A Russian cloud gaming website is now offering Nintendo games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
We got a tip on this from Twitter account Pirat_Nation. However, there were comments on their tweet, claiming that those listings were removed.
However, we can confirm that the listings are still up. You can see the store page for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom here and Animal Crossing: New Horizons here. We have also uploaded a screenshot of the The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom page for posterity sake.
This page, translated by Google from Russian to English, clearly shows, among other things, a link to play the game in the cloud. So it’s possible what’s happening here is that this website is connected to a server farm with actual Nintendo Switch consoles running these games.
Alternately, they could be running this on a server farm filled with emulators running Switch. The latter scenario might sound like the better option, since they could run Switch games on more powerful hardware. But it runs the risk of compatibility issues.
The site in question is VK Play, a video game platform run by VKontakte. And VKontakte, also known as VK for short, is a Russian social media website based in St. Petersburg. VK has faced prior controversies from the massive copyright infringement that happens in it. They have subsequently faced legal threats and had to resolve these issues with their own copyright tracker and IP reporting system.
VK is not owned by the Russian government, but it cannot be ignored that real life politics may be a factor on why this has happened without seeming action from the Russian government. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many multinational companies, including Nintendo, have made actions to end their business in the country.
In April of last year, Nintendo explained their decision to leave Russia in a statement to Eurogamer, saying:
“In early 2022, Nintendo suspended shipping products to Russia, and placed Nintendo eShop under maintenance following the suspension of transactions in Russian rubles by the payment provider. Following this, and as a result of the economic outlook, Nintendo of Europe has decided to wind down operations of its Russian subsidiary.
We will maintain a minimal presence in Russia to complete the wind-down process, and to fulfil legal, contractual and administrative requirements. Employees in Moscow received individual compensation packages, and their contracts ended by mutual agreement and with our appreciation for their efforts.”
Nintendo also clarified that the head of Nintendo in Russia, Yasha Haddazhi, remains an employee, seemingly out of legal obligations. At the same time, Nintendo had no involvement with Haddazhi continuing to import their games to sell in Russia.
To put it plainly, Nintendo is in an unusual place when it comes to enforcing their copyright in Russia. It’s even stranger when you remember that in 1989, Nintendo sent Henk Rogers to Elektronorgtechnica in Moscow to negotiate the rights for Tetris. 35 years later, Nintendo seems to be helpless in how their supposed employees represent them in the country.
In fact, since this is now in the open, we should not be surprised if even more cases of copyright infringement for video games is going on in Russia right now. There could be more Russian websites doing this to Nintendo, and they could also be doing this to PlayStation, Xbox, EA, Ubisoft, etc. As Russia’s trade relations and economic position in the world continues to be harmed by their war, one wonders if they will take action on this, or if they are already condoning it.
