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Comment by gjsman-1000 | Hacker News Reader

I have such mixed feelings on Emulation. On one hand, playing games I purchased on a PC or Steam Deck? Adding graphics shaders? Learning how the game works? Super cool!

But then, unfortunately, I will admit also that about 92% of emulation, is so people can play games they did not pay for. The sense of entitlement from these people when they talk about it is often stunning, and I cannot support it. As for Homebrew, despite people talking about it, I have yet to see anyone say “XYZN is a fantastic homebrew game that really shines on the Switch specifically.”

If I was Nintendo, I would honestly be doing the same thing right now. If it were possible to build an emulator that only played purchased games then maybe we could have a discussion about leniency.

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Part of the difficulty becomes when a system is so long-lived; the Dolphin project for GameCube and Wii is highly valuable, worthwhile, and good even if some (perhaps massive?) percentage of the people using it pirate games that are no longer sold.

Right, but imagine Nintendo right now. Non-paying customers are now playing, and sometimes even streaming, games a week or more ahead of time. Because if you can get a cartridge, you can dump it and publish it.

Also, ~70% of game sales are within the first month, if not higher. It’s why companies pay big for Denuvo - slowing pirates down a month could save tens of millions. For Nintendo, having games dumped before release is embarrassing and at the worst possible time financially for both them and their developer partners.

If we were talking about Switch game dumping after the end of the Switch’s life like the Wii or GameCube it would be a very different discussion.

Yep - and that's why I don't befront Nintendo doing what they are doing; the Switch is a live console and there's a real demand for pirated games.

so go after the people actively distributing pirated games - much more reasonable than the mixed case of third-party developers.

While i agree that the people in the OP thread are highly arrogant. Piracy is really a service problem, and most pirates like in the op thread wouldnt pay for the product anyways (they are most likely kids, poor, or live in region where the service isnt offered). If i could play switch games on pc legally, i would probably buy more switch games. Only reason i own switch is due to it being a great party game system, so its great having around with guests.

> and good even if some (perhaps massive?) percentage of the people using it pirate games that are no longer sold.

Nintendo is also in the business of rereleasing games were no longer sold.

Then after the Wii U shop closed, how can I buy a copy of Pikmin 2 for the Wii U or Switch?

> But then, unfortunately, I will admit also that about 92% of emulation, is so people can play games they did not pay for. The sense of entitlement from these people when they talk about it is often stunning, and I cannot support it. As for Homebrew, despite people talking about it, I have yet to see anyone say “XYZN is a fantastic homebrew game that really shines on the Switch specifically.”

Who cares? Most of the people using a PC have used it for piracy at one point in time. Do you think PCs should be banned? The fact that some people are going to use emulators for piracy is irrelevant, especially in the scenarios where many of these people do not have the option to purchase said game if they live in regions where they're no longer serviced. And as we've seen before, companies have had no problems taking away things you've purchased or preventing you from playing games you own.

Emulators are both legal and a public good. They are the only reason why a lot of games still exist, as there are many games that never left the consoles they were released on.

> I will admit also that about 92% of emulation, is so people can play games they did not pay for.

Where are you getting this figure? I've never really understood the close tie between emulation and piracy.

With the exception of the new switch emulators, most emulators are emulating gaming experiences that existed decade(s) ago. I don't know a single person who would download a gamecube emulator to pirate a game they've never played before, people use emulators to re-experience the games they played(and owned) a long time ago.

Plenty of people play games through emulation that they didn't play when they were new. I certainly have done so. Whether that's something you've seen played by someone else, a famous classic you missed out on, or something you've played the later entries of and want to go back to.

The appeal of, for example, Nintendo's paid-for emulation services goes well beyond just stuff you personally played before, and the same applies to downloading roms.

Of course, even taking the nostalgia market alone, I don't know that having owned a game once creates a permanent right to play it free going forward, even in just a moral sense. How many of those people who had previously "experienced" a game sold their copies, or never owned one in the first place?

> Of course, even taking the nostalgia market alone, I don't know that having owned a game once creates a permanent right to play it free going forward, even in just a moral sense. How many of those people who had previously "experienced" a game sold their copies, or never owned one in the first place?

If a game can not be purchased from the developer anymore I have absolutely no moral objection to pirating it. Why would I go out and buy a second hand copy - in some case for extravagant prices - when the developer sees exactly 0% of that money?

Nintendo could add a way for emulators to log in to an online account and check for a license. That’ll happen well after pigs start flying.

Why would they do that when their business is selling hardware? You make it seem like they are being foolish or unreasonable. They aren't Netflix

Technically they make all/most of their money on the games people buy - the PS5 is just barely profitable[0] (but only at its massive scale of >20M units), and the xbox series X supposedly still sells at a $100-200 loss[1].

0: https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/4/22609150/sony-playstation-...

1: https://www.thegamer.com/xbox-series-x-s-sole-at-loss-200-do...

Why are you making that comparison? Nintendo is known for their strategy of using cheap/old parts in innovative ways to both increase hardware profit margins, and create lock-in (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpei_Yokoi#Lateral_Thinking_...). They make quite a bit of money on each Switch sold, as they have on every console previous.

Nintendo lives soley of their games and consoles (unlike Sony and Microsoft), and they do need profit to survive. but they always pushed boundaries and try to deliver the best gameplay. There are a lot of ways to increase profit, using outdated hardware doesn’t seem the safest way. I prefer to focus on the innovation Nintendo keeps delivering, regardless.

You cited two sources that are irrelevant to your claim. Neither Sony's nor Microsoft's hardware profits have any necessary bearing on Nintendo's.

The last time a major vendor seriously contemplated something like this, Sony made a 45 second ad completely humiliating them, destroying any and all goodwill that vendor had built up over the 6th and 7th generations, and won the early years of the 8th generation more or less for free. Never underestimate to what extent people value things like being able to play games offline and not having to deal with obtrusive checks tied to a centralized service.

Microsoft did it to kill second hand market and piracy. They did it to make more money. They did not for a single speck of time contemplated the benefit for users in that decision.

I largely agree with you with regards to current systems (such as the Switch), but I think there's some nuance here to consider.

Emulation is legal with specific restrictions, but it's also the only way to play some games and systems that are no longer produced. If we're talking about Nintendo there's a slew of games that they made over the years that you cannot buy from them, they do not produce anymore, do not make available digitally, and would go after anyone who tried to sell them digitally. That goes for PC, Xbox, Playstation, Dreamcast, Sega, etc. - if a company has abandoned the software and hardware I (personally) don't think they have a valid legal or moral claim to stop that from happening.

The second layer is that the groundwork for emulation in consoles tends to begin when that console is current gen - even though the success rate is miniscule, the foundations are laid that allow emulation at a later date. Without those foundations it might be more difficult to emulate abandonware at a later date.

Nintendo also has an established history of resurrecting titles that seem long-dead (or "abandoned"), both as straight re-releases and re-masters, both as one-off sales and as licensed rentals. They even released new hardware to play SMB on pretty recently.

Thy mostly do that with their most popular first party titles. There are a lot of games that have never been released on other platforms.

Some MGS series games have been released on one platform only and those platforms are no longer supported.

If you want to play something like MGS: Twin Snakes legally you have to find a used copy somewhere (and hope that the discs haven't been damaged) and get the original console (and hope that the hardware isn't faulty) to either play the game on it or dump the game somehow. (Dumping might not be legal everywhere). Or you can just sail the high seas and play it on your PC.

I doubt that anyone is going to port less known games to modern systems any time soon.

I resonate completely. Proponents of piracy don’t understand that it takes teams of people (each with a family to feed, bills to pay) to build stuff. In short term, humanity would benefit from piracy. Everyone would get what they want for free. In long term, we’d just wipe out small businesses and studios that used to make stuff.

There is also a disconnect between “I never think twice to pay for a nice shirt” vs “Games should be free”. People don’t mind paying for things in the analog world.

I never ever feel bad about paying for something that I enjoy. It’s a transaction as old as human civilization. Exchanging value that is mutually beneficial.

I don’t know why I get this feeling that we are actively dismantling the society that used to produce amazing things through trade and trending towards nothing will be built, like some sort of a Frankenstein neo-communist society. I talk to young people and they want free stuff. If it’s not open source, you’re evil.

>Proponents of piracy don’t understand that it takes teams of people (each with a family to feed, bills to pay)

"To be more precise, the study estimates that for every 100 games that are downloaded illegally, players actually legally obtain 24 more games (including free games) than they would in a world in which piracy didn't exist."

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/eu-study-finds-piracy...

In the limit when 100% of the society pirates, what happens then? Is there a concrete theory that after a certain threshold, piracy plateaus?

Piracy is mostly dependent on availability, pricing, value proposition, regional parity and affordability. Steam is a great example of how to tackle piracy.

Steam and F2P basically killed piracy for games (and streaming services nuked it for movies) in Russia, for instance, somewhere where I'd estimate 80-98% of everything was pirated. With the current situation there's been a revival of the piracy scene in Russia like it's 2005 all over again.

> Proponents of piracy don’t understand that it takes teams of people (each with a family to feed, bills to pay) to build stuff.

Opponents of piracy don't understand that financial loss was never proven by studies and is an urban legend at this point.

Which one is the urban legend?

Is it that "Let's pirate, it's good for the society, I'm told it is free marketing"?

No the financial loss stories, it's a complete urban legend, never proven by any study

Repeating lies doesn't make it true, even if you have money to push it.

Let's pirate, because, unfortunately it's the best way to preserve the old stuff, because copyright holders mostly don't give a damn about preservation.

Piracy is harmful short term, but absolutely necessary long term.

Well, there is the stealing part.

Which part? Stealing means that something is missing afterwards. That is obviously not the case. You mean unauthorized copy.

The part with the stealing.

I still hope to download a car some day.

>Proponents of piracy don’t understand that it takes teams of people (each with a family to feed, bills to pay) to build stuff

How incredibly rude. As a small business owner I very personally understand what it takes to pay my bills and feed my family. There is no room in my budget for new games releases, just like there is no room in my budget for a netflix (and sixteen other streaming services') subscription.

The equation really is quite simple -- if a product is good, I will pay for it. If a product is crap -- I will not. If good product is locked behind a shitty delivery system, then I will do without it (ie, not pay) or humor myself by pirating it (ie, still not pay).

A tangentially related anecdote; I used to work for a small IOT company that dealt with some fairly proprietary software & hardware. One day I got an email in my inbox from somebody who had reverse engineered our (closed-source) windows client, and built a generic *nix command line client for the tool. We collectively shrugged, asked the developer if he wouldn't mind us hosting the source code on our corporate website, and what license he wanted to use. End result -- we grew our userbase for that particular device, and could point folks that needed a *nix solution at a source package. tl;dr, moral of the story: don't fuck with hobbyists, even if they're reversing your stuff.

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