There’s no piracy on the 3DS yet, however, with the recent hackings, it could be possible that the system will get as bad the Nintendo DS for third parties, but could also ensure a lot of hardware sales.
This is sort of a pre emptive warning from Renegade Kid–the studio that has developed Mutant Mudds, Dementium and Moon. These are all indie games but piracy is a big no-no according to them and their boss says that they will drop the system if any such thing happens.
“Piracy on the Nintendo DS crippled the DS retail market, especially in Europe. 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,” studio head Jools Watsham wrote in a blog post.
He cited the sales of Dementium which sold 100k copies but its successor did half and that was due to the piracy on the system.
“We’ll never truly know why that was so, but many seem to believe that piracy had a lot to do with it. If piracy gets bad on the 3DS, we will have no choice but to stop supporting the platform with new games.”
This is a really complicated thing, because users who have bought the system have every right to break it open.