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[Nerrel] A Word on the Death of Switch Emulation
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this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024
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I know, call me a hater, but switch emulation was a bad idea. I argue that it was less emulation, it was more piracy why they got involved.
Sure we like to say that emulation is okay, but that wasn't really the thing here. The problem is this was taking money directly out of Nintendo's pockets.
Now, I don't like Nintendo, their lawyers are too trigger happy - but switch emulation basically loudly stuck out a collective middle finger at Nintendo - and they saw it. Of course it was doomed to be taken down.
Further, I think it was bad for the emulation community. By emulating modern current Gen games and essentially encouraging piracy, it tainted what the emulation goal is - which is to preserve games. Most older games we can point to a case on our shelf and say "I just want to play that again" but can't because the old hardware died.
By emulating current Gen switches they made emulation about piracy, not saying it didn't involve some of it, but it made it seem like pure piracy instead of about preservation.
Why do people not understand that piracy is COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY irrelevant to the LEGALITY of emulation?
There is no "Oh, but Nintendo was losing money..."
My electric company loses money when I generate solar power. That doesn't give them the legal right to come to my house and rip out my panels.
The established legal FACT is that emulation is LEGAL.
"But the pirates..."
No, shut up. Emulation is LEGAL. Making and distributing an emulator is LEGAL. And the best way to LOSE that legal right is to misunderstand that you have it and make the public think that there's some legal gray area here. There isn't.
You know what's illegal? PIRACY. And Nintendo has every legal right to go after PIRATES. They DON'T have the legal right to stop development of system emulators. Stop with this nonsense justification, because there isn't one. Nintendo is not legally right on ANY aspect of this.
Repeat after me:
CREATING AND DISTRIBUTING EMULATORS IS COMPLETELY LEGAL BY ESTABLISHED LAW AND LEGAL PRECEDENT AND NINTENDO ILLEGALLY EXTORTED SOMEONE INTO STOPPING A PROJECT.
I agree with you, but Nintendo's arguments are that the emulators pirated their code in order to develop the emulator and for it to function.
If they have proof of that, more power to them, but at this point the only evidence I've seen in the case of Ryujinx is Nintendo making wild accusations. Maybe they have a case, maybe they don't. In either case, "But the game piracy..." is not and has never been a valid defense of Nintendo's actions.
It's not about the number of years, it's about how accessible the original title is. The less accessible, the better you can justify the existence of emulating that title
It's not about either of those. A system emulator is nothing more than a program that converts the hardware instructions of one piece of hardware to another. What you DO with that can be legal or illegal, but the emulator ITSELF is totally legal and requires no justification.
There's no simple answer to that since games become inaccessible in different ways and with different severities. It'll always be an argument you have to make.
I think we all know the "preservation" argument is bullshit. I don't know why we keep pretending. 99% of people copying games are not "preserving" them, they're playing games they didn't pay for.
Whether or not you think it's wrong to do so is another argument. But can we just start being honest with ourselves? You're not opening a museum, and you know it.
Personal preservation is perfectly valid and doesn't automatically mean sharing aka piracy. If killing emulation prevents a legit owner from playing their game you're diminishing the authority of that ownership. Now I'm not arguing all claims of personal preservation are always ok since some games give you a limited license to play and are not owned, but that just means it's important to see the nuance
That is completely irrelevant. Piracy is already illegal. If you pirate software you can be jailed and/or sued.
Emulation development, however, is completely legal and protected by law and precedent.
Yes and no. Yuzu had it coming because they bragged about running leaked games and profited from it. Ryujinx was entirely legal and ethical even if they were way early to the game.
Emulators have always existed alongside their consoles. That's to only way you get enough talent involved in a project like that. Difference is these days computers are fast enough to emulate the consoles much better and the architecture they use is a lot closer to what the PC is using anyway in a lot of cases, or at least a documented strain of ARM with a few custom tweaks.
The people working on the emulators are pioneers forging a path that takes a massive amount of time and effort. Trial and error, tweaking and ironing out the kinks can last years.
The goal of emulation is to play games on other platforms. Preservation is a nice benefit.
If that doesn't work without official permission then it doesn't work at all. Fuck their bottom line. You have a right to culture, and a right to run software as you see fit.
I own a switch and a steam deck and I've bought my switch games. Nintendo is telling me I'm not allowed to run the games I legally purchased from them on my steam deck. Fuck 'em. Piracy isn't a new thing, you don't even need emulation to pirate games on the PC but PC gaming is thriving.
I don't support pirating anything that is readily accessible. I've never touched Yuzu or Ryujinx.
But I also think it's important that these projects are developed sooner rather than later, before the things we want preserved disappear. Later is too late. Some Switch titles already have been delisted, but we've saved them thanks to these efforts.