Hold your homebrew horses: semi-bricking Wii Region Changer wrings drama
In the wake of homebrew developer Waninkoko‘s Region Changer, the homebrew community revolving around the Nintendo Wii turned to a classic Mexican standoff. On one side, there’s Marcan and Bushing calling developer Waninkoko “irresponsibile” regarding the questionable release of a semi-bricking homebrew process. On the other is Waninkoko and allies, who believe that lack of warning was an honest mistake, and the irresponsibility is an oversight. Get to the full story for more.
The recently released Wii Region Changer from Waninkoko has a risk of semi-bricking your Wii, but that’s old news. Those who’ve taken the time to absorb the basics of region-lock circumvention already know that changing the region settings of your console will also change the console’s system configuration.
And a configuration mismatch is a stall waiting to happen. Of course, there are already ways of reverting from semi-bricks. Heck, I had a couple of those in three months, and that’s no biggie.
But Marcan of Elotrolado.net believes the lack of warning or safety was a huge irresponsibility on Waninkoko’s part, because the homebrew was publicly released, and was rendered usable for even first-time region-free users.
This is where everything breaks apart. Marcan says on record that region-lock circumvention was allegedly discussed with Bushing of Team Twiizer, and to some degree, it had some ties to the issue of encouraging piracy.
I guess this feeling of resentment towards Waninkoko’s pro-piracy image pretty much bottled up since the release of WAD Manager, then the custom IOS installer, the IOS uninstaller, and the Downgrader for the Wii.
After all, we all know that Bushing has been against pro-Wii piracy all this time. He sternly said that an ISO loader will never spew from the Wii homebrew community. It appears to be the code of honor for the Wii homebrew community.
To that end, news has come ’round that Marcan, together with Bushing, have decided to call a full information blackout on Waninkoko, and will no longer share new information the closely-knit Wii homebrew community may encounter in the future.
This has sparked some serious friction in the community, as Waninkoko’s allies rallied to his end. Another division stayed neutral, but managed to put out these points of sense before the tomato-throwing started.
As with all unsigned code, there’s always a risk of malfunction, error, or damage to devices and peripherals. Something a 20-year period of getting intimate with all things technical in computers would teach you, believe me. Homebrew is no exception. As many have pointed out, there are always risks, even if the risk isn’t obvious, advised, or hinted. Waninkoko’s Region Changer is one such given.
Are the higher-ups listening? I can’t tell much from where I’m standing, but it does appear they want to keep their relations with Nintendo amenable – if it’s even at a good stage right this moment.
The status quo is divided: some believe that relations might not even be existent with Nintendo, if the opinions from shadowz of Wiinewz are anything to ponder over. On the other hand, some might agree that even the most impressive of the Wii homebrew community is getting a bit too hypocritical with their stance. Shadowz’ take, we quote (a bit long):
Are they forgetting why homebrew exists in the first place? Nintendo disagrees with openness because of some apps that homebrewers could possibly make so they do not give them the information to make apps. Now Marcan is wants to do the same thing in homebrew community. Yes, Waninkoko’s apps may be unstable but they are making new, useful functionality available to more people. Bushing et al. may have done 90% of the work to make it possible, but in the same way Nintendo has done 90% of the work to make the wii platform work. The situation seems somewhat hypocritical to me, they are working on making the platform more open and accessible for everything but at the same time limiting information when they disagree how its used. Of course, there are always shades of gray in situations like this, which is why I didn’t have a huge problem with all the negativity towards this in the past, but it seems like its getting the point where its too much.
Need more be said? If so, jot down your thoughts below. Pro-piracy or anti-piracy – so not the drama. A translation of Marcan’s two-cents can be had from in-the-scene correspondent Brakken, who’s all over it like a bear on honey (follow external link).
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