In the last year, famed Japanese video game company Nintendo shut down their 3DS/Wii U web store. This locked out the possibility of buying any additional digital games on those devices. Understandably, fans of the 3DS and the Wii U were upset, but Nintendo said it was time.
A streamer undertook the mission of buying everything from those stores so that they could be preserved in the annals of video game emulators everywhere. Nintendo, infamous for its anti piracy policies, intervened by pushing out an update to their 3DS/Wii U platforms to prevent people from accessing these emulators.
We are not here to argue the merits of piracy in regards to unsupported games and consoles, but we are here to consider the response.
There are two major responses from the gaming community.
#1. Nothing to see here, business as usual
#2. Nintendo hates their fans and is anti-consumer.
The former of these responses is rather dispassionate and seems fairly cold to the holders of the latter position, and the latter position is often viewed as entitled, emotional, and selfish by its detractors. Do you see where I am going with this?
This piece has never been about Nintendo. Society these days has two loud voices when it comes to issues of inequality.
#1. The social structure is inherently built to oppress and dehumanize people and needs to be torn down and rebuilt.
#2. Life isn’t fair and things rarely work out the way we want them too. Nothing more, nothing less.
These come from drastically different starting points and it is useful to understand both sides, but what side you fall on can largely be predicted by a question. When bad things happen, is it intentional and targeted, or haphazard?
Truly the answer lies in the middle. There are times when bad things are clearly the work of a malicious agent. Just as there are times when inequality shakes out on its own. Some say it can be structurally solved, others say it is a fact of life and any attempt to overcome Mother Nature will have disastrous results. This dichotomy shapes many of the interpersonal issues in politics today.
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