Japanese Police Arrest 36-Year-Old Man on Suspicion of Tampering With Pokémon Violet Save Data - IGN
www.ign.com
Police in Japan have arrested a 36-year-old man on suspicion of selling illegally modified Pokémon save data to customers online — a practice which is banned under the country’s 2019 Unfair Competition Prevention Act.

This dude was selling Pokemans with modified move sets for up to $80 a pop and could now face up to 5 years in prison.

Is this not insane? Or do you think he could face a much less severe sentence and the 5 years prison and $30k just the upper limit for this particular set of crime?

  • NikkiB@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    3 months ago

    "The 36-year-old allegedly took custom orders for rare Pokémon, and sold the resulting tampered data between December 2022 to March 2023, for up to 13,000 yen ($84) a time on a website that served as a marketplace for video game assets and items. He also offered deals in which six Pokémon would be created for the equivalent of roughly $30 in yen."

    How, with GameShark?

    • taiphlosion@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      3 months ago

      There's a program that you can use to modify Pokémon data, it's fairly easy to do but it's free so idk why this dude was charging people for it

        • taiphlosion@lemmygrad.ml
          ·
          3 months ago

          People are willing to pay for lots of things that don't need to be paid for, so I'm not sure how paying for data and pixels you could easily do yourself is reasonable

          • Flyberius [comrade/them]
            ·
            3 months ago

            Because they don't know how or can't be bothered. This is a one man cottage industry. I really do not see the issue

          • zkrzsz [he/him]
            ·
            3 months ago

            I looked up and see that PKHek doesn't have Japanese lang supported. Plus Japan is mostly console, console gamer that is not very good at English + PC skill may need this service.

            Not to mention if the guy doing this know the risks involved and charge high. Or people know the risks and don't do it leads to low supply/high demand.

            • loathesome dongeater@lemmygrad.mlM
              ·
              3 months ago

              It's possible there is an easily available Japanese software for this too. More often than not because of the language barrier the Anglosphere and non-Anglo countries don't interact freely for stuff like this.

          • loathesome dongeater@lemmygrad.mlM
            ·
            3 months ago

            It's just a strange situation overall. If you consider a player who meets the following criteria:

            • plays pokemon violet
            • is desperate to cheat in it
            • yet does not have the technical knowhow to do it themselves
            • is desperate enough to pay for it
            • know where to pay for it as a service

            The overlap according to my intuition at least feels incredibly small. Especially considering that you need either an emulator or a hacked and possibly modded Switch to make use of it.

            Yet this guy was committing this """crime""" in enough volume to warrant an arrest. It's just difficult to wrap the head around.

            I am guessing it was a situation sinilar to what mobile game companies call "whales" where a few players spend an inordinate amount of money for reasons incomprehensible to most people.

            • 7bicycles [he/him]
              ·
              3 months ago

              Yet this guy was committing this """crime""" in enough volume to warrant an arrest. It's just difficult to wrap the head around.

              I think occams razor here says laws in japan are just fucked up

            • taiphlosion@lemmygrad.ml
              ·
              3 months ago

              If you're that desperate enough to cheat in a game that you're willing to spend money on it I think there's a much deeper issue there

              • Flyberius [comrade/them]
                ·
                3 months ago

                People can spend their money on what they want. The issue here really isn't people paying for Pokémon hacks. It's that the Japanese courts are sending people to jail over selling them.

                What do you think the deeper issue here actually is? Disrespecting Pokémon?

      • amber (she/her)@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        3 months ago

        I’m pretty sure you need homebrew to access the save data, so if your switch isn’t exploitable you’re SOL. In that case paying someone to make the mons you want and trade them to you makes sense to me, though no way I’d ever pay $80 for it lol