Is emulating acceptable?

[SvennoJ]

Barozi said:

SvennoJ said:

Not quite

So you can't play Kirby's Adventure anymore, even though you paid for it in 1993?

Not legally, no. What you bought twenty-something years ago was a game cartridge, not a right to always have access to the game that was stored on it. And as horrid and draconian as that sounds, there is - sort of - an argument for why that should be the case.

"From an IP perspective, you are seeking to consume content which you can't have any other way, and that's understandable from a consumer perspective, but that's not a privilege consumers own," Purewal says.

"Consumers don't have the right to enjoy content for free just because the content isn't available in any other way. Now, from a practical perspective, the fact that there's no-one there to enforce those rights may be an indication that no-one will come after you in reality. But that's just down to how things work in practice; it's not a legal defence.

http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/are-game-emulators-legal-1329264


I've pirated tons of games too as a teenager. I could actually afford to buy (some) games yet I spend all my money on blank media, a gaming PC and partying in the weekend. Why pay for games if you rather spend that money of something else right?..  It was wrong, yet it seemed to be the norm back then. Frequent copy parties, swapping games at school, try out a dozen games an afternoon, buy more 3.5" disks for the next batch.

When I got a job in the software industry I quickly changed my habits, never pirated again. Then I got to deal with the software I made getting pirated and dealing with the hassles of drm during development.

Ofcourse emulating is not automatically piracy. Yet emulators are often used to facilitate piracy. I applaud the efforts of pscx2 to require actual game disks. Too bad that's not practical with cartridge or any pre CD era based games. Yet it seems Sony and Nintendo are doing their own work to preserve older games with ps now, virtual console, mini nes / snes, compilations. There really is no need to emulate Mario games for preservation, they're safe, really.

I'd say it depends entirely on the country.
In Germany, you're not only entitled to make a copy for yourself, but also a copy for up to 7 close people (family and friends)  if there's no kind of DRM involved.
Though it's not allowed to download a copy from the internet. It must be a copy from your own CD/DVD/cartridge/file.

About PCSX 2 though, since when does it require a DVD? An image of the game used to be enough and I don't think that has changed.

My bad, I'm still too trusting :/ I thought pscx 2 required game discs yet it seems to support ripped versions too.

This form of emulation is still shut down regularly
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-04-24-red-dead-redemption-gta5-mod-shut-down-after-three-year-development