Because if anyone from Nintendo of America had bothered to watch the latest episode of Modern Family, they may have seen this kid. “Oh great!”, they probably thought at first. “Free advertising!”

But the more observant of staffers would have noticed the odd colour of the cartridge stuck in the back of the DS. And then the cartridge’s funny shape, smooth on one side, a hole on the other.

Yup, the hole where a microSD card goes. Meaning it’s very likely the kid (don’t watch the show, don’t know his name) was using either an R4 cart, or a similar device. We don’t know for sure — I am also not involved in the show’s production — but take a look for yourself.

Which doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a pirate! After all, the R4 isn’t just for pirating games; it’s also for enabling homebrew, a noble endeavour if ever there was one.

Not that Nintendo would care to make the distinction.

[thanks Greg!]

A press release from the US Department of Homeland Security’s US Customs and Border Protection indicates that the machines were valued at $US138,000 and capable of being sold for $US672,000.

And these games, which were discovered in a shipping container that arrived in Los Angeles from China, played the classics:

The machines contained several copyrighted video games, which are registered with the U.S. Copyright Office and recorded with CBP. The video games found on the coin-operated machines were Frogger, Scramble, Time Pilot, Ms. Pac-Man, Super Pac-Man, Donkey Kong Jr., Donkey Kong 3 and Donkey Kong. CBP seized the items when the importer was unable to provide authorization from the owners.

The machines were seized on October 23.

[PIC]

As we posted previously, announced that it and 54 software game companies were filing a lawsuit with the Tokyo District Court against companies that import “R4 Revolution”-type devices, using the Unfair Competition Prevention Law as the legal grounding.

According to Nintendo, such devices hurts the growth of the entire game industry and steps must be taken regarding the legality of R4 carts. It’s important to note that this legal injunction is for Japan only.

Nintendo is asking for the cease of marketing, sales and importation of these Chinese-made devices. The R4 allows easy software piracy by fitting right into the DS’s cartridge slot. Data is stored on a Micro SD and downloaded from websites via a flash drive, and the R4 has a small slot that the Micro SD card goes into.

In addition to the suit, Nintendo launched a website devoted to collecting information about R4 sellers. “It’s getting increasingly difficult to track down R4 sellers as day by day they get more ingenious, flourishing online and complicating matters,” said Nintendo in a written statement. Because of this, Nintendo is calling on the strength of the masses to eradicate the sale of these devices.

The website Nintendo has set up has an anonymous form that can be filled out. Selectable choices include retail stores, internet shops, online auctions selling R4 devices. Another choice includes “game software uploads” — or those sites or individuals making DS games available online. There’s also spaces for dates and time, a box for details and another box for the shop’s address or home page.

Today, Nintendo announces that the information collected by this website has been “extremely useful”.

“We would like to say that the information we have collected from so many individuals has been extremely useful and offer our sincere gratitude for everyone’s cooperation.” Nintendo goes on to say that with the cooperation of all, the legality of this issue will be concretely resolved.

[Pic]

According to GamesIndustry.biz, Tero Virtala, the RedLynx CEO, said that the pirated version his team sent out did not include leaderboard support, which Virtala called the “soul” of the game. In other words, the pirate version functioned as a kind of demo without being a demo, encouraging downloaders to grab the fully enabled version if they enjoyed the illicit one.

“Piracy is here, so how can we take advantage of that? What we did actually, on day one, we put that game immediately on all the torrent networks ourselves,” Virtala said at the Develop Liverpool conference.

The 150,000 copies the game has sold since its launch matches the number of users with access to the leaderboards, Virtala said, so if the gambit didn’t work, at least it didn’t hurt. “At least people have not cracked our leaderboards yet,” he said.

RedLynx: We put Trials PC Game on Torrent Sites [GamesIndustry.biz]

It all started with a Craigslist post, as many seedy stories these days do. Last Thursday a listing popped up for a Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 bundle, nearly two weeks before the eagerly anticipated game was supposed to hit store shelves. Activision hired Dallas private investigation firm IPCybercriume.com to track down the sale. A little investigative Facebook work later and the firm uncovered two men who had stolen a crate of the bundles from the back room at a video game retailer. They turned the criminals over to the store’s loss prevention department, but that was only the beginning.

On the 30th of October, Activision directed IPCybercrime to an individual going by the handle “cedelamo” and “cdelamo815″, who had posted on an Xbox 360 ISO site requesting donations to buy one of the bundles so he could duplicate Modern Warfare 2. The investigators checked the email address used in the posts against Facebook users, which led them to a site offering console mods. From there they brokered a deal, acquired the culprit’s mobile phone number, and tracked him down at the address they had acquired through Facebook.

The investigators identified the culprit as 18-year-old Christian Del Amo, a modder known for selling hacked Xbox 360 hard drives filled with pirated games. IPCybercrime turned the investigation over to the Miami-Dade police department, which purchased a copy of Modern Warfare 2 from Del Amo, arrested the runner who had delivered the disc, who then led him directly to the Del Amo home, where the pirate was arrested.

“It all happened very fast,” said Rob Holmes, owner of IPCybercrime. “If these guys get their stuff out, then they can do some major damage to sales and spoil it for everybody. We plug leaks every day, but this was one of the biggest ones of the year.”

While the investigation didn’t do much to curb the piracy already plaguing Modern Warfare 2, it is an excellent example of the lengths that publishers will go to in order to protect their property, as well as being proof that no matter how well you think you covered your tracks, they’re probably not covered.

Hit up the link below for the full story.

How investigators tracked down a Modern Warfare 2 cyber pirate [VentureBeat]

Last week Microsoft launched a string of Xbox Live console bans on Xbox 360s that had been modified to play pirated software, which naturally caused an uproar among people who have modified their Xbox 360 consoles to play pirated software. Go figure. Major Nelson explains that it’s all for the sake of the community members that actively spend money on games.

As you may have read online, we’ve been actively banning consoles from Xbox LIVE that have been modified to play pirated games. Our commitment to combat piracy and support safer and more secure gameplay for the more than 20 million members of our Xbox LIVE community remains a top priority. All consumers should know that piracy is illegal, and that modifying their Xbox 360 console to play pirated discs, violates the Xbox LIVE terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox LIVE. The health of the video game business depends on customers paying for the genuine products and services they receive from manufacturers, retailers, and the third parties that support them.

It’s all common sense, really, but then the Major raises a very important point.

This would also be a good time to remind you that the warranty on an Xbox 360 console is not transferrable and if you purchase a used console that has been previously banned, you will not be able to connect to Xbox LIVE.

Since most game retailers don’t check to see if a 360 can connect to Xbox Live prior to taking it in used, you very well could wind up with a system that is unable to connect to Xbox Live at all. Luckily most retailers return used consoles without much hassle. Just make sure you check your Xbox Live connection within the return period and you should be fine.

Xbox 360 Console Bans [Major Nelson]

IGN noticed scuttlebutt about bannings in technical feedback forums and asked Microsoft about it. A spokesperson confirmed they banzored some modded consoles. Said the spokesperson to IGN:

“We have taken action against a small percentage of consoles that have been modified to play pirated game discs. In line with our commitment to combat piracy and support safer and more secure gameplay for the more than 20 million members of our Xbox LIVE community, we are suspending these modded consoles from Xbox LIVE.”

Microsoft wouldn’t say exactly when the action was taken, although IGN speculates that, from the chatter, it’s been happening over the past week.

Microsoft Performs Mass Xbox Console Banning [IGN via Hot Blooded Gaming] [Image from KnowYourMeme]

On day one, according to Neptune Interactive, the number of illegitimate copies of Tap Fu submitting high scores to the game’s leaderboards was more than 50 per cent. Two days later, it was more than 90 per cent by Neptune’s figures. Worse? Neptune’s findings indicate that zero percent of the pirates playing ill-begotten copies of Tap Fu ultimately became legitimate purchasers of the app.

The full post, which covers just how pirated copies are tracked, how iPhone owners can game for free with their Jailbroken phones and a nice dissection of pirate justification for stealing is at the developer’s blog.

Piracy and the App Store [Smells Like Donkey via Waxy.org]

Q-Game head Dylan Cuthbert has stated that he doesn’t think the company will port anything else to the PSP, telling Kotaku, “We thought the PSPgo and the PSP-3000 were safe but a rip “that works on PSP-3000s” went up on the torrent servers the day after we released PJMD.”

The PSP port is optimised for the PSP screen and features all the content of the PSN tower defence original as well as a brand new island.

Concerned about piracy, Q-Games decided to release the game as digital-only, but not to avail. “Seeing it up on torrentz.com the following day was very depressing,” states Cuthbert.

A UMD version of the game was released, but in Asia, and it was not the full game. The pirated versions appearing online are the full game.

Piracy aside, if PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe isn’t a big PSP hit for Q-Games, then porting games over to the PSP could very well be more trouble than they’re worth.

According to Nintendo, such devices hurts the growth of the entire game industry and steps must be taken regarding the legality of R4 carts. It’s important to note that this legal injunction is for Japan only.

Nintendo is asking for the cease of marketing, sales and importation of these Chinese-made devices. The R4 allows easy software piracy by fitting right into the DS’s cartridge slot. Data is stored on a Micro SD and downloaded from websites via a flash drive, and the R4 has a small slot that the Micro SD card goes into.

In addition to the suit, Nintendo is turning the heat up on retailers who sell the devices by launching website devoted to collecting information about R4 sellers. “It’s getting increasingly difficult to track down R4 sellers as day by day they get more ingenious, flourishing online and complicating matters,” said Nintendo in a written statement. Because of this, Nintendo is calling on the strength of the masses to eradicate the sale of these devices.

The website Nintendo has set up has a form that can be filled out. Selectable choices include retail stores, internet shops, online auctions selling R4 devices. Another choice includes “game software uploads” — or those sites or individuals making DS games available online. There’s also spaces for dates and time, a box for details and another box for the shop’s address or home page.

As recently as last week, countless retailers in Tokyo’s Akihabara and Osaka’s Den Den Town were openly carrying and selling R4 devices.

Nintendo Fraud Form [Nintendo] [Pic]