That Age-Old Debate Between Piracy vs. Accessibility

That Age-Old Debate Between Piracy vs. Accessibility

We gotchu.

Ni no Kuni and Inazuma Eleven publisher Level-5 rattled some nerves this week by broadcasting a strong stance against software piracy. Critics were quick to point out the fact that Level-5 was probably referring to its Yo-Kai Watch games for Nintendo 3DS, which the company made infamously difficult to come by in the U.S. As some parties have noted, Yo-Kai Watch 3 was supposedly printed so severely below demand that it now sells for about 20 times its original retail price. The fourth game in the series never shipped here at all and has become a cause célèbre within the (unofficial) fan translation community.

We’re sympathetic to both sides. As a publisher, we’re certainly not keen on piracy ourselves. Our team has families to feed, after all!

But, we also understand how frustrating it can be for fans when they find themselves unable to get a hold of games that they’re perfectly willing to pay money for. In fact, that’s been a guiding principle for Limited Run Games since the beginning: putting delisted or obsolete software back into circulation. And, despite what certain people claim, exploiting scarcity and FOMO doesn’t factor in; on the contrary, we’ve done our best over the years to avoid feeding into those things. It’s why we moved toward an open preorder system, giving fans a reasonable chance to pick up the games that interest them without fear of allocations. It’s why we maintain the Vault, where people can grab older titles once we no longer need to maintain a reserve to cover replacements or damaged shipments. It’s why we try to keep a healthy selection of older games on hand at Limited Run Retail, where people can pick up releases that have more or less sold out. We certainly aren’t perfect. We get things wrong sometimes, though we always try to put things right and avoid making those mistakes again in the future.

This is not a paid promotion for Limited Run Retail. It’s just a really good place to shop, is all.

Publishing video games is a tricky business, especially when you look beyond the realm of blockbusters to the kinds of games we (and Level-5) sell. Knowing how many copies to print can be challenging. Produce too few and you annoy fans who miss out to snipers and shopping bots. Produce too many and you’re left with hundreds of thousands of dollars in unsold inventory and may find yourself flirting with bankruptcy. 

So we can understand where both Level-5 and their frustrated fans are coming from. Obviously, the solution here is to get those rare or missing games into circulation again. Nintendo no longer manufactures 3DS cartridges, but we do know a certain publishing company that loves to put compilations of beloved games for modern systems into physical form. Which is to say: Give us a call, guys.