| Miguel_Zorro said: What benefits does emulation provide? Does it impact game sales? How do game creators feel about this? What are the legalities and ethics around emulation? What percentage of those that use emulators are engaged in privacy? Are there sources of data to support this? Let's discuss this! Keep it civil, please. |
What are your views on emulation?
Emulators are fine legally. Distribution of them should come with strings attached to prevent piracy, they don't do that. You have a moral responsibility when distributing software (or anything else) that it can't easily be abused.
What benefits does emulation provide?
Benefits of emulation are better understanding of the software and systems themselves which can help keep old games in the public mindshare and keep the knowledge of older systems alive. They can show publishers that there is still interest in certain games.
Does it impact game sales?
Emulators impact game sales as it diminishes the value of games. It directly affects the value of second hand games, yet also the amount of effort that can be spend on remasters and official emulation.
The newer the game emulators can emulate the more chance it has to impact new game sales as well. Piracy is real and closely tied to emulators. Super Mario Galaxy 2 was illegally downloaded 1.29 million times in 2011 (the year after its release) Most of that was probably running on soft modded consoles instead of Dolphin. Yet with emulators catching up to console hardware, soft modding will no longer be neccesary when you can play the game on an emulator withing half a year of release.
How do game creators feel about this?
Some creators will be pleased that their old software is not forgotten. Most will raise their eyebrows when seeing their hard work distributed for free. Emulators are very closely intertwined with piracy. As a software creator myself it was very frustrating to have to work with DRM during development, after we found our sofware available online for free. Emulators are build to circumvent DRM as most of them run of copies without any check if the original is present. It's hard to distinguish emulators from software that cracks the game.
What are the legalities and ethics around emulation?
- Emulators themselves are legal.
- Downloading roms, isos, console bios, etc is illegal.
- Making an archieval backup of owned software is legal in most countries.
- Making a copy (while retaining the original) for use is only legal is some countries.
- Emulating games for consoles and games that no longer exist is morally acceptable.
- Abandonware is still piracy, however so far a simple take down request by publishers has been honered by Abandonia when pulishers want to revive the ip themselves or have a prolem with their game being distributed for free.
- Emulating games that are still for sale should be strongly discouraged unless anti piracy measures are in place.
- Making money of distributing emulators by promoting brand new games running on it is ethically reprehensible. Cemu makes 43k a month now from Zelda.
What percentage of those that use emulators are engaged in piracy?
That's impossible to tell which is directly the fault of how emulators work. Yet we all know that humans aren't capable of living by the honor system. Likely the percentage is very high as, unless you have the tools to copy the software yourself (and circumvent security measures which is illegal in most countries), downloading it is your only option, which is piracy.
Are there sources of data to support this?
Here's the result of 1 simple Google search, 1 link.
http://1337x.to/torrent/2107759/The-Legend-of-Zelda-Breath-of-the-Wild-CEMU-1-7-3-D/
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Included in this package: Breath of the Wild updated to 1.33 and CEMU 1.7.3d (patreon build)
EDIT: For A CRACKED version of CEMU please refer to my other torrent: CEMU 1.7.3d Cracked (MUDLORD)
Downloaded 20083 times so far. With a link to hide you IP adress since apparently it's tracked, that's how legal it is! Those are all illegal downloads.
Mods feel free to delete that link, as I hope there are some rules against linking to pirated software. Which raises the question why is promoting emulators that run off pirated software ok?
Some say piracy is no longer an issue on PC since cheap games are abundant now. I don't belive that.
https://torrentfreak.com/media-companies-track-pirated-downloads-for-marketing-purposes-150218/
I doubt piracy was eliminated in the last 2 years. Why the fuss over Denuvo otherwise...
Emulators are unfortunately very close to piracy until they clean up their act and verify that you actually own the software. Either by working with the console manufacturors or software publishers. Until then they simply enable illegal activity.
However as long as it remains small in scale (that is not promoted everywhere as the 'best way' to play new games) it won't have much of an impact. Meanwhile the industry has been taking their own measures to move away from piracy by focussing more on games as a service, always online requirements and digital licenses instead of ownership of software. Sony has their eyes on streaming, MS on games as a service and already tried the online check-in strategy, more and more PC games require you to be online for single player games, and Nintendo tries to make it more desirable to having all their software run on a hybrid console. Emulators promoting brand new games will only hasten this process, and make it less desirable to launch new games on old hardware when they gain in popularity.
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