Is this the beginning of the end for video game emulation?
Emulation has been a hotly-debated topic over the years, with copyright holders calling it theft while gamers see it as preservation or playing games that are no longer commercially available.
Recently, Nintendo went after a couple of smaller emulation sites which prompted Emuparadise, the largest and probably oldest rom host on the Internet to flinch. They announced that they were removing ALL of the ROMs from their site.
While there are other ROM sites out there, Emuparadise was the biggest one. With them closing their ROM library, its going to be harder to find the game ROMs you're looking for. Other sites will likely also cave and remove their ROM catalogs out of fear of losing a legal or financial fight with Nintendo. ROM libraries will still be available through torrents and other, less user-friendly sources, but the fear of picking up viruses or using torrents will be another hurdle to anyone trying to get game ROMs.
Is emulation piracy or preservation?
Let's be honest, most companies no longer sell their back catalogs. There was a time when these games became monetized again thanks to the Wii Virtual Console, but with that being shut down this year there's no legal way to purchase thousands of classic games other than buying a physical cartridge or disc, and the publishers don't see a penny of those sales.
On the other hand, some people use emulation as a way to pirate games rather than paying for them. The Dolphin Wii emulator was available while the Wii was in its prime. Some people will always use emulation to play games for free, but most companies aren't effected when someone downloads a game they no longer sell.
What's next?
My advice would be that if you're interested in emulation, you'd better get the ROMs you want now rather than later. Who knows how hard these games will be to find a month or a year from now?
Of course, some ROM site will hold on, hoping they fly under the radar. Some will probably purge every Nintendo game on their site hoping the big N will leave them alone. I fear that its just a matter of time though, before ROMs become hard to track down.
Get them while the gettin's good and archive your ROM libraries to assure you can access them once every ROM site has shifted to only offering emulator downloads.
So what do you think will happen with ROM sites in the near future? Let's discuss!
Thanks for reading. As always, upvotes, resteems and comments are appreciated!
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Its the good thing I am part of a Telegram group where they list games of almost every classic and modern consoles in existance so if you want to play them, they can be found directly by the group. Who knows if Nintendo is going after Telegram users too. I have many classic ROMs on my external hard drive, should get some more soon just incase for more gaming livestreams I can do for PS One, SNES and many other games on my YouTube channel in the future. Its really sad to see emuparadise go and it sucks that Nintendo is being stubborn with filing lawsuits against emulation sites when they never did it before... why now? 0_0 No other companies seems to be doing this crap since they understand about game perservation.
I have to imagine it has to do with the classic games Nintendo will be including with their online service memberships, so they're going after the ROMs now before the service launches next month.
Yeah but they better start explaining about the Nintendo Switch ONLINE soon because we hardly know much about it :P And only NES games when it starts is not super exciting. We need Gamecube games to be available to play eventually.
I don't think emulation is going anywhere. You can go back through the last twenty years and see Nintendo doing the same thing: they target one particular site for lawsuits, the site drops everything, a few others follow suit, then a few years go by and other sites crop up often with servers in different countries where it's harder to enforce the Berne Convention and the cycle begins anew.
Is emulation preservation or piracy? That, much like obscenity, is in the eye of the beholder. The scene has aspects of both built into it, making a final ruling on this issue difficult. I suppose I view it the same way I view alcohol: when used responsibly and with care, there's nothing wrong with it. When used to excess or when it affects one's behavior with regard to the law, that's when we have a problem.
If you're using emulation to enjoy games you've already purchased in a more convenient fashion, as a way to enhance your experience in some way (I used emulated versions of games when I was writing solely about them on the internet because it was so much easier to capture screenshots), or as a way to play and enjoy titles that would be outside your ability to play and enjoy otherwise due to import restrictions (the game may not be available in your territory), language barriers (JRPGs, anyone?), or an ability to experience them simply because they're now impossible to find due to age (most arcade games fall into this category), and the software and/or hardware are not available in a commercially-viable, readily-obtainable format, then the amount of "harm" one causes by emulation is relatively tiny. Nobody's hurt if I'm emulating a fan translation of a Super Nintendo game released twenty-five years ago, or checking out the regional differences between titles released in different territories.
If, on the other hand, your intention is to horde ROMs and save money by pirating everything you can get your hands on, you need to reconsider your relationship with the hobby.
I've always looked at whether or not it is piracy from this perspective: If you couldn't download it for free, would you buy it and is it available to buy? If the answer is no then it isn't piracy. Of course, this definition requires that you be honest with yourself...
That's how I look at it as well. If I download something I wasn't planning to buy in the first place, no sales are being lost. If you rent a movie or a book from your library, is it really that different?
I have ended up buying stuff that I 'sampled' and liked enough to buy a physical copy, so there's that too.
The main difference being the library paid for the copy or copies they are lending out. Not quite a 1:1 analog, but close.
I think availability is a much better qualifier, and by that I mean 'available to purchase in a format that makes the developers money'. Thanks to eBay and Amazon, damn near anything is "available" in some format if you've got the cash. But every NES game ever produced during the system's life has pretty much been sold through. Whether I buy it second-hand from a garage sale, win an eBay auction, or download a ROM copy, there's no way for the original developer or the copyright holder (who are often two different entities) to get money for it. For games like Mario and Metroid, which Nintendo maintains the rights on and re-releases via Virtual Console downloads and retro re-issues like the NES Classic, this is a harder sell.
But a game like The Guardian Legend, which was programmed by a now-defunct Japanese studio, translated and published by a now-defunct US software company (which was broken up and sold off in various bits and bobs during the bankruptcy proceedings to other studios who may no longer know what the heck they have )? Nobody knows who owns the rights to The Guardian Legend. It's in a legalistic limbo, sort of like the New World Pictures US release of Godzilla 1985. It's a spaghetti plate of copyright nightmares nobody's going to expend the time, effort, and money required to untangle, and at some point there will be so few working copies of that cart left it will be completely unavailable to the average gamer. Downloading a ROM of The Guardian Legend is about as close to a victimless crime as it's possible to commit at this point. :)
Very true. Like you stated with The Guardian Legend, nobody is losing money if its downloaded. Many companies are sitting on games they have no intention on re-releasing and lots of games are just in limbo where nobody really knows who owns the copyright to them.
Nintendo, Sega, Capcom and a few other companies do bundle up their games and resell them, so I can understand why they take issue with ROM sites. But for small titles from companies who long went bankrupt and/or were bought up by bigger fish, they might not even know what games they own the rights to.
Precisely. I'm absolutely 100% all for and behind companies protecting their copyright and ownership of their properties. As someone who partially makes his living by creating content, I want to respect the rights of others to make a living from their creative efforts as well.
At some point, a lot of this will be moot. In the US, the copyright office provides for an initial term of 28 years' protection for copyrighted works, with the chance for an additional renewal of protection for a further 47 years if the owner so requests, but that request can only be made during the final year of that first term. We're hitting a time period right now where some computer and console software is reaching that limit and the rights are not being renewed because the entities involved in their creation no longer exist to request the extension.
Right now, any NES game registered prior to August of 1990 that was not renewed this year is now in the public domain. That doesn't mean all NES games are public domain, because companies like Nintendo, Capcom, and Konami which are still around will vigorously re-up their protections on their IP as they should. Publishers that acquired other properties and stayed on top of them will also renew those requests for IP protection under the law.
The Guardian Legend, by contrast, was published in 1989. THQ acquired the product when they bought up some bits of Broderbund after that company went bankrupt. THQ subsequently sold off large parts of their company (but not in whole) in 2012, before the rights would need to be re-registered. Nordic Studios acquired the THQ name in 2014...if Nordic acquired The Guardian Legend property (and it's currently unknown the entirety of what they bought from THQ in the bankruptcy proceedings, as multiple development houses bid on THQ's IPs), did they (or whoever got hold of it) register it for the additional years of protection in 2017 (which would have been year 28 of its protection status), or did those rights expire?
We don't know--it may be perfectly legal to not only possess but also upload for others a copy of The Guardian Legend's ROM file. There are entire banks of games released for the Intellivision, Colecovision, Atari VCS, the Vectrex, and other pre-NES consoles as well as arcades that are likely in the public domain as well. At this point, there are Genesis/Mega Drive games that could be public domain.
How we figure out what's available and what isn't is the big question. Discerning public domain assets can be a monumental undertaking, but discovering what is out there and open can be a huge boon to not just the preservation movement behind video games, but also to developers themselves. Imagine if someone could develop a spin-off or sequel to The Guardian Legend without worrying about a lawsuit from THQ Nordic or some other IP holder? The lack of knowledge and transparency gives corporations virtually all of the power. It would be nice to get some of that back into our hands, where it may now belong. :)
Very good points. Some people use emulation as piracy, while others use it for convenience or preservation. If you're using a Wii U emulator in 2018 while games are still for sale, that's piracy.
Uhm... this is kinda off-topic but you might want to join Asher's League since you comment amazingly. :)
That sucks, I was just starting to get back into classic gaming too.
Although I seem to remember the same thing happening like 10 years ago. Legal threats, roms getting de-listed, then over time coming back somewhere else.
Hopefully some of the other sites take up the slack.
To the question in your title, my Magic 8-Ball says:
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Of course you could just use bittorrent to download a complete collection of every ROM ever dumped in a couple of hours (optical disc based games excluded...that would take longer).
Oh no!!! They should release their own then if they don't want emulations online. :(