I own original hardware and buy 100% of my games but sometimes you just wanna run games that aren’t originally crossplatform on your Steamdeck for convenience, or on a PC with resolution upscaling, or for ease of streaming the gameplay, or tons of other legitimate reasons.
Nintendo has some great IP and gameplay, and I guarantee you their sales are not meaningfully hurt by people who pirate/emulate games. Those people were never their customers anyway. If anything the emulation community enabled streamers to boost the popularity of their games. (People like PointCrow did more for the sustained popularity of BOTW than all of Nintendo’s marketing efforts combined)
I own original hardware and buy 100% of my games but sometimes you just wanna run games that aren’t originally crossplatform on your Steamdeck for convenience, or on a PC with resolution upscaling, or for ease of streaming the gameplay, or tons of other legitimate reasons.
Can’t wait until our courts decide that, due to the prevalence of “remasters” that are just upscaled ROMs running on emulators, that this is no longer considered “fair use.”
Fair use has nothing to do with this. Fair use has to do with distributing a copyrighted work. Emulators are (ideally) running completely original code that isn’t copied from the company’s source code. This is why, for example, PCSX2 has you use “your own” PS2 BIOS instead of including it.
The PS2 BIOS is copyrighted, so it’s illegal to distribute it (and it’s never been “fair use” to distribute it). But it’s not illegal to do whatever you want with it (including dump it) as long as you own the console you’re dumping it from and as long as you don’t upload it to the internet for the purpose of distributing it to others. As far as the law is concerned, you bought the console and can do to it whatever you wish, provided you keep it to yourself and don’t distribute it to others.
Games fall under the same category. You’re free to dump your games and play them however you wish, provided you don’t distribute the dumped game to other people. However, companies are also free to implement measures (DRM) to stop you from doing that as much as possible, likely because they know more people would illegally distribute them if they didn’t.
That’s a perk of emulation, but it isn’t the reason why someone would pirate over purchasing it. People just want free shit, but they have a weird mental block in admitting it.
There isn’t enough paying for shit that’s gonna make a mod run in an unmodified console. You can find people who have bought every single Pokémon game ever, and they still want to play romhacks and randomizers and such.
There’s something to be said about how willing people are to pay and whether they admit it or why. But sounds more like you don’t want to believe there’s any other reason to do it.
So what you’re saying is not only did they not buy a game, they also didn’t buy the system the game was developed for. So it definitely hurt Nintendo’s bottom line.
But that’s on Nintendo. For those people the game doesn’t cost $70, it costs $200+ even if they buy a used Switch lite. Nintendo is deliberately leveraging their games to make people buy their console when those people just want to buy the game.
They want to have their cake and eat it too, and that is most likely one of the biggest reasons people pirated TOTK.
I’m one of those weirdos who actually dumps all my own games with my own modded launch Switch mainly for preservation purposes.
But then TotK came out and performed so poorly on the console itself, I exported my save to play on PC and Steam Deck. Every part of my Switch emulation journey has been legal and by-the-book: dumped my own firmware, my own keys, and my own games.
Yeah, this is dumb.
I own original hardware and buy 100% of my games but sometimes you just wanna run games that aren’t originally crossplatform on your Steamdeck for convenience, or on a PC with resolution upscaling, or for ease of streaming the gameplay, or tons of other legitimate reasons.
Nintendo has some great IP and gameplay, and I guarantee you their sales are not meaningfully hurt by people who pirate/emulate games. Those people were never their customers anyway. If anything the emulation community enabled streamers to boost the popularity of their games. (People like PointCrow did more for the sustained popularity of BOTW than all of Nintendo’s marketing efforts combined)
Can’t wait until our courts decide that, due to the prevalence of “remasters” that are just upscaled ROMs running on emulators, that this is no longer considered “fair use.”
Fair use has nothing to do with this. Fair use has to do with distributing a copyrighted work. Emulators are (ideally) running completely original code that isn’t copied from the company’s source code. This is why, for example, PCSX2 has you use “your own” PS2 BIOS instead of including it.
The PS2 BIOS is copyrighted, so it’s illegal to distribute it (and it’s never been “fair use” to distribute it). But it’s not illegal to do whatever you want with it (including dump it) as long as you own the console you’re dumping it from and as long as you don’t upload it to the internet for the purpose of distributing it to others. As far as the law is concerned, you bought the console and can do to it whatever you wish, provided you keep it to yourself and don’t distribute it to others.
Games fall under the same category. You’re free to dump your games and play them however you wish, provided you don’t distribute the dumped game to other people. However, companies are also free to implement measures (DRM) to stop you from doing that as much as possible, likely because they know more people would illegally distribute them if they didn’t.
A lot of people resort to emulation simply so they can play mods too.
That’s a perk of emulation, but it isn’t the reason why someone would pirate over purchasing it. People just want free shit, but they have a weird mental block in admitting it.
Those are two different situations.
There isn’t enough paying for shit that’s gonna make a mod run in an unmodified console. You can find people who have bought every single Pokémon game ever, and they still want to play romhacks and randomizers and such.
There’s something to be said about how willing people are to pay and whether they admit it or why. But sounds more like you don’t want to believe there’s any other reason to do it.
Yep, sure do.
keeps pirating
I agree with you, but Nintendo’s sales are definitely hurt meaningfully by piracy. Over a million people downloaded TOTK when it leaked.
I was one of them but I also had my physical game pre-ordered so…
I would expect the people that bought a physical copy but pirated it anyway to be the minority, but we’ll never know.
And I guarantee a lot, if not most, of those people didn’t even have Switches. If Nintendo had released a PC version they would have sold a ton more.
So what you’re saying is not only did they not buy a game, they also didn’t buy the system the game was developed for. So it definitely hurt Nintendo’s bottom line.
But that’s on Nintendo. For those people the game doesn’t cost $70, it costs $200+ even if they buy a used Switch lite. Nintendo is deliberately leveraging their games to make people buy their console when those people just want to buy the game.
They want to have their cake and eat it too, and that is most likely one of the biggest reasons people pirated TOTK.
That’s the whole point of exclusive titles and every console vendor does it.
Everybody doing it doesn’t change the fact that it’s a bad thing for customers and a reason for piracy.
No, because if they wanted a Switch, they would have bought one.
I’m one of those weirdos who actually dumps all my own games with my own modded launch Switch mainly for preservation purposes.
But then TotK came out and performed so poorly on the console itself, I exported my save to play on PC and Steam Deck. Every part of my Switch emulation journey has been legal and by-the-book: dumped my own firmware, my own keys, and my own games.
Fuck Nintendo for bullying these developers.