Popular Wii homebrew tool Wii Homebrew Channel has been shut down, and its developers have launched an excoriating attack on the originators of the software on which the channel is (or was) based.
As spotted by X user OatmealDome, the Wii Homebrew Channel GitHub repository has now been archived, and homebrew group Fail0verflow has blamed the shutdown on the discovery that the libogc library, on which Wii Homebrew Channel is based, contains stolen code.
According to Fail0verflow, “large portions of libogc were stolen directly from the Nintendo SDK (software development kit) or games using the Nintendo SDK”. The group says it “thought that at least significant parts” of the library “were original”, and so “reluctantly continued to use the project”.
However, Fail0verflow says it was recently revealed that certain parts of libogc were “stolen from RTEMS”, an open-source real-time operating system for which the library “remove[d] all attribution and copyright information”.
According to the group, libogc’s developers’ actions go “far beyond ignorance about the copyright implications of reverse engineering Nintendo binaries” and stray into “outright deliberate, malicious code theft and copyright infringement”.
Fail0verflow says libogc’s developers are “not interested in tracking this issue, finding a solution, [or] informing the community of the problematic copyright status of the project”, going as far as to say the Wii homebrew community as a whole is “built on top of a pile of lies and copyright infringement”.
As OatmealDome further points out, libogc serves as “the core of all homebrew apps” when it comes to GameCube and Wii homebrew solutions, so Fail0verflow’s accusations aren’t small potatoes in this regard.
The shutdown of the Wii Homebrew Channel, or rather the cessation of ongoing development, is a massive blow to the Wii homebrew scene, but unfortunately, Fail0verflow says it can’t encourage further development as it’s “impossible to legally and legitimately compile this software”.
Some might say Fail0verflow is being hypocritical given emulation is a common usage for Wii homebrew software, but I don’t think that’s entirely fair. Modding a Wii with homebrew software is far from illegal; it’s playing copyrighted games or software that crosses that particular line.
In any case, we’ll have to wait and see what impact this has on the Wii homebrew scene as a whole, but it’s not likely to be a positive one. Stay tuned for more.
