5 ms·

I am not going to blatantly support piracy of video games (Most of us work in the software industry, and most of us want to get paid for our work. Video games s

I am not going to blatantly support piracy of video games (Most of us work in the software industry, and most of us want to get paid for our work. Video games should be no different.), but I think it's clear that game preservation has some issues in its current state, and Nintendo is one of the worst offenders. Nintendo is a lot like Apple in this way. They see things in one way, and assume all consumers will happily conform to that standard. They are stubborn and perhaps less willing to listen to the consumer than any other major video game company. And we all know that gamers are some of the most vocal, opinionated fans out there. In my opinion, if you own a game (digitally or physically), there are absolutely zero moral qualms, and there should be zero legal issues, with playing a copy of that game on an emulator. Emulation is 100% legal and should be encouraged. ESPECIALLY because Nintendo makes it such a challenge to legally acquire old games, I understand why people turn to piracy and emulators. I think Nintendo is within their rights to not want people showing videos of how to explicitly download pirated games and emulate them, but I don't see any way they can prevent people from simply showing an emulated game.

asimops 5y ago
But where do you still find games that you own? You might be lucky enought to still own a physical media but the game is still only licensed to you. What if the licensor decides that the media will burn the first account it is used with into some efuses? No more selling that cart. You can be f*cked with every minute. Or just a hypothetical example: you bought a cool sandbox game in alpha and then some years later, some big IT corp comes around and requires that you now have to use their account system, hand over your data and agree to being tracked.
- _michaelll 5y ago
  Shit, thanks for reminding me I have migrate before they lock me out
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
> In my opinion, if you own a game (digitally or physically), there are absolutely zero moral qualms, and there should be zero legal issues, with playing a copy of that game on an emulator. I agree. However—What percentage of the people who visit a Switch rom site, and are scrolling through the list of games, think "oh, that game looks interesting, but I don't own it. I won't download that one. Maybe I'll buy an eShop code off Amazon, and then come back and download it." I've been that person. I'd hazard a guess that people like me make up 0.1% of users, at most. And I'm being generous. There's a problem here. Possibly one with no solution; I don't know the right thing to do. But, I certainly don't fault Nintendo for their hostility towards emulators.

asimops 5y ago

But where do you still find games that you own? You might be lucky enought to still own a physical media but the game is still only licensed to you. What if the licensor decides that the media will burn the first account it is used with into some efuses? No more selling that cart. You can be f*cked with every minute. Or just a hypothetical example: you bought a cool sandbox game in alpha and then some years later, some big IT corp comes around and requires that you now have to use their account system, hand over your data and agree to being tracked.

_michaelll 5y ago
Shit, thanks for reminding me I have migrate before they lock me out

Wowfunhappy 5y ago

> In my opinion, if you own a game (digitally or physically), there are absolutely zero moral qualms, and there should be zero legal issues, with playing a copy of that game on an emulator. I agree. However—What percentage of the people who visit a Switch rom site, and are scrolling through the list of games, think "oh, that game looks interesting, but I don't own it. I won't download that one. Maybe I'll buy an eShop code off Amazon, and then come back and download it." I've been that person. I'd hazard a guess that people like me make up 0.1% of users, at most. And I'm being generous. There's a problem here. Possibly one with no solution; I don't know the right thing to do. But, I certainly don't fault Nintendo for their hostility towards emulators.