I get where you’re coming from, and I respect the concern about keeping things fair and not turning donations into paid access. But I still think this kind of exception makes sense.
The main goal isn’t to make money — it’s to lower the barrier to entry. Getting a working Wii U these days is hard, and even used ones go for around $60. That’s a lot just to revisit an old game or play with friends. On top of that, while it’s not a big issue yet, hardware bans could eventually end up punishing people who buy used consoles without knowing they’re banned, locking them out for no good reason.
A small, one-time upgrade option would fix those cases, give the project a bit of extra support, and make the network more accessible overall — all without undermining/replacing the donation model or giving anyone unfair advantages.
Okay, Mario Kart World is overpriced, but $60 should still be more than acceptable for a Wii U. If $60 would be a financial problem to anyone, then you have better priorities than buying a console from 2012.
Yeah, fair point — $60 might not sound like much to some people, and sure, it’s cheaper than something like Mario Kart World. But I think it’s important to look at it in context.
In many parts of the world, $60 is a big deal — that’s several days or even weeks of income. Not everyone has easy access to local listings or reliable sellers either, so prices can climb fast with shipping or scarcity. To me, entertainment shouldn’t be something only the wealthy can afford — especially when we’re talking about keeping an older game alive for people who just want to relive a bit of nostalgia or play with friends.
I agree, and I really don’t want to, but I will nonetheless say, that working several days for 60$ is something happening in as rich countries as South Korea. As for working several weeks for 60$, that’s something happening in much to many countries to too many people (~512.913.135).
Even ignoring the changes this would make to the donation model, which Josh has already gone over, it’s still just not viable because it hinges on one thing: the assumption that we can accurately track it as “one time”
This would effectively become a “pay to get unbanned” situation. All a user would need to do is create a new account and pay the fee to get their Pretendo-signed console files and now they’re unbanned. If those files get banned, then they can just repeat the process for effectively infinite unbans so long as they have the money. We already experience people who do buy entirely new consoles when they get banned, if anything offering something like this would lower the barrier for cheapers to get back in since it means those people would get more bang for their buck by not needing to buy entirely new hardware
Not only does that defeat the purpose of bans entirely, but in terms of optics it would look REALLY scummy of is to (even indirectly) support that behavior
The only way that would even start to work in our favor is if we could accurately track it being a “one time” thing, and prevent it from being used to bypass an existing ban. And we can’t track it as a “one time” thing for all the same reasons why we can’t just hand out console files to begin with. Tracking this on the account level is pointless as anyone can have infinite accounts. IP addresses can’t be used either since it’s trivial to change them (and a lot of people don’t even have static IPs anyway), all they’d need to do is change their IP and they’d look like a “new” user to us. Even if we checked payment information at checkout (like only allowing 1 set of console files per card number or whatever), services like https://www.privacy.com/ let people make infinite virtual cards. Addresses on payment information can easily be faked (I have some subscriptions to services where my billing address is set to a house I lived in 10 years ago) and isn’t reliable anyway since multiple users can be in the same address
If the “only one time” part were able to be trivially solved, we would just hand out console files one time and call it a day. But that’s not possible, which is the crux of the issue. There is no viable, reliably, long-term solution for this outside of extremely invasive measures like verifying ID cards to track individual users which we will never do
Like I said many times over, there is no trivial way to solve this. We have thought about it for years. I can almost guarantee you than any suggestion you have, we’ve already considered
Yeah, I completely get the issue with enforcing a true “one-time” system — that’s the main roadblock, and it’s not something anyone’s going to solve in a clean way anytime soon. Without invasive tracking, it’s just not technically possible to guarantee that someone can’t abuse it, and I respect why you’d want to avoid that.
That said, I still think the real challenge is finding a balance between fairness and accessibility, and to me, the current system doesn’t really get there. It feels like it was chosen not because it works well for everyone, but because all the other options had flaws.
On top of the accessibility issues, there are technical downsides too — mainly the risk of people unknowingly buying banned consoles secondhand, then being permanently locked out with no recourse. That’s not great for legitimate players and could hurt the community over time.
I understand the reasoning behind the current setup, but it still feels like it leaves a big gap for regular users who aren’t trying to cheat — they’re just the ones who end up paying the price.
The balance has already been found. I don’t know what else to tell you. It’s not “the other solutions have issues”, it’s “there are no other solutions”. The only balance there is, is the one we currently have. Anything less than the current implementation opens up critical holes in our infrastructure. That’s not “an issue”, it’s a preventive blocker making those things not options to consider at all
I understand you want an alternative, and like I said we did explore that years ago, but it’s just not viable as even potential alternatives
Maintaining our services security is our top priority
I get that security has to come first, and I respect that. But I have to strongly disagree with the idea that the balance has already been found. From my perspective, the current system protects against abuse, sure - but it does so by completely sidelining accessibility and user fairness.
I understand that there’s no perfect technical fix right now - and there probably won’t be for the foreseeable future - but saying there are no other options or that the discussion is already settled feels a bit too final.
It feels final because it’s final. There’s no other systems that would work here. Like I said, I’m not sure what else to tell you. You can disagree all you want, that doesn’t change the fact that such a system just doesn’t exist. It’s not a “for the foreseeable future” thing. You can disagree as much as you want, but that doesn’t change the objective fact that you’re just wrong. All other systems introduce critical holes. Introducing holes like that isn’t “finding a balance”
buying a wii u is now over 100 uk pound, so you have to take the risk to buy a console that could be banned? and then what? you just cant play bear in mind wii u are now not made anymore theres only so many and it was not a very big console to begin with, not many were made because there was no demand? could you not need to find a better system.? you will run out of wii u if every one gets banned… surely..
You can import them from over seas for almost nothing. People on our team have gotten them for under $30 (total, shipping included), often a lot less. I personally got one not too long ago for $40 total, GamePad and everything included. I just checked Buyee right now and found multiple consoles for ~$20. Even accounting for shipping/import costs, you’d be hard pressed to hit £100
You run this risk no matter what
I’m not going to repeat myself on the matter any further. I’ve already answered this multiple times, you can disagree if you want but you’d just simply be wrong
The Wii U was not popular by any means, but it still sold over 13 million units. If all 13 million units got banned within any of our lifetimes, I will personally pay you 13 million dollars