The Alternative Remedies Guide

Ever since the very first video games consoles thirty years ago, individuals have had a compulsion to alter both software and hardware for pleasure and/or profit. Be it simple machine code hacks on microcomputers such as the Spectrum and BBC to allow you unlimited “lives” on games back in the 80s, to Nintendo Wii mod chips enabling you to play a greater range of games on their Wii.

Software makers and system manufacturers have had an uncertain relationship with modders and gamers who are often one and the same. In one way, hackers add worth to the systems and games – e.g. modified chips give great convenience to gamers who can play backups on their consoles. Likewise, games hacking adds new purpose very challenging games, and in the modern gaming era it’s even a convention for software developers to embed cheat codes for gamers to discover.

But to counter that, games manufacturers say that this kind of chip modification lessens their revenue, as mods can also be utilized to bypass piracy measures, and bypassing firmware that restricts DVDs to play only in certain geographical locations. These are powerful causes for hardware and software developers to forever add progressive steps to make chipmods all that more dificult.

But no matter how powerful the arguments are in opposition to chipmods, chip modification is a big market that isn’t going to disappear anytime soon.