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Zkuq on 01 May 2017
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SvennoJ said:
Zkuq said:

People have been pretty much saying that emulation is piracy. Backwards compatiblity is a simple proof it's not. Either it is piracy or it isn't. It can't depend on the context.

I did try looking for a download link now that you mentioned it. Didn't find BotW, but I did see Bayonetta 2 and Mario Kart 8 on the first page. Just looking for Cemu didn't yield anything shady though. Still, emulation itself is not piracy. Games are often obtained by pirating them and then emulated, but emulation itself is not related to piracy at all. Go on, try to define emulation and see if you can find anything related to piracy in the definition.

People have been saying emulation is closely tied to or even intertwined with piracy as it often involves downloading pirated copies. Not emulation is piracy, emulation enables piracy and does nothing to prevent piracy. I did hit a link with Botw plus Cemu on my first search, posted it in the other thread, won't repeat it here.

So the question whether emulation == piracy is not relevant. Now we can argue which emulators enable piracy and the legality of circumventing security measures and/or circumventing a contractual obligation to the publishers/developers to ensure the safe keeping of their software.

I'm pretty sure I've seen more than one person claim that emulation is piracy in the last few days, usually without specifying the context. One person said emulation was piracy if it was used to play a pirated game, but the others didn't even specify a context. I also think the distinction is important because otherwise every single thread about emulation keeps getting remarks about piracy as well, seriously derailing the discussion. I have nothing against discussing piracy in the context of emulation, but the amount of offtopic is horrifying.

I saw your link but I didn't see it in my search results. Must be because of Google's personalized search results.

I don't think emulators technically circumvent security measures, they just don't reimplement them. As to whether implementing them without the help of console manufacturers is plausible, I don't know, but I would bet they're not too eager to share their security measures. I also don't think emulators circumvent those contractual obligations, because they're not a part of those contracts. I guess it would be good if those security measures were implemented in emulators (for newer hardware, in my opinion), but again, I'm not sure if it's really possible to pull that off. The security measures would have to be known, which would make circumventing them easier even on actual hardware. Even if those security measures could be implemented properly, they'd just end up getting circumvented, because emulators typically run in environments where the user has much more control over what kind of code gets run. Unlike on actual hardware, the platform running the emulator provides essentially no protection against such actions.