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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.
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.