3 ms·

Very cool. I have to wonder if they've ever been contacted by Nintendo over this though - many recent-ish games have been in a playable state for several years

Very cool. I have to wonder if they've ever been contacted by Nintendo over this though - many recent-ish games have been in a playable state for several years now and you'd think functional Wii emulation attract negative attention.

neobrain 13y ago
As far as I can tell, none of the developers have been approached by Nintendo so far. And I guess by now they should have noticed us in some way. EDIT: Fixed incorrect double-negative
- Guvante 13y ago
  They have certainly noticed, but likely won't do anything about it. IANAL but I am not even sure if emulation of this kind can be considered illegal. And if I were in their shoes I would much prefer a group of random people create a playable open source emulator of my old hardware. If they ever decide to leave the hardware business it makes going down that path themselves much easier.
  - keeperofdakeys 13y ago
    As long as you are doing black-box reverse engineering. If you tried to disassemble the gamecube or wii software, then you likely are breaking the law. A similar situation comes up with Gnash, the GNU adaptation of flash. They require developers to have never installed flash, which requires signing the EULA, which includes a clause about reverse-engineering the program.
    - cookiecaper 13y ago
      Disassembly is actually explicitly legalized for the purposes of reverse-engineering. It's just distributing any software that circumvents copy protections that's illegal, whether it's the result of a disassembly or not. People avoid disassembly in clean-room implementations out of an abundance of caution. If it's evident that the logic was ripped from disassembled executables, you'll have a harder time defending against patent claims or frivolous copyright claims. IANAL, but this is my understanding.

3 ms·

Very cool. I have to wonder if they've ever been contacted by Nintendo over this though - many recent-ish games have been in a playable state for several years

by anonymousab 13y ago

neobrain 13y ago
As far as I can tell, none of the developers have been approached by Nintendo so far. And I guess by now they should have noticed us in some way. EDIT: Fixed incorrect double-negative
- Guvante 13y ago
  They have certainly noticed, but likely won't do anything about it. IANAL but I am not even sure if emulation of this kind can be considered illegal. And if I were in their shoes I would much prefer a group of random people create a playable open source emulator of my old hardware. If they ever decide to leave the hardware business it makes going down that path themselves much easier.
  - keeperofdakeys 13y ago
    As long as you are doing black-box reverse engineering. If you tried to disassemble the gamecube or wii software, then you likely are breaking the law. A similar situation comes up with Gnash, the GNU adaptation of flash. They require developers to have never installed flash, which requires signing the EULA, which includes a clause about reverse-engineering the program.
    - cookiecaper 13y ago
      Disassembly is actually explicitly legalized for the purposes of reverse-engineering. It's just distributing any software that circumvents copy protections that's illegal, whether it's the result of a disassembly or not. People avoid disassembly in clean-room implementations out of an abundance of caution. If it's evident that the logic was ripped from disassembled executables, you'll have a harder time defending against patent claims or frivolous copyright claims. IANAL, but this is my understanding.