London's High Court bans R4 mod chip in the UK

by Steven Williamson on 29 July 2010, 09:09

Tags: Nintendo (TYO:7974), DS, Action/Adventure

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Nintendo has successfully ended a long campaign to get the R4 chip banned in the U.K.

At London’s High Court yesterday, the R4 cartridge, which allows users to use Homebrew software and play illegally downloaded Nintendo DS games, was ruled as illegal. Last night, R4 retailers went into over-drive to sell their stock of R4 chips by cutting the price substantially before the ruling came into play at 8am this morning.

Defendant Playables Ltd. claimed that the chip was legal as it allows the play of homebrew applications, but the court ruled that R4 circumvents the DS security system and is therefore illegal.

The R4 chip, which is said to have cost Nintendo millions of pounds of lost revenue from game sales, can no longer be imported, sold or advertised in the U.K.


HEXUS Forums :: 12 Comments

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I'm guessing this applies to the other mod chips aswell?

I suppose the majority of people buying this probabily pirate games but I liked using the homebrew software, its shame really
Iron Sights;1958566
I'm guessing this applies to the other mod chips aswell?

I suppose the majority of people buying this probabily pirate games but I liked using the homebrew software, its shame really

I believe this relates specifically to the R4 chip only.
Iron Sights;1958566
I suppose the majority of people buying this probabily pirate games but I liked using the homebrew software, its shame really

Theres probably also a small minority that also use it to “consolidate” their game collection.

Carrying around 1 R4 with all your games on it is significantly easier than carrying around lots of cartridges that might get lost or damaged.
still R4's are one of the more basic and well imho rubbish mod chips anyway
I can understand why they've done this, but as a big fan of emulation it's a bit disappointing.

I'm thinking about this - if they've banned the cards because they bypass security to play commercial ROMs does this mean that if someone releases homebrew cards without the commercial ROM bypass code that they'll be legal? I may be totally misunderstanding it, but I'd quite happily buy one of those to run Homebrew/emulation stuff.