Sigh... they have perfectly legitimate uses too. You can't play Zelda in 4K @ 60fps on a switch...
I really wish this angle of thought would die. Stop parroting what the business fucks tell you.
I really wish this angle of thought would die. Stop parroting what the business fucks tell you.
The existence of those is a fig leaf for what Switch emulators are used in the vast majority of cases: piracy. There are much better ways to run homebrew than the Switch.
If you think piracy of currently sold games is in fact ethical, or if you simply don't care about copyright, than please say so explicitly!
- Microtransactions
- Pay to win, punishing players for not having ample disposable income
- Lootboxes and the like ("baby's first casino")
- Blatant false advertising, especially coupled with preorders
If openly preying on your customers, — in no small part, children and teenagers, — for huge profits is considered ethical, then merely copying some files is downright angelic behavior, is it not?
Given the current laws you are correct, sure. (Whether to follow each and every law is a quite a personal choice...)
The majority of games for Switch aren't worked on by Nintendo, so that point seems tangential.
Yes emulators are unfortunately often used for pirating games. But they will also be the only way you get to enjoy your purchased games in 10-20 years when the vendor stops producing the hardware, cuts off online services and your device becomes a fancy paperweight either as a consequence of that or naturally.
When media is no longer available for sale or pulled from the market, piracy is ethical (there is literally no way to pay the creators)
When media you had legit access to is now unavailable because your account got stolen or you are otherwise locked out of some required online service, piracy is ethical (they won't do business with you)
When media requires something that was stolen from you, lost, or otherwise destroyed, piracy is ethical (you already paid for it)
When media uses DRM, piracy is ethical (doctrine of first sale stipulates you cannot control something after you have sold it, and one should not recognize any "license" for which have custody of the physical bits)
Emulation is completely legal in the US. Its legality has been challenged in court and it won.
At the moment, there's a game compilation being sold on the Switch and other platforms called Disney Classic Games Collection. It contains emulators and ROMs stripped of the trademarks of their host systems, with the emulators created without the involvement of them too.
Nintendo can't do anything about third parties emulating their hardware without also threatening the legal status of software released by their partners, which include Disney, but that's just one example. Suffice to say that even if you argue that Yuzu/Ryujinx step over the line, the foundations for all this are fragile enough that no one wants to rock the boat.