Is it OK to have a Dev Kit in your possession?

Is it OK?

 

Nop not in the slightest but as long as you keep to yourself no one is going to waste their time and money to go after you.
In other words, Just don't do anything stupid and you'll be fine.

 

Not nearly that clear cut, there are lots of situations where it might be okay to physically have the unit anyway. Really quite complicated.

 

Oh? My understanding of it is since we are not licensed developers then we can't have them, further more at least in the case of MS the kits are leased not sold to the studios afaik.

 

Contracts are a complicated thing.

 

I'd assume if they are old or previous generation, they'd be fine to have. No one at Sony is going to be threatened by a nerd with a PS2 TOOL.

 

This^
I don't think that its legal or "OK" at all but just no one cares as long as you behave.

 

.

 

Yeah I was always under the assumption that if its an older dev kit (360, PS3, and back) then the companies wouldn't necessarily care if you own it. Cause I doubt SEGA goes after people with Dreamcast Dev Boxes.

 

No, it's 200% illegal and you shall be drawn and quartered.

 

Here's the thing to remember; in example of Midway games for instance. When the company went into bankruptcy protection, they were forced by the courts to liquidate ALL assets including development hardware. As such, Microsoft for instance, had no recourse as they cannot come after the company for A: selling off an otherwise "contract protected" asset (i.e. An XDK) and B: cannot demand said items from the perspective buyer because they bought the item in a liquidation sale in good faith. So in this sitch you'd have an xdk, in possession other than Midway, with someone who has zero contractual obligations with Microsoft. It would be 100% legal in that same situation because whomever purchased it from the sale did so legally. So, if you bought an xdk from someone who bought an xdk from some dude who bought it from a sank development company, is that legal? That's why these things are better considered "gray" part of the legal system.

 

Basically, keep your head down and you'll be ok. I managed to get in some shit with them a few years ago but its because I made a stupid move really. But I mean nowadays its not possible (by standard means) to do what I did back then so you should be all good. Plus it was the year MS decided to go full lockdown on this sort of stuff when it was at its peak. Nowadays, they have their full attention on Xbox One.

 

I couldn't agree more. Even OG Debugs seem to run the entire auction course on eBay these days.

 

Yeah, you can find 360 ones, if you smart (you loyal)

 

yeah they are far from being legal to own unless you have the license and whatnot that comes with them. trust me i had about 50 fbi agents here clearing out all my devkits and prototypes from 5:30am to about 9am back in 2012. needless to say it wasnt fun. which is why i will never buy any of that shit ever again.

 

You'd think they have something better to do? I'm guessing a polite knock on the door with a warrant and an officer or two would have sufficed. 50 FBI agents? Do you vacation in Afghanistan?

As I understand it, if buy a devkit from a liquidation sale (which is where I'm assuming 95% of them originate - and explains why they don't surface for sale until a few years after release) then you're not breaking any law. If anything, it's the person putting it up for auction that's probably breaking the law - but they're already bankrupt so there's no point chasing them, I'd hazard a guess.

It's what you choose to do with the devkit that probably drops you into that 'grey area'. Go hunting leaked games and either (a) not cover your tracks at all or (b) try selling/leaking that game before its official release and you'll become a (very obvious) target for the law.

I would have thought most of this was very much common sense.

The posts from people doing prison time/community service all reveal people who went too far and should have known better from the start. I mean, you're smart enough to get the kit and go looking for software but you're not smart enough to realize you're breaking the law by offering to share/sell it and could screw up the sales of a million dollar video game? There's a word for that...

 

It's interesting that you mention Midway, as I had a Midway DVT4 at one point that I received from a trade with Borman - from memory I believe it was used to make Slugfest 2006. Eventually I decided to sell it as I wasn't using it and thought someone else would be able to get a lot more enjoyment out of it than me, so I listed it on eBay. Not even 24 hours later, the listing had been taken down by eBay at Microsoft's request and I received a cease and desist email from Microsoft's piracy division, which I always thought was odd because I wouldn't exactly consider own 100% legitimate hardware as being "piracy". But then again, Nintendo sent me an email through their piracy division when I was selling IS-NITRO-CAPTURE units on eBay, too...

So even in the exact situation that you just described, it seemed that I didn't have full ownership over the kit. Strange stuff.

 

It takes zero effort to have something taken down, that shouldn't be a judge of ownership or anything else

 

Does it also take zero effort for Nintendo to send someone to my house to collect a pair of 8 year old development controllers?

 

Being in Japan is a different story, but I imagine it didnt take them much. Many large companies have recovery teams, and they can ask for whatever they want back. Microsoft has done that to people in the UK in the past. They can ask for it back, but whether or not you are required to hand it over is a different story (and not one I would test either, they have more money, especially while in Japan)