Wii homebrew contains a component called libogc, it was recently discovered that a lot of code from libogc was stolen from official Nintendo SDKs. Because of this the maintainers of Homebrew Channel have archived the project and are no longer accepting new contributions.
The Homebrew Channel has ceased development. A developer alleges that key figures in the Wii homebrew community stole code from Nintendo and other projects.
"The Wii homebrew community was all built on top of a pile of lies and copyright infringement"
19 Comments
Extremely unfortunate. Hopefully the homebrew community is able to bounce back and create something quickly that doesn’t use stolen code.
To quote the church lady – “Well, isn’t that CONVENIENT?”
I know there’s other uses for the homebrew channel than to play pirated games but it was a major reason why people used it. It feels kind of weird that it’s okay to support software that allows you to play stolen games, but not okay that the software itself uses stolen code.
Editing to add that I’ve used homebrew channel before. I’m not criticizing the use of it, I’m questioning why this is the line that makes it immoral to continue using.
It is unfortunate, from a personal level I think this is fine, the second Wii was abandoned I don’t particularly care that the software was in this case stolen (if no one is ganna make money from it anymore and the users are not as well, what’s the damage here), imo I would of liked laws that forces companies to released abandoned software to there users, so they can choose to continue to support stuff. Unfortunately that is not the law so this is probably go away.
I just assumed “homebrew” was stolen content to begin with
Surprise surprise lmao, a program for stealing games contains stolen code too
Unrelated, but I still love the banger theme that plays from the wii homebrew channel. As a poor student back in the day that didn’t have a GBA player, I loved using the homebrew channel for GBA emulators to get it on my borked CTR stuck on permabloom.
am I crazy if I don’t really care? It’s not like they bit into Nintendo’s bottom line at all.
OP completely missed the real problem which was that it also used stolen open source libraries without credit or attribution. Much more unethical than stealing from a corporation.
Ok?
so, who snitched?
I just hope this makes people, who thought of homebrewing a console, finally break their procrastination and homebrew their damn console. I really enjoy having ways to improve my console experience, nothing beats official hardware and having it be so tailored for your own experience is probably the biggest W gaming has ever done.
Huh, TIL homebrew isn’t a form of piracy. Neat
I developed many homebrew using libogc… Man it was 20 years ago, I feel so OLD
I’m sure I’m not the first to say this, but is it news to anyone else that Wii homebrew is still actively developed? It sort of seams useless these days.
I’m sorry… wasn’t the whole point of homebrew to port Nintendo games from other consoles onto Wii? Wasn’t the whole thing illegal from the beginning?
Why bother blowing the whistle on this? Are they that paranoid of legal action or do they have moral dilemmas over the non existant damage this is doing to the billion dollar corporation that prints money?
“The authors of libogc didn’t just steal propriety Nintendo code, but also saw fit to steal an open source RTOS and remove all attribution and copyright information.”
That’s just downright scummy.
How does anyone prove that the code is legitimate and not stolen? It’s a he said she said at that point right? It’s not like Nintendo has to provide their code and have an unbiased third party review it, right? I feel like Nintendo would tell everyone that everybody steals their code even if it was legitimate.