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Apple now allows retro game emulators on its App Store
- cjk2 3y agoI already use an HP48 emulator that pulls ROMs off the Internet on iOS. It has been around for a long time. I suspect that most of the rules were to prevent Sega or Nintendo getting pissy and start suing Apple.
- iilfat 3y agoThe most concerning detail for me is how to acquire the rights to the ROM. Can anyone who legally purchased it upload an emulator of a popular game to the App Store?
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y agoHah! Not even close.
- Drakim 3y agoThere are legal ROMs from the homebrew community, so it's definitely possible.
- jsheard 3y agoWith the caveat that some emulators need BIOS files or decryption keys pulled from the original system, and you can't redistribute those even if you only intend to run free homebrew games.
- Drakim 3y agoTrue! But there exists clean room implementations of some systems BIOSes that could be used.
- scarface_74 3y agoAnd the last time that was tested with Connectix and Sony, Connectix won in the end but faced so many legal fees they still had to end up selling it to Sony and abandoning it.
- Drakim 3y agoSure, and companies could also sue you for libel when you leave a negative product review. Life is unfair, but when talking strictly about what's legal or not, homebrew roms using an emulator that has a clean room implementations of BIOS should be perfectly acceptable for the App store legal-wise.
- jonny_eh 3y agoSystems that have BIOSes but their emulators no longer need them: Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, PlayStation, PlayStation Portable. There may be others. Most 16-bit and earlier systems don’t have a BIOS.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- yau8edq12i 3y agoWhy can't you redistribute those? You cannot copyright a key. If I bought a console and somehow manage to extract the keys, what exactly prevents me from distributing them?
- jsheard 3y agoIf you're in the US, or the place you're trying to distribute to is under US jurisdiction, the DMCA is what forbids you from distributing DRM decryption keys. That's why emulators for modern systems usually don't include the keys, and make the user provide their own copy of them.
- yau8edq12i 3y agoI don't live in the US. Not such a free country after all.
- jsheard 3y agoUnfortunately if you want to publish on the App Store or the Play Store then you have to play by the US rules, regardless of where you are, since Apple and Google operate out of the US.
- yau8edq12i 3y agoToo bad for iPhone users, then.
- II2II 3y agoOnly time will tell but the article notes that it is likely that this change is for publishers, not for end users. I doubt that we are going to see many third-party emulator because of the ROM issue. To my knowledge, most consoles and all computers will have copyrightable ROMs built into the system. Given the relative scarcity of old hardware, equipment, and technical skills to image those ROMs any third-party emulator will attract copyright infringement. That is before you consider imaging software. (While there is a good chance that a person can retrieve a working mask or EPROM from an old system/cartridge, anything disk based will be much more sketchy. Not only do you need working drives to image the software, you need working media and the media cannot be copy protected.)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- boomlinde 3y agoFor example, ScummVM for iOS includes the MT-32 emulator MUNT. It doesn't bundle images of the ROMs in the MT-32 (which would be illegal without license from Roland). Instead, the user can dump the ROMs from their own MT-32 or obtain them by some other means and drop them in the app data folder themselves.
- AltruisticGapHN 3y agoAwesome. There are some beautiful emulator front ends on macOS that will now come to the iPad.
- reustle 3y agoAnd Vision Pro
- jbverschoor 3y agoFinally fun games
- cowsup 3y agoThe wording of the rule change seems to imply that the games must be downloaded from the app (perhaps disallowing sideloading), which Apple would not allow for games that the app developer does not own the rights to. This seems more catered towards a Sega, Namco, or similar “Retro Game Collection” service, versus a third-party “drop in your own ROMs” app.
- 14 3y agoAgain reminds me that jailbreaking is still useful in 2024. Apple tried to close the gap by stealing many of the best features but they can not give up full control not due to security but always due to greed.
- scarface_74 3y agoIt’s not like Nintendo will sue Apple for using an emulator with copyrighted ROMs are facilitating pirating…
- galleywest200 3y agoNintendo generally leaves the retro, unsupported console emulators alone. mGBA, Project64, Dolphin (except for their request to take down their steam page).
- jsheard 3y agoCase in point: there's an endless list of Nintendo system emulators on the Play Store, many of which have been up for years with no issues. I'm sure Nintendo would prefer they weren't available on there, but as long as they don't distribute any copyrighted files or keys Nintendo can't really make a compelling case to Google that they shouldn't be allowed.
- extraduder_ire 3y agoThanks to the DMCA, they wouldn't need to make the case to google, just send a notice and they're obligated to comply. The dispute would be between the uploader and nintendo once a takedown is sent, and maybe counter-claimed.
- farleykr 3y agoSo… does anyone have any recommendations for some good emulators that we could reasonably expect to see on the app store?
- jonny_eh 3y agoThere’s this multi-emulator called Delta that already exists: https://faq.deltaemulator.com/ https://faq.deltaemulator.com/ Then there’s PPSSPP, the PlayStation Portable emulator. The dev said they’ll try submitting a port to the App Store.
- gostsamo 3y agoBy a complete coincidence, a new app store in the EU offers a Nintendo game emulator.1 1. https://www.theverge.com/24100979/altstore-europe-app-marketplace-price-games https://www.theverge.com/24100979/altstore-europe-app-market...
- scarface_74 3y agoThey will be sued out of existence by Nintendo if they get any type of visibility. Apple is not going to touch letting an emulator in their store that isn’t published by Nintendo - just as valve didn’t.
- jsheard 3y agoValve did allow RetroArch on their store, it's just Dolphin which got shot down. IIRC the distinction was that Dolphin flew close to the sun by bundling decryption keys, which gave room for Nintendo's lawyers to argue that it violated the DMCA, and Valve didn't want to die on that hill for the sake of putting a free emulator on their store.
- scarface_74 3y agoValve asked Nintendo in advance about allowing the Yuzu emulator on the store. Nintendo said no and Valve didn’t put up a fight. I heard about it on a recent Decoder podcast. But this is the first reference I saw on the web. https://kotaku.com/yuzu-nintendo-switch-emulator-steam-deck-dock-valve-1849632836 https://kotaku.com/yuzu-nintendo-switch-emulator-steam-deck-...
- galleywest200 3y agoYuzu is not a retro emulator.
- scarface_74 3y agoSo exactly what is Yuzu then?
- galleywest200 3y agoTangentially related: if anybody is looking for a good way to organize a library of retro emulators and games on their MacOS laptops/desktop computers then I recommend OpenEmu. It is designed from the ground up to look and feel like a Mac app. https://openemu.org/ https://openemu.org/ https://github.com/OpenEmu https://github.com/OpenEmu
- sunaookami 3y agoNo it does not. See for example: https://twitter.com/MikageEmu/status/1776558775064760798 https://twitter.com/MikageEmu/status/1776558775064760798 (from a former Citra dev). Quoting the relevant parts: >No, the new App Store policies won't get us emulators on iOS. Sadly this has been grossly misreported by basically everyone. >The platform continues to be as unattractive for community emulators as ever. >[...] >Apple only wants emulators that offer in-app downloads >[...] >For 4.7.4: Sure, you could theoretically ship a list of the entire game library for a console. But what "universal links" would you even provide? >And again, language reveals the intent: "software available in your app" means they don't want users to bring their own.
- jonny_eh 3y agoThe emulator could have download links to some public domain ROMs. The open question is if it allows the user to also add ROMs from their own file system or cloud drive. We won’t know until an emulator is submitted for review.
- derefr 3y agoTaking the Swift Playground app as precedent, I would assume that you could very likely submit an emulator app that allows users to “develop” and “test” their own game “projects” inside it. Apple would very likely counter by picking a nit about the distinction between ROMs (object code) and source code, though. But there’s a (to me, quite pleasing) counter to this: support import of / repo sync with game “source code” projects… where the source code can just be ASM, and so a disassembly of an existing published game will work just fine. This tactic is would push the responsibility for preventing IP theft off onto source code hosting services (e.g. GitHub… but self-hosted ones do exist, wink wink); and I think Apple’s lawyers would be pretty satisfied with that arrangement.
- lxgr 3y ago> Apple would very likely counter by picking a nit about the distinction between ROMs (object code) and source code, though. There are iOS apps in the App Store allowing you to run unmodified Linux i386 binaries, so I think that ship has sailed. Of course Apple is only very weakly guided by precedent in their application review policies, as far as I can tell, so I don't think anybody can predict what they'll do in this case.
- toddmorey 3y agoWhile this is good news for the retro gaming community, I'm really struck by how deep the collective Stockholm syndrome is that this is exciting.
- grugagag 3y agoFor retro gaming do yourself a favor and buy a Miyoo or Anbernic. They’re cheap and give you a dedicated device and a lot of bang for the buck. Recently got a Miyoo mini+ for $56 and couldnt be happier, the gamining experience is pretty good, the screen is good, buttons are good, it is easy to back up, and so on.
- barfard 3y ago[flagged]
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- slimebot80 3y agoIt's curious to me how Plex is allowed to exist on the App Store?