Where to get illegally pirated games | This Week in Business

Legal This Week in Business is our weekly recap column, a collection of stats and quotes from recent stories presented with a dash of opinion (sometimes more than a dash) and intended to shed light on various trends. Check every Friday for a new entry. Every now and then, piracy becomes relevant to the day-to-day reporting of games industry news, usually when a big new game has been leaked online before its actual release date, like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Halo 2, or more recently, Splatoon 3 and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. And in those cases, the websites covering the leak often get very shy about where exactly that new game can be found online, perhaps because they’re worried about assisting piracy, or maybe because they want to keep in the good graces of the publishers whose games have been pirated. I’m going to tell you exactly where you can go to get a treasure trove of pirated games Well forget that noise. I’m going to tell you exactly where you can go to get a treasure trove of pirated games. I’m going to tell you exactly which sketchy website out there is taking on immense legal risk just to sell some bootlegged games. And not just any games. Nintendo games. Ok, there’s a process to this. First, open a new private or incognito window… on second thought, I don’t know how much I trust those. If it’s still the same program, maybe there’s a chance they could somehow access your normal browsing history and figure out who you are. If we’re going to visit the shady underbelly of the internet, we need something completely separate, untraceable. An entirely new identity with no history, no ties to anything you’ve ever touched. Open Microsoft Edge. Using the InPrivate mode (and/or the VPN of your choice), you’re going to navigate to the website I’m about to name for you. That’s right. I don’t believe that whole fable about if you stand in front of the mirror and say the name of a pirate site three times Nintendo’s lawyers show up and drag you away forever. So I’m just going to do it. [deep breath] Ok, here we go. Amazon. Amazon. [Nervous glance over my shoulder] …Amazon. Are… are they behind me? No? That’s a little weird, right? Nintendo is famously heavy-handed about IP protection in all its forms and Amazon is absolutely loaded with blatantly infringing products. (Oh, and you can close Edge now. That was a joke. I can’t believe you actually did it, that’s so gross.) STAT | Between 366 and 589 – The number of items that Amazon.ca returns for the search query “R4 card,” depending on which browser I use for some reason. Granted, some of them are rookie trading cards of Toronto Maple Leafs superstar Willie Nylander, but a bunch of them are really just for the notorious
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