R4 And Other Flashcards Outlawed In United Kingdom

Tweet

Good news for video game developers and publishers, bad news for would-be pirates in the United Kingdom. The government of the UK has banned the import and sale of R4 cards and other flashcart cards that allow play of pirated games on a Nintendo DS. The decision was made by a high court judge, who ruled that the flashcarts were illegal.

In case you don’t understand – Nintendo DS game carts are basically proprietary SD memory cards (in layman’s terms). Flashcarts, the most popular being the R4, allows gamers to download pirated games and then play them back on the DS.

Nintendo has been working hard to get the flashcarts banned across the world. They’ve gotten them declared illegal in Australia and they even have a pending suit against the Australian reseller of the device to the tune of $467,000 USD.

Nintendo is obviously bothered about how easy the cost-of-entry is regarding these R4 cards. While playing pirated games on a modern console (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, etc.) requires taking apart and sodering bits together – buying the R4 card is a pretty easy way to get into the pirate scene.

So, as said – good news for video game developers. Bad news for those who enjoyed playing free DS games. No word on how close Nintendo is to banning these things in North America/Japan – but they’re definitely on a warpath.