I will always say this in these “Nintendo shuts down beloved fan project” threads: why don’t the people working on these projects operate anonymously and release via torrent? I feel like I’ve been reading the same story for 20 years. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone at this point that Nintendo will come after you.
Because emulation is legal. It shouldn’t have to be hidden. This was taken through the courts in 2001 with the Sony vs Bleem lawsuit.
What appears to be happening is Nintendo is abusing its power and money to make threats of legal action that these groups just can’t afford to fight, even though they haven’t done anything illegal. It should be coming as a surprise that Nintendo is coming for them, because this is completely legal, and not some fan game using Nintendo IP (which is what they normally shut down).
That sounds like grounds for some kind of legal action. Antitrust? Class action? I don’t know the specifics of the best strategy for approaching it, but if Nintendo is showing a pattern of using their legal team to harass legally operating emulator developers that sounds like something that should be actionable.
From what u understood It’s a bit more complicated than that. Emulation is rather not illegal and in very thin ground.
This is like if a pedestrian gets struck by a car while on a crosswalk. Yeah, they were allowed to be there… but they should have looked both ways before crossing the street.
This is a case of people being idealistic rather than practical.
Incidentally, this is a perfect example, because the automotive industry ran a series of ad campaigns to change public sentiment after cars got more common and children and elderly citizens started dying in the streets.
Nintendo is working equally hard to change public sentiment against the innocent.
Source: https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history
Emulation might be legal, but it’s software specifically designed to run illegal copies of the games.
I dislike Nintendo, but I can’t blame them for taking down that kind of software development. They’re still selling many of their old games through their own store for their own emulators. They’re perhaps charging way too much for it and/or lock it behind a subscription wall, even if you ever bought the original copies. Absolute garbage business practice, but from the corporate point of view I can see why they go after emulators. Especially since it’s easier to take those down than trying to go after all digital emulator copies of the games (if not impossible).
They’re probably gonna try and set an example to scare off others trying to make new emulators too.
Edit: lol people really are shooting the messenger here.
Also, the amount of excuses that people have to make backups of their already purchased games is very weak. You damn well know that a vast majority of people don’t use it for such reasons, the amount of people that still own original copies, and also have the hardware to even extract software for personal use must be like less than a percentage of the entire community using emulators. They’re just people pirating games they never paid for. It’s very naive to assume otherwise.
That may be the main reason why people use or even create emulators, but there are still legitimate uses for emulators. It’s like banning couples from riding the same motorcycle because two people on a bike is usually a robbery.
To be fair, it’s software specifically designed to run digital backups of what’s supposed to be personally owned media. It just so happens that it’s very easy to obtain a copy otherwise, but there’s nothing inherently illegal about it or the games.
Strong arming independent projects, and individual developers especially, that are very careful to not endorse that, effectively holding them accountable for others, is morally questionable at best.
I can’t blame them for taking down that kind of software development.
Your not being able to blame them is completely irrelevant. Nintendo can not like stuff all it wants. The question is if it is LEGAL. If it is, and it is, your defense of their actions is a defense of the argument that they should be above the law because they don’t like something, and that’s an absolutely TERRIBLE position to take. You don’t need to white knight for Nintendo. They have more money than God and taking up their fights for them against your own rights as a consumer is so far beyond Stockholm Syndrome that I don’t think we even have a word for it yet.
Nintendo didn’t put legal pressure on emulator devs for decades at this point, which made devs less cautious about preserving their pseudonymity.
Now it’s too late and they can’t stop Nintendo from finding out who they are and which mistakes they did at some point over the years.
Maybe a new generation of emulator developers will be more protective of their identity, by using hosting providers like Njalla or privacy networks like i2p. The latter would limit access (as it requires i2p), which isn’t desirable for most users.
While that’s true, it’s incredibly reductive to a baseline of “nintendo should win because they are powerful and others aren’t”
How many of these emulators were shut down through legal action or threat of legal action? I mean, the list goes on and on
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/PlayStation_emulators
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/PlayStation_2_emulators
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/PlayStation_3_emulators
https://www.ppsspp.org/
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/PlayStation_Vita_emulators
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Xbox_emulators
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Xbox_360_emulators
Oh right, this happened https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment,_Inc._v._Connectix_Corp.
Nintendo is using every action possible to stop switch emulation, because, unlike other console companies, they don’t produce any advanced or specific hardware anymore, and they purely survive through their IP.
And because these are never finished projects. People can rant and rave about cloning the git all day, but without active, knowledgeable developers with the knowledge of the original dev team, these projects are dead. It’s not about using the emulators as they exist today… it’s about continuing to keep them working going forward. Anything that releases in the last year or two of the Switch’s life is now at risk of being lost forever into Nintendo’s archives.
Anything that releases in the last year or two of the Switch’s life is now at risk of being lost forever into Nintendo’s archives.
Somebody will archive it, for two reasons: 1) data hoarders and 2) hacked Switches.
Sure, it will be as playable as it is right now, right as the project shuts down. Any updates or improvements? Any new games? Only if someone else takes up the mantle and risks having world police nintendo suing them
Yeah! And they’ve been so cool and supportive of the gaming community thus far, <3 nintendo https://www.thegamer.com/a-snapshot-of-nintendos-convoluted-legal-history/
