Exactly. I do not understand people defending this. An emulator playing games that are not even released, it’s a step too far. What’s the difference with piracy?
And I say this as someone using emulators on a regular basis for 15 years. Emulation is good (and necessary) for preserving video games, but the timing is important not to cross the (thin) line between « preservation » and « piracy ».
This leads to the same kind of erosion of free and open source software as Google taking down projects like youtube-dl on GitHub. The emulator code contains nothing illegal, neither does the developer community, but that’s exactly what Nintendo is targeting, because it’s the most effective way to shut down any project. The way Nintendo handles these cases is the problem and they have never cared if something is actually completely legal if they want it gone enough, like modding, romhacking or uploading videos of gameplay. At this point they’ve burnt so much goodwill that I’m hoestly surprised there are still people left willing to insist that Nintendo only goes after actual piracy.
Nintendo would not be as aggressive if Switch emulation waited 10 years. Developing an emulator for a machine that they are still selling, running commercial games even better then their own system, and allowing to play new games that are not even released officially yet, I do not expect another outcome.
In addition to that, some people got paid for that. It’s a very different situation than any other emulator in my opinion.
Again, I am not against emulation, but the timing for Switch emulation is very bad and unethical. It’s not only about Nintendo, but also third party developers. A situation where Switch emulation is very easy (especially with all those handheld PCs) would greatly impact game sales. It won’t kill Nintendo of course, but third party on the system will just leave because they will not sell anymore (see what happened to the Nintendo DS because it was easy to pirate any game).
Exactly. I do not understand people defending this. An emulator playing games that are not even released, it’s a step too far. What’s the difference with piracy?
And I say this as someone using emulators on a regular basis for 15 years. Emulation is good (and necessary) for preserving video games, but the timing is important not to cross the (thin) line between « preservation » and « piracy ».
This leads to the same kind of erosion of free and open source software as Google taking down projects like youtube-dl on GitHub. The emulator code contains nothing illegal, neither does the developer community, but that’s exactly what Nintendo is targeting, because it’s the most effective way to shut down any project. The way Nintendo handles these cases is the problem and they have never cared if something is actually completely legal if they want it gone enough, like modding, romhacking or uploading videos of gameplay. At this point they’ve burnt so much goodwill that I’m hoestly surprised there are still people left willing to insist that Nintendo only goes after actual piracy.
Nintendo would not be as aggressive if Switch emulation waited 10 years. Developing an emulator for a machine that they are still selling, running commercial games even better then their own system, and allowing to play new games that are not even released officially yet, I do not expect another outcome.
In addition to that, some people got paid for that. It’s a very different situation than any other emulator in my opinion.
Again, I am not against emulation, but the timing for Switch emulation is very bad and unethical. It’s not only about Nintendo, but also third party developers. A situation where Switch emulation is very easy (especially with all those handheld PCs) would greatly impact game sales. It won’t kill Nintendo of course, but third party on the system will just leave because they will not sell anymore (see what happened to the Nintendo DS because it was easy to pirate any game).