I love video games. I grew up with Super Mario Bros on the NES and since the 2000's I feel absolutely spoiled by the burgoening and diverse indie game industry.

I love video games. I grew up with Super Mario Bros on the NES and since the 2000's I feel absolutely spoiled by the burgoening and diverse indie game industry. I can hardly believe that today I can mix and match genres, and the fact that the genre "deck building city builder roquelike" (looking at you Against the Storm) even exists is amazing. This whole industry exists because society has made guarantees that you can in fact license your game for sale and be rewarded for all your hard work. I'm glad that piracy has been far enough on the edges that people still find it worth their time to invest years into dreaming, crafting, and delivering wonderful new games every day. Where does this leave console emulators? I agree with everyone here that there is nothing inherently wrong with building them. But practically speaking, they do in fact significantly lower the barrier to "I'm going to play this game without paying the creators for it." If you, like me, love video games and want there to be a healthy and thriving market for them, then what is the right and correct set of rules that we can agree on as a society? I don't think banning emulators makes sense, but it bothers me how much the hacker community completely lacks any sense of nuance for how their "fun hacker project" can have a detrimental effect on the very thing they love. If the creators of these emulators are doing it out of a love and passion for video games, should they not also encourage users to pay for them? I know Nintendo isn't popular around here, and this particular action of theirs seems overreaching even to me, but if I have to pick a side I'm choosing the one that has some semblance of a future for video games.