You see…
It’s okay when THEY do it.
It’s not okay when YOU do it.
That’s how they function.
Well, you know, the games are theirs to begin with.
I see what you mean, and you are correct, but I think it’s more about the games that are being emulated than emulation in itself right?
It would be, if they didn’t target the emulators and only targeted the roms/game data.
The only time the emulators are targeted is when the creators try to profit off them, or am I mistaken?
Well yeah, as the owners they have the exclusive right to determine what’s okay. They’re just following the rules as they’ve been laid out by centuries of corporate lobbying for more exploitable copyright laws. Those are what we need to focus on if we want more fair use of intellectual property that the rights holder has already sufficiently profited from - the thing that such protections were initially meant to ensure to a much more reasonable extent.
You had me in the first half ngl (more like first sentence but close enough)
But they DO have the exclusive right. People want to be told the world is different - that it’s better - but if we want to change it we need to see it for what it is. If we say “They don’t have the right!” before we’ve done the work necessary to strip them of the right, then we’ll never even understand how to start fixing this broken system.
Nintendo has never been against emulation. They’ve only been against people playing without paying.
Yes they have. They’ve just recently nuked on the Switch emulator.
And you can bet that if they could, Nintendo would go out of their way to sue any other emulator developer that emulates their games. The only things saving some of those emulators is technicalities like open-source.
They’ve just recently nuked on the Switch emulator.
Because it was being used for piracy. As in, had support in the emulator’s code for unreleased games. Nintendo rarely goes after emulator devs that don’t use their code.
I kinda get that they’ll do whatever than can to shut down an emulator for a console still selling and available on the shelves though. Not that there aren’t legitimate cases for it (homebrew software and games), but that’s not what Nintendo is concerned about.
But screw that for legacy consoles, game preservation is important too.
I’m not going to check the whole archive, but going back to at least 2005, Nintendo was asking users to …
report ROM sites, emulators, Game Copiers, Counterfeit manufacturing, or other illegal activities
https://web.archive.org/web/20051124194318/http://www.nintendo.com/corp/faqs/legal.html
Here’s some more quotes from the same page where Nintendo is viciously anti-emulation:
The introduction of video game emulators represents the greatest threat to date to the intellectual property rights of video game developers. As is the case with any business or industry, when its products become available for free, the revenue stream supporting that industry is threatened. Such emulators have the potential to significantly damage a worldwide entertainment software industry which generates over $15 billion annually, and tens of thousands of jobs.
Distribution of a Nintendo emulator trades off of Nintendo’s goodwill and the millions of dollars invested in research & development and marketing by Nintendo and its licensees. Substantial damages are caused to Nintendo and its licensees. It is irrelevant whether or not someone profits from the distribution of an emulator. The emulator promotes the play of illegal ROMs , NOT authentic games. Thus, not only does it not lead to more sales, it has the opposite effect and purpose.
Personal Websites and/or Internet Content Providers sites That link to Nintendo ROMs, Nintendo emulators and/or illegal copying devices can be held liable for copyright and trademark violations, regardless of whether the illegal software and/or devices are on their site or whether they are linking to the sites where the illegal items are found.
Wait are we arguing that the owner of something isn’t entitled more than someone who stole it?
Wait are we arguing that the owner of something isn’t entitled more than someone who bought it?
FTFY. The problem is not with Nintendo being against emulators because of piracy, they’re against emulators even if you own the game and the hardware but want to preserve the hardware (just like they do in the museum).
And if the counter-argument is that you don’t own the game when you buy it, then by that same logic you don’t steal it when you pirate it.
If Nintendo were only showcasing games developed AND published by Nintendo, that might be the argument.
They’re not though, some of the games they’re showing they didn’t develop or publish.
Nintendo says emulation is transformative, that due to the recompiler, it’s a new work. Do they have permission from all the rightsholders for third party games to make a transformative work?
Do they even have the permissions from artists who might have licensed their work to Nintendo for X game, but not for the newly emulated ‘Y’
I won’t be buying a Switch 2 and if I can’t pirate Nintendos games I won’t play them. I refuse to reward them for their bad behavior. Like a little child who throws tantrums they belong in the time out area.
Nintendo: Emulation is illegal, criminal, and you should never ever do it. If you do, we will sue your ass, send the Pinks, and then shit fury on you!!!
Also Nintendo:
Needless to say, I will not be buying an alarm clock today.
That’s not at all Nintendo’s philosophy.
They literally included emulation starting with the wii
So it is more of a rules for thee but not for me situation. Not you should never ever do it but you should only do it on our hardware with our emulators
I mean, their position is that they as the rights holders can republish how they please, but that buying a cartridge does not give you license to play on other devices. You can disagree with them on legal or philosophical grounds but their position isn’t really inconsistent.
I was joking when in a previous post about the museum I said it better not run on any emulators…
So… Why aren’t they selling said emulators and roms? I ain’t gonna travel half the world to play one in an overpriced museum.
I’d bet the emulators in use are actually publicly available ones. Not anything Nintendo made. Adding to the hypocrisy.
I hate to defend Nintendo, but they used their own Emulators in the NES and SNES Mini (Kachikachi and Canoe respectively). I would be surprised if they just yoinked one from the internet here.
Um… they are, and have been for almost 20 years, since the Wii. Or the N64 depending on how you look at it.
What did you think Virtual Console was? How about the NES and SNES mini? What about the “Nintendo Game Pass” or whatever they’re calling it?
Animal Crossing’s original Japan release had NES games in it, and so did the GC rerelease/psuedosequel we got internationally too.
Even better: During the Wii era, the Wiis at the Nintendo Store in New York City ran official Nintendo made software to load games off a connected hard drive, so you could play multiple of their new releases without workers having to switch discs.
It has always been about attempts to prevent piracy and keep control over how people access their games for Nintendo, and they are roughly 10 years behind the curve on modern tech trends.
Either stop supporting them or get used to it.
The problem is that they had stuff like Virtual Console and then decide to pull the plug. Then rebrand as some other feature in an online service, which is yet another service that’s gonna be a wait and see on whether or when they’ll pull the plug again. Forcing people to pay for old stuff over and over again.
They should sell this kind off stuff independently from their consoles/handhelds, preferably something that runs on a PC or any platform.
The NES and SNES mini were great examples of how it could be done, except there too they decided to only make a limited amount, essentially the same as pulling the plug.
Nintendo’s truly an awful company. It’s baffling how often they get praised for their stuff, they only dangle some 15+ year old reskinned game and people forget all about it.
This is an excellent article that covers how and why the VC died.
People say they want it back, but most titles never sold all that well back then.
There is no way to legally buy their ROMs anymore. You can only rent them in perpetuity. When they did sell them, they didn’t forward port your purchases to their next device, which is hilariously stupid, and you know they’d take you to court for dumping those same ROMs to your PC to organize, customize, and play the way you like them. If they just sold these things DRM-free on a web site for me to put in Emulation Station, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
Just for the record, this is exactly what any museum would do, because they’re not going to actually run any of the older hardware. Because that hardware is part of their collection, and it behoves them not to put wear on them.
Also because emulators can be managed remotely.
This is a “Museum” run by Nintendo in Japan. Meaning they could have used or even created more original hardware to run the titles, but instead cut costs by using the same Emulators that they’re hoping to take down.
Them being the original creator of the products doesn’t necessarily imply that they still have running production processes for every product that they ever made.
If I obtain all the original schematics and software and make 1 Nintendo internals for commercial purposes wothout their permission it would be illegal.
If they do it, it costs them the price of a couple of family dinners at most.
This museum IS NINTENDO. They are the only people allowed to do this job correctly.
That is highly depending on the type of Museum. Many Videogame and Computer Museums (at least in Germany) are showing the real Hardware running, some are even allowing the visitors to use and play at the old machines. And yes, they are often very used to repairing the hardware too.
I would expect from Nintendo that they would show and use real hardware in their museum, and not some emulators. Because I can see the games on an emulator at home (for example using my Switch Online or my SNES Classic), I don’t need a museum for that experience.
I know to be a certified museum in the US, you must work to preserve your articles in perpetuity, meaning anything that could be detrimental to the article is discouraged if not totally disallowed.
Unless they store everything in high vacuum and near absolute zero, it’s going to get oxidized and fail eventually. There is no such thing as perpetuity. Might as well give them some use.
They’re fucking Nintendo. They made the consoles they’re showing off in their museum. They absolutely have the ability to supply that museum with equipment and maintain it in perpetuity, because they fucking invented it
Ok that is not the case in Germany, here you can have items multiple times, to have some to archive and some to use.
I can see that the preservation aspect is very valid for highly rare or one of a kind items, but that is generally not the case with retro hardware. Yes there are examples for that too (like C65 or other prototype stuff) but nobody would expect a museum to put that to use.
Even if they don’t use the real old hardware then at least they could have created something that is closer to the original hardware, for example a SNES/NES/N64 console based on FPGA in a recreated original shell. Anything but a stupid emulator running on a Windows PC.
An FPGA seems like a lot of effort, but an SNES emulator running on a Raspberry Pi seems like it may have been a better option IMO.
I am sure that Nintendo is using FPGA for internal R&D, so they have people capable of writing cores for FPGA. Add to that the fact that Nintendo has all the schematics and detailed information about the original hardware and designs.
Yes, a FPGA would have been work, but not lots of work for them. And we are speaking of 8 and 16 bit hardware, that is very small and limited hardware.
Besides that: Windows can run on a Raspberry PI, so maybe the emulator on Windows used by Nintendo is already using that. Who knows?
