Persona 5 is almost perfect now on PC using latest version of RPCS3.

[Azuren]

OdinHades said:

Azuren said:

Interesting spin, except no. Just the software or hardware that allows you to play a digitally stolen game on an otherwise legitimate piece of hardware. Keep trying, though. I feel like I'm arguing with a mugger on whether or not mugging people is okay.

 

It's not.

I just think it's crazy to make emulators illegal just because they can be used for piracy. That's like banning DVD writers because you could make illegal copies with it. Emulators just as homebrew on consoles are just a tool. What you do with it as a whole different story. 

Emulators are in fact important to preserve games of the past. Without them, the majority of games from the past would be lost forever soon enough. There will be a time when the last Amiga or C64 will cease to function. Without emulators we would have no way whatsoever to play the games from those machines, even if we have legitimate copies. Because of that I very much welcome emulators. I use them on a daily basis for playing some good old DOS games on my modern computer. No piracy involved. So why the heck should I suffer just because some other people use emulators for piracy? That's just nuts. That's like banning cars because some idiots use them to kill people. With that mindset MP3 would have also been declared illegal back in the day when music was only available on CDs. Sure, most people used MP3 for piracy in the 90s. But not everybody. Plus everyone profited from the tech that came with it. Streaming services today wouldn't be possible without the groundwork from MP3. In the same way virtual console wouldn't be possible today without the work from the developers of emulators. Even Nintendo themselves use tech from open source emulators and ROMs from the internet.

The gains are simply bigger than the losses on this one.

It's actually more like the initial shut down of Napster, a service designed to get free music. It's more like R4 cards, and how they were made illegal in most places.

 

There are tools that help people make things (DVD writers, for example), and tools used to pirate things (like the software used to rip movies from DVDs). Some software and hardware has to justify itself in a legal way to remain legal. Movie ripping is to keep all your media on a server, it's totally not ever used to pirate and the programmers don't support the use of it as such, right? But we know who's fucking using it and what for. The R4 card was so you can rip your games all into one convenient card, stopping the need to constantly change, right? Except Nintendo proved in court that it's purpose was for piracy.

 

I agree that emulators WERE important to preservation of older games, but companies have taken notice of that and there are legitimate ways to get a hold of nearly every title ever made digitally and legally. And yes, there are some games the still need preserving and emulators do that niche job, but there's a much larger number of people out there abusing emulators. Yes it's nice having your games in one spot and not having to worry about whether or not your old console can play them or if the cartridge still works, but there's a much larger group out there just downloading "free games". And no, it's not like banning cars because some people get killed by them. It's more like banning fake weed; the manufacturer can say it's for one thing and put "do not smoke" warnings on it, but we know what everyone is buying it for.

 

After contemplation, though, I don't feel like banning emulators would accomplish anything. Like with marijuana, people will use them regardless of their legality. The difference is no one would ever get caught driving with emulators in their cars. All we can do is watch the DRM get more and more invasive, with pirates and hackers overriding it with greater difficulty each time, claiming to be the heroes of a problem they caused.