The Japanese video game company Nintendo, which is infamous for smacking down on anyone infringing on its copyright, has successfully sued one of the biggest ROM websites online. The lawsuit has now ended, with RomUniverse forced to pay out $2.1 Million in damages to the gaming industry giant.
Generally, a ROM is defined as a computer file that contains a copy of data usually found on read-only memory chips such as video game cartridges. While video games have moved on, for the most part, from using game cartridges the term has stuck around. A ROM can be used in tandem with an emulator to play a video game, usually one exclusive to a console, on a PC. ROMs have been the backbone of pirating gaming for a long time, with many players only experiencing retro gaming in this form due to the limitations and expenses associated with legally finding all the equipment and the cartridge for some games. Older games, such as The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker and Super Mario Bros. can be incredibly expensive and difficult to find, leading players to instead emulate the games online.
According to a recent article by Nintendolife, the lawsuit dates back to September 2019, where Nintendo filed a lawsuit against the website for facilitating massive online copyright infringement of popular Nintendo titles for years. The site even made money from hosting the ROMs, charging users money to uncap accounts and have access to unlimited file downloads. While the site’s original operator, Mathew Storman, defended himself in court, he was ordered by the US District Court Judge, Consuelo Marshall to pay out Nintendo over $2.1 million in damages. This is significantly less than Nintendo wanted, with the company originally filing for $15 million in lost sales ($90,000 for each of the 49 games found on the site), but settled for the smaller amount in the end. This smaller size payout may be in part due to Storman never having actually uploaded any of the ROMs to the site himself, instead just hosting the content posted by others.
The ROM site has since been removed, but can still be viewed through the Wayback Machine, a site that has saved the history of the internet in its entirety and archived it. There are also a number of other ROM sites still active at this point, although many have gotten wiser over the past couple of years and removed any Nintendo-based ISOs and ROMs from its site.
Gaming pirate websites should see this case as a warning, with Nintendo willing to go the extra mile to make sure that these sites are taken down and it is paid accordingly. For Nintendo, this is less about the money and more about removing access to the Nintendo property without paying the company.
Source: Nintendolife