As hackers tear into 3DS, one studio considers looking elsewhere

"If piracy gets bad on the 3DS, we will have no choice but to stop supporting the platform with new games."

- Jools Watsham, co-founder of Mutant Mudds studio Renegade Kid, discusses his concerns over Nintendo 3DS piracy. Over the last couple of weeks, hackers have apparently made several breakthroughs in breaching the handheld's copy protection, with one claiming that he has discovered an exploit to take full control of an unmodified system. Watsham is worried that the 3DS will now suffer similar piracy to its predecessor, the Nintendo DS. "Piracy on the Nintendo DS crippled the DS retail market, especially in Europe," he says. "We'll never know how/if Dementium II landed in as many hands as the first game, Dementium: The Ward, due to the rampant piracy at the time." The original game sold over 100,000 copies on the system, while the sequel managed less than half of that -- and Watsham believes the ever-expanding piracy rates were to blame, at least in part. "The good news is that Nintendo has the ability to put up a good fight against pirates due to 3DS system updates and such," he adds. "Let's hope this is enough to stop piracy." And the Planet Crashers dev has some select words for those people who believe piracy is not an issue on Nintendo handhelds. "Some say that piracy leads to more game sales, claiming that it enables players to try before they buy. Bullshit," he says. "The percentage of people who will spend money on a game that they already got for free is surely very small - especially with so many 'free' games already in the market. The line between what should/should not be free is getting very blurry."