4 ms·

> What we want is for the level of friction required to acquire and play a legitimate copy of a game in an emulator to be at least semi comparable to the effort

by Nursie 5y ago

> What we want is for the level of friction required to acquire and play a legitimate copy of a game in an emulator to be at least semi comparable to the effort required to find and download a pirated rip. Yeah, unfortunately that seems pretty darn unlikely, especially where Nintendo wants to control the experience and make sure people are getting it exactly the way they design it. I can see why they wouldn't - the moment they start selling it like that it's a support nightmare and their perceived quality would probably plummet.

Wowfunhappy 5y ago
Okay, here's another example a la PS3 discs—it so happens that people have figured out how to download Wii U games directly from Nintendo's eShop servers. As in, any game on the eShop. You just need to track down a somewhat-sketchy Java app. What if this capability was built into the official version of Cemu, but (!) with some sort of basic ownership check included? I'd imagine that if it's possible to pull games directly off of Nintendo's servers, there's a good chance it's also possible to query which games an account owns. As far as I know, nobody ever looked into this. There's no interest. If emulator developers want people to use their emulators legally, I think there are some more creative avenues that could be explored. Not in all cases, but at least in some of them.
- crtasm 5y ago
  Emulator devs don't want to be sued by Nintendo, adding code to acquire games from their servers would be an incredibly risky move even if they were able to check what's owned on an account.
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    Is this substantially different from e.g. Dolphin downloading Virtual Console and WiiWare games? (In Dolphin's case, this works because Dolphin can emulate the Wii Shop channel. You used to be able to make purchases directly in Dolphin, and you can still redownload previously-purchased software.)
    - crtasm 5y ago
      Yes because Dolphin is not distributing the rom/code for the Wii Shop channel. Users who decide to emulate it need that + various other things to make it work: "Wii Shop Channel has functionalities that requires proper network certificates extracted from an IOS to work." "Keys from a real Wii are required." "a proper NAND is required." https://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?title=Wii_Shop_Channel https://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?title=Wii_Shop_Channe... If Dolphin was distributing any of that they'd be getting a letter from Nintendo.

by Nursie 5y ago

Wowfunhappy 5y ago

Okay, here's another example a la PS3 discs—it so happens that people have figured out how to download Wii U games directly from Nintendo's eShop servers. As in, any game on the eShop. You just need to track down a somewhat-sketchy Java app. What if this capability was built into the official version of Cemu, but (!) with some sort of basic ownership check included? I'd imagine that if it's possible to pull games directly off of Nintendo's servers, there's a good chance it's also possible to query which games an account owns. As far as I know, nobody ever looked into this. There's no interest. If emulator developers want people to use their emulators legally, I think there are some more creative avenues that could be explored. Not in all cases, but at least in some of them.

crtasm 5y ago
Emulator devs don't want to be sued by Nintendo, adding code to acquire games from their servers would be an incredibly risky move even if they were able to check what's owned on an account.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  Is this substantially different from e.g. Dolphin downloading Virtual Console and WiiWare games? (In Dolphin's case, this works because Dolphin can emulate the Wii Shop channel. You used to be able to make purchases directly in Dolphin, and you can still redownload previously-purchased software.)
  - crtasm 5y ago
    Yes because Dolphin is not distributing the rom/code for the Wii Shop channel. Users who decide to emulate it need that + various other things to make it work: "Wii Shop Channel has functionalities that requires proper network certificates extracted from an IOS to work." "Keys from a real Wii are required." "a proper NAND is required." https://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?title=Wii_Shop_Channel https://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?title=Wii_Shop_Channe... If Dolphin was distributing any of that they'd be getting a letter from Nintendo.