so people must wait for his return. Meanwhile, Phaze1G cautions users not to spread any wild rumors.

“The site is not hacked, stolen, compromised, FBI / CIA conspiracy, and so on,” he notes.

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In recent years, entertainment industry insiders have often portrayed Australia as a piracy-ridden country.

To see if these statements hold true, the Government conducts annual consumer surveys to study local piracy habits. In recent years, this has revealed a steady decline in piracy.

The latest online copyright infringement report, released this week, shows that there’s been a decrease in the number of people who consume music, movies, and TV shows illegally, compared to the year before.

The only category where the percentage of pirates has increased is games, but the overall trend is clearly downward. In 2018, two-thirds of all Aussies consumed content through legal channels, compared to 57% three years ago.

Lawful, unlawful or both?

Interestingly, this pattern doesn’t automatically translate to higher spending. In fact, those who pirate and buy tend to spend much more on average, compared to those who purchase content 100% legally.

This is consistent with previous research indicating that “hybrid” consumers (who pirate and buy) are bringing in the most money, probably because they are the most content-hungry consumers.

Also, while fewer Aussies are pirating in 2018, they’re pirating more. The volume of illegally consumed digital content has grown across all measured categories, which includes music, games, movies, and TV shows.

“When the proportion of lawful and unlawful digital consumption is applied across the Australian population, it can be seen that the proportion of unlawful consumption has increased across all four content types from 2017 to 2018,” the Government concludes.

In other words, there are less Aussie pirates, but they’re pirating more.

Another noteworthy finding deals with the recent pirate site blockades ordered by Australian courts. The entertainment industry argues that these will decrease piracy, and the report appears to back this up.

Of all respondents, only 7% say they will bypass a blocked site if they encounter one. An impressive statistic, but also very misleading.

Blocking response

The 7% refers to all the people that were questioned. This also includes the 76% that don’t use pirate sites at all, who obviously have little reason to bypass a blockade. In addition, the graphic also leaves out the 10% who would find alternative pirate services.

In other words, of ALL respondents, 17% would continue to pirate. This is quite significant, considering that little over 23% of all respondents are pirates.

Finally, it’s worth looking at how Aussies would plan to bypass a blocked site. Among those who said they would, 30% would go for a VPN while 21% would opt for proxy sites. Google Translate, surprisingly, is the third most favored option with 15%.

Whether these people will actually do this remains to be seen. The survey also asked those who encountered a blockade what their response was, and less than 1% said they’d bypass the block. Finding other pirate sources was a more popular option.

All in all the report provides a good overview of recent media consumption trends, particularly where they apply to piracy. It shows that, increasingly, Australians are transforming into legal customers. The blocking efforts are somewhat effective as well, even though total piracy volumes have increased.

Blocking aside, it appears that a lot of progress can still be made on the supply side. Most pirates indicate that they would stop if lawful services were cheaper, if the content they’re interested in is available legally, and if legal services were better.

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In recent years Hollywood and other entertainment sources have focused their enforcement efforts on pirate streaming sites and services.

According to several reports, streaming sites get more traffic than their P2P counterparts, with the latter being almost exclusively BitTorrent related.

While the rise of online streaming sites can’t be denied, a new research report from anti-piracy outfit Irdeto shows that P2P remains very relevant. In fact, it’s still the dominant piracy tool in many countries.

Irdeto researched site traffic data provided by an unnamed web analytics partner. The sample covers web traffic to 962 piracy sites in 19 countries where P2P was most used. This makes it possible to see how P2P site visits compare to those of pirate streaming sites.

The data reveal that there are massive differences in the relative use of P2P versus streaming sites between countries.

In Russia, for example, only 2% of the visits go to streaming sites, while the rest of the traffic goes to P2P portals. P2P also outperforms streaming in other countries such as Australia, the Netherlands, and India.

This pattern is reversed in Germany, where 88% of all visits go to pirate streaming sites. Similarly, streaming is also the dominant web piracy tool in the United States, France, Spain and other countries.

Additional research in eight countries shows that piracy traffic has grown during the course of 2017. This growth also applies to P2P sites, in all but one country, Germany.

Looking at the sample as a whole, Iredeto notes that 70% of all pirate traffic goes to P2P sites, which appears to run counter to the popular narrative that streaming is more dominant today.

“While many expect P2P piracy to be taken over by streaming and direct downloads, it’s clear that this has not happened yet. P2P piracy is still a big threat to the industry, in which the overall piracy problem is growing,” Peter Cossack, Irdeto’s VP of Cybersecurity Services says.

“While the increase in bandwidth and social media has facilitated growth in content redistribution piracy, particularly around live sporting events, it is clear that other forms of piracy are not going away any time soon.”

Irdeto’s non-weighed data

While the data provide an interesting look at the regional differences it should be interpreted with caution. First, the sample only includes desktop visits. This might be a problem since streaming sites are arguably more popular on mobile platforms.

Also, the 19 countries were selected because they had the highest number of P2P downloads. That’s a significant selection bias that favors P2P sites.

Finally, and perhaps more problematically, the traffic data are not weighed. For example, nearly half of all visits in the sample come from Russia, which is significantly overrepresented.

That means that visits can’t simply be added to draw overall conclusions, something Iredto seems to do.

The company does make a few solid points though. With an estimated 800 million global monthly downloads from P2P sites in 2017, BitTorrent should not be disregarded.

The report also notes that P2P sites are mostly visited by “committed pirates” who don’t use legal streaming sites, while about half of the visits to pirate streaming are from “casual pirates.”

Finally, Irdeto points out that P2P sites are ‘content’ suppliers too. They often act as a source for streaming sites. In other words, the videos people watch on streaming portals were taken from P2P sources, which underlines that these play a vital role in the piracy ecosystem.

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A copy of Irdeto’s report is available here. We asked the company several questions about the methodological issues we found, but at the time of writing we haven’t heard back.

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Cory’s most recent book, Walkaway, is a story of refusing a life of surveillance and control under a high-tech oligarchy and the struggle to live in a post-scarcity gift economy where even death has been defeated.

Over this one hour plus interview we discuss:

– Whether file-sharing & P2P communities have lost the battle to streaming services like Netflix and Spotify, and why the ‘copyfight’ is still important
– How the European Copyright Directive eats at the fabric of the Web, making it even harder to compete with content giants
– Why breaking up companies like Google and Facebook might be the only way to restore an internet — and a society — we can all live with.

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Steal This Show aims to release bi-weekly episodes featuring insiders discussing crypto, privacy, copyright and file-sharing developments. It complements our regular reporting by adding more room for opinion, commentary, and analysis.

Host: Jamie King

Guest: Cory Doctorow

^{If you enjoy this episode, consider becoming a patron and getting involved with the show. Check out Steal This Show’s Patreon campaign: support us and get all kinds of fantastic benefits!}

Produced by Jamie King
Edited & Mixed by Lucas Marston
Original Music by David Triana
Web Production by Eric Barch

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