Anyway, what’s the point of a museum of a console maker without showing original hardware?
That’s like saying what’s the point of the air and space museum if they’re not actually flying the planes.
They’re not going to use the original hardware and put wear on them. That’s a standard part of archiving.
No it is more like saying “What is the point of going to an museum of art when all the paintings and statues are only photocopies and 3D printed replicas”
I was joking when in a previous post about the museum I said it better not run on any emulators…
So… Why aren’t they selling said emulators and roms? I ain’t gonna travel half the world to play one in an overpriced museum.
I’d bet the emulators in use are actually publicly available ones. Not anything Nintendo made. Adding to the hypocrisy.
I hate to defend Nintendo, but they used their own Emulators in the NES and SNES Mini (Kachikachi and Canoe respectively). I would be surprised if they just yoinked one from the internet here.
I mean, they’ve done it before in part.
Um… they are, and have been for almost 20 years, since the Wii. Or the N64 depending on how you look at it.
What did you think Virtual Console was? How about the NES and SNES mini? What about the “Nintendo Game Pass” or whatever they’re calling it?
Animal Crossing’s original Japan release had NES games in it, and so did the GC rerelease/psuedosequel we got internationally too.
Even better: During the Wii era, the Wiis at the Nintendo Store in New York City ran official Nintendo made software to load games off a connected hard drive, so you could play multiple of their new releases without workers having to switch discs.
It has always been about attempts to prevent piracy and keep control over how people access their games for Nintendo, and they are roughly 10 years behind the curve on modern tech trends.
Either stop supporting them or get used to it.
The problem is that they had stuff like Virtual Console and then decide to pull the plug. Then rebrand as some other feature in an online service, which is yet another service that’s gonna be a wait and see on whether or when they’ll pull the plug again. Forcing people to pay for old stuff over and over again.
They should sell this kind off stuff independently from their consoles/handhelds, preferably something that runs on a PC or any platform.
The NES and SNES mini were great examples of how it could be done, except there too they decided to only make a limited amount, essentially the same as pulling the plug.
Nintendo’s truly an awful company. It’s baffling how often they get praised for their stuff, they only dangle some 15+ year old reskinned game and people forget all about it.
This is an excellent article that covers how and why the VC died.
People say they want it back, but most titles never sold all that well back then.
Probably after people learned that nintendo had no proper account system so you would lose your purchases if your console died and needed the hassle of sending it to them for them to transfer to a new console.
Yeah, I stopped buying from the VC when the Wii U asked me to pay to “upgrade” my games.
I think, like that post mentions as well, that prices were the biggest issue. The points system being a garbage system in the first place, easily a system I would instantly be turned off from, I absolutely hate buying currencies to buy something, instead of just outright seeing the actual prices in the store. But if you’d want to buy a small collection for a couple of decades old games it would add up quickly.
The problem with Nintendo’s always been the insane prices. I’m especially hesitant to buy anything digital or any services from Nintendo. Knowing they could decide to pull the plug any time again.
There is no way to legally buy their ROMs anymore. You can only rent them in perpetuity. When they did sell them, they didn’t forward port your purchases to their next device, which is hilariously stupid, and you know they’d take you to court for dumping those same ROMs to your PC to organize, customize, and play the way you like them. If they just sold these things DRM-free on a web site for me to put in Emulation Station, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
I mean…
All of those mini consoles (NES mini, SNES mini) are already SOCs with an emulator.
The Switch has a SNES emulator as well
The 3ds was a full on emulation machine. Heck it started with the Wii!
I’d say it started on at least Nintendo 64. The original Japan-only Animal Crossing game for N64 had playable, emulated Famicom (NES) games. Nintendo even ran a special offer to get an N64 Controller Pak with Ice Climber pre-loaded which you could plug into your controller like a game cartridge and play inside Animal Crossing.
Corps are shameless. No amount of hypocrisy is enough to make them reconsider their evil.
Yeah, that shallow appreciation is why you can’t truly understand them, it’s like calling a shark evil when it eats a baby seal.
They are, but you need to understand the system so you can know how they get where they get, and how to counter them.
Don’t just be an angry mother seal.
Why are you here? You’re more cringe than Nintendo right now. There’s absolutely no reason to insult that guy.
Because I’ve worked with the marketing assholes who lead to these decisions, and if you don’t get why they make them and how to get them fired for those decisions, you’ll never change anything.
That’s the difference between being a child, and being effective.
Ooohhh, you’re trauma dumping. Well carry on then. Tell us about the good corps who are just getting ruined by evil marketing assholes.
They’re not, Jesus, what is wrong with you?
They’re greedy and ambitious, but also cowardly.
Saying ‘Nintendo’ doesn’t hurt much, the corporation is almost numb to criticism, it knows it will sell games.
Find the marketing moron responsible and destroy his career, that’s the only way you make a difference.
Do this enough times, and eventually they become more afraid of the community’s wrath than their ambition to get a promotion by kissing ass.
Take down a few VPS of marketing, you’re can start influencing them, because they’ll start community outreach before doing shit.
Corporations are a hard outer shell to protect the sensitive inner meat, don’t attack the shell, take down the inner bits.
The people change, but the streets are always the same.
Nintendo had uses emulators for a long time. This really isn’t anything news worthy.
It would be pretty cool if they were using Higan.
Nintendo: Emulation is illegal, criminal, and you should never ever do it. If you do, we will sue your ass, send the Pinks, and then shit fury on you!!!
Also Nintendo:
That’s not at all Nintendo’s philosophy.
They literally included emulation starting with the wii
So it is more of a rules for thee but not for me situation. Not you should never ever do it but you should only do it on our hardware with our emulators
I mean, their position is that they as the rights holders can republish how they please, but that buying a cartridge does not give you license to play on other devices. You can disagree with them on legal or philosophical grounds but their position isn’t really inconsistent.
You arent wrong and they have every right to use emulation themselves as the legal owners of their products.
The hypocrisy, as i see it, is that they have in the past painted emulation as bad. Fullstop. So for them to have had that opinion, then use it themselves is where they come into being called out for it. Hence the rules for thee but not for me phrase.
And its not a perfect fit which is why i said “more of a” if that helps explain how i intended to mean it
The inconsitency is in their past words vs actions especially where going after emulators is concerned.
Thats all i was getting at hope that helps
It’s tough if no impossible to find now, so I don’t blame anyone for not knowing or believing this to be the case whole google results are dominated by more recent events involving more recent emulation cases. But they have litteraly in the past made the false claim that emulation itself was an illegal practice. Then later they pretend they never said that and people like yourself never see it. I’ve seen emails from the big N’s legal team making the claim, but it was over 20 years ago. I just have a long memory…
people like myself never see it
Totally wrong my guy. I do see what you mean, but im claiming to be an exception to the case you have laid out.
Their actions are more important than their words which is why i made my point. Im well aware of nintendos history with going after emulation. They almost rival the mouse
For the record im not defending Nintendo here, i just apprciate honesty and accuracy. Otherwise its just slander and misinformation which we have way too much of.
You see…
It’s okay when THEY do it.
It’s not okay when YOU do it.
That’s how they function.
Wait are we arguing that the owner of something isn’t entitled more than someone who stole it?
Wait are we arguing that the owner of something isn’t entitled more than someone who bought it?
FTFY. The problem is not with Nintendo being against emulators because of piracy, they’re against emulators even if you own the game and the hardware but want to preserve the hardware (just like they do in the museum).
And if the counter-argument is that you don’t own the game when you buy it, then by that same logic you don’t steal it when you pirate it.
A) Yes, if you buy a game you don’t own the game. Only a license to use the software (in this case the game) was bought. This was, in general, even the case back then when games were sold on cartridges or discs. And it is for sure the case now with digital distribution.
B) Also yes, pirating a game is most of the time not theft but it is still against the law to use a unlicensed copy of any software.
If Nintendo were only showcasing games developed AND published by Nintendo, that might be the argument.
They’re not though, some of the games they’re showing they didn’t develop or publish.
Nintendo says emulation is transformative, that due to the recompiler, it’s a new work. Do they have permission from all the rightsholders for third party games to make a transformative work?
Do they even have the permissions from artists who might have licensed their work to Nintendo for X game, but not for the newly emulated ‘Y’
Well, you know, the games are theirs to begin with.
I see what you mean, and you are correct, but I think it’s more about the games that are being emulated than emulation in itself right?
It would be, if they didn’t target the emulators and only targeted the roms/game data.
The only time the emulators are targeted is when the creators try to profit off them, or am I mistaken?
That, and when Nintendo’s code is used in some way to develop the project. Japan has very strict laws on reverse engineering any software, which Nintendo is always set to capitalize on.
That’s definitely not the case for Switch emulators.
Yuzu was charging for early access to their emulator, which is what prompted Nintendo action.
Ryujinx doesn’t seem like any legal action was taken, sounds like the creator was given a chunk of cash by Nintendo to take it down.
I hate Nintendo, but you gotta keep the facts straight
They also shut down Yuzu forks using the DMCA. If they paid Ryujinx’s dev it was the equivalent of the Mafia bribing a judge while waving a picture of his family.
Totally the same /s
I don’t think they paid him off, I think it was more along the lines of “We won’t do anything to you if you stop now”
What about the fan games that were made of pure passion for the IP that they’ve taken down?
To name a few:
Pokemon Uranium
Pokemon Prism
Mario Maker 64
Another Metroid 2 Remake
Zelda Maker
Ocarina of Time 2D
Zelda 30There are countless others I’m sure.
FUCK Nintendo.
They have to protect their IPs, it is what they have to do by law if they don’t want to lose then.
https://www.varnumlaw.com/insights/enforce-your-intellectual-property-or-risk-losing-it/
So it is not really Nintendo’s fault that the IP laws are the way they are.
the fact that its law doesnt necessarily mean the right or moral thing. just means lobbyists might have been paid for it.
Doesn’t change a thing, Nintendo is bound by law to protect their IPs.
Why the law is this way and if it should be changed (which it should IMHO) are completely different questions.
i think we are mostly arguing that it has to be changed when this topic comes up. its not just nintendo and not just games though too.
Yes, like many things in the space of copyright and patents, this should be changed and defanged.
But the only changes we will ever see is making it more and more into a weapon against consumers. Nintendo, Disney and all the other big IP holders will never allow for anything else, they will use their money and power to prevent it.
I understand needing to protect your IP, in some sense, but what I’m getting at is that when a fan game is made, it is a homage to a beloved franchise that fosters love for the IP. If you were a smart company, you would foster this love for your franchise, to entrench the fans you already have, and to gather more fans because you are seen as the company that “does no wrong”, which in turn also increases your profits. Imagine if instead of taking these love letters to your franchise down (which makes you look like an absolute fucking ass to most), you made a feature of it on an official channel. Look at Scott Cawthon and his Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise. He encourages people to make fan games using his original ideas and that encourages people to not only love his own games, but to go out and start developing their own little games that include ideas that Scott may not have even thought about including before. I guess what I’m trying to say is that there is a good way of protecting your IP by taking down blatant rip offs of your game that want to steal money from your fans, and cause confusion to new fans. Then there is the bad way, which is taking down these passionate love letters to your franchise that encourage others to look at the original source and see why they even decided to take the time to create the fan game in the first place. IF the fan game is trying to monetize, then by all means, send a warning. Tell them to not monetize it, and they are free to continue. If they continue, Cease and Desist. Hopefully that makes sense.
If they would carte blanche allow fan games of their IPs then that would weaken the IPs, which could lead to them loosing the IPs completly. For that it is irrelevant if the games are monetized or not.
Nintendo would need to implement some kind of process for developers of fan games to get them officially licensed. But for that to be effective as a tool to protect the IP they could not just give such a limited fan game license to everyone who request it, so a complex request process with multiple steps would be needed, and they would need to deny lots if not even most of the requests.
And this gets even more complicated when the very complex japan software patent system is added to the mix.
Could Nintendo be less shitty? Oh yes they could, but they decided to go the Cobra Kai way and strike first, strike hard, no merci!
I don’t disagree they are their games, but is it their emulator, or did they just download one of the many online? Really doesn’t matter, just love to see companies bitch about something, then turn around and do it themselves.
Well yeah, as the owners they have the exclusive right to determine what’s okay. They’re just following the rules as they’ve been laid out by centuries of corporate lobbying for more exploitable copyright laws. Those are what we need to focus on if we want more fair use of intellectual property that the rights holder has already sufficiently profited from - the thing that such protections were initially meant to ensure to a much more reasonable extent.
You had me in the first half ngl (more like first sentence but close enough)
But they DO have the exclusive right. People want to be told the world is different - that it’s better - but if we want to change it we need to see it for what it is. If we say “They don’t have the right!” before we’ve done the work necessary to strip them of the right, then we’ll never even understand how to start fixing this broken system.
I completely agree with that take, I was just making a joke about how the first sentence reads like the start of a comment that’s about to defend Nintendo
They aren’t the owners of most of the games though, did they ask, in writing, all of the rightsholders for the games they made?
Did they ask the artists if it was ok to re-use their work in a ‘new title’? (according to Nintendo, emulation is transformative)
Would you want to enter a legal battle with Nintendo? This system is broken in a lot of different ways, one of which is the incredible expense of legal fees even if you’re in such an open-and-shut case as someone clearly using your intellectual property without your consent. The one with deeper pockets wins regardless of what the law says.
Nintendo has never been against emulation. They’ve only been against people playing without paying.
Yes they have. They’ve just recently nuked on the Switch emulator.
And you can bet that if they could, Nintendo would go out of their way to sue any other emulator developer that emulates their games. The only things saving some of those emulators is technicalities like open-source.
I kinda get that they’ll do whatever than can to shut down an emulator for a console still selling and available on the shelves though. Not that there aren’t legitimate cases for it (homebrew software and games), but that’s not what Nintendo is concerned about.
But screw that for legacy consoles, game preservation is important too.
I kinda get that they’ll do whatever than can to shut down an emulator for a console still selling
If I hadn’t downloaded Yuzu and BOTW, Nintendo would’ve probably missed out on several hundreds euros my brother spent on buying a Switch, several games, controllers and supplies, albeit some of the supplies are 3rd party so Nintendo probably didn’t make profit off them.
Piracy definitely increases sales. I would have never bought a Switch in the situation I was in some years back, but having downloaded it and gotten very into it, my brother wanted to as well and he didn’t care to pirate, and had actual uses for Switch’s properties that you don’t get on emulators, like online play and the portability of the console itself.
It’s just that it’s hard to actually quantify, so the shareholders will prefer to go with enforcement that forces people to buy the games and console than taking a risk on hypotheticals.
Personally, I never bought a Wii U/Switch and played my fair share of games through emulation only.
They’ve just recently nuked on the Switch emulator.
Because it was being used for piracy. As in, had support in the emulator’s code for unreleased games. Nintendo rarely goes after emulator devs that don’t use their code.
Supporting unreleased games does not mean they used Nintendo code. The whole point of an emulator is to perfectly reproduce the original system. That means working on any switch game, regardless of whether said game has been released or even thought of. In practice it isn’t that simple because they are attempting to replicate a very complex system, so there will usually be patches whenever giant games come out that use the system in different ways. However, that doesn’t mean Nintendo code is being used at all.
Right, but Yuzu did, tho. That’s how Nintendo shut them down. Yuzu overstepped and handed Nintendo their own noose. They probably would’ve been just fine if they hadn’t given out builds with those tools built-in.
AFAIK the Yuzu accusations of containing code from the Nintendo SDK haven’t been proven and also didn’t come out until well after Yuzu had already shut down (it was drama surrounding the Suyu “devs” that tried to succeed them). The whole case was about them profiting off of their patreon and optimizing their emulator for a game that hadn’t been released yet.
It’s not that Yuzu used stolen code, it’s that they released updates that optimized for the leaked copies of Tears of the Kingdom, and charged money for it. If they waited to release builds until after the release, or if they had been doing it for free, they probably wouldn’t have been shut down. You might think this is a small difference, but it really isn’t because having the binary file of a game is not the same as having the code that made the binary. Realistically, if you are good enough at reverse engineering binaries that you can figure out the code well enough to make optimizations for it in the 2 weeks that the game was leaked for before it came out, you are probably getting paid enough that steaking your income on a community-driven emulator would be unthinkable.
Either way, Ryujinx, which didn’t profit like Yuzu did (and is written in a completely different programming language from Yuzu, with a completely different set of developers) still got shut down. Nintendo isn’t doing it because of stolen code, they’re doing it because it’s an emulator that exists.
They didn’t use any code. Any keys were dumped from an existing Switch. Yuzu got taken down not as a result of a lawsuit, but because of the threat of one. Famously Bleem won their emulator lawsuit from PlayStation, but still went bankrupt anyway, so most emulator projects don’t even try to fight any legal battles.
Please stop slobbering over Nintendick.
I’m not defending Nintendo, dude. I’m explaining how they’re able to shut down emulators. It’s possible to make legal emulators, and Nintendo won’t touch them.
I’m not going to check the whole archive, but going back to at least 2005, Nintendo was asking users to …
report ROM sites, emulators, Game Copiers, Counterfeit manufacturing, or other illegal activities
https://web.archive.org/web/20051124194318/http://www.nintendo.com/corp/faqs/legal.html
Here’s some more quotes from the same page where Nintendo is viciously anti-emulation:
The introduction of video game emulators represents the greatest threat to date to the intellectual property rights of video game developers. As is the case with any business or industry, when its products become available for free, the revenue stream supporting that industry is threatened. Such emulators have the potential to significantly damage a worldwide entertainment software industry which generates over $15 billion annually, and tens of thousands of jobs.
Distribution of a Nintendo emulator trades off of Nintendo’s goodwill and the millions of dollars invested in research & development and marketing by Nintendo and its licensees. Substantial damages are caused to Nintendo and its licensees. It is irrelevant whether or not someone profits from the distribution of an emulator. The emulator promotes the play of illegal ROMs , NOT authentic games. Thus, not only does it not lead to more sales, it has the opposite effect and purpose.
Personal Websites and/or Internet Content Providers sites That link to Nintendo ROMs, Nintendo emulators and/or illegal copying devices can be held liable for copyright and trademark violations, regardless of whether the illegal software and/or devices are on their site or whether they are linking to the sites where the illegal items are found.
Nintendo’s been openly emulating their own games since about that time. IIRC, the SNES Virtual Console on the Wii had code from SNES9X in it.
The distinction (which seems nobody cares about) is that Nintendo’s going after copyright infringers. If your emulator doesn’t use any of Nintendo’s code, they ain’t doing shit about it; they’re just gonna steal it, if anything.
Somebody has fed you or you have invented bad information. Neither Yuzu nor Ryujinx, the two Switch emulators which recently ceased development due to intervention from Nintendo, included Nintendo’s code. The Yuzu settlement required those developers to acknowledge that
because our projects can circumvent Nintendo’s technological protection measures and allow users to play games outside of authorized hardware, they have led to extensive piracy.
There was never any mention of them stealing Nintendo code.
Ryujinx, we know even less about, because the agreement went down privately, but there’s literally zero indication of any stolen code. We know that Nintendo contacted the developer proposing that they cease offering Ryujinx and they did.
Obviously, Nintendo was bothered in both of these cases because the emulators do facilitate piracy, but that’s not the same as them having infringed on Nintendo’s copyright by using their code which you are claiming. Both of these emulators were developed open-source; if they were built using stolen Nintendo code there would be receipts all over the place. That was never the problem.
Yuzu supported unreleased games. To do that required using Nintendo’s code, and getting that code through unauthorized channels. Nintendo’s code may not have been distributed through Yuzu, but it was used in a way that was not permitted in order to engineer a way to circumvent the copy protection of those games. That was how Nintendo was able to go after them.
Dude why are you digging this hole even deeper. They are going after emulators. That’s a proven fact. You can try to handwave it however you wish, but that won’t change reality. Nintendo goes after emulators, after modders, after content creators playing those mods. An emulator can play games, that’s what it’s there for. I don’t see how an emulator would work otherwise.
Just curious - what size rock do you live under? Is it room sized or as large as a house? How do you decorate? Is it climate controlled?
So you admit that emulation is the best way to preserve old forms of interactive media?
I won’t be buying a Switch 2 and if I can’t pirate Nintendos games I won’t play them. I refuse to reward them for their bad behavior. Like a little child who throws tantrums they belong in the time out area.
I don’t think they care if you won’t buy their consoles or games anyways.
I really love those doofy detachable Joycons. However I have instead gone with the Steam Deck as it is open to the point of allowing custom OS and they advertise capability for DIY repairs.
Eww extremely embarrassing that they used Windows.
please get a personality
Getting a personality by dressing their PC exactly the same as anyone else? Sounds right!
i never disputed that??
REAL
No
not alot of people know linux come on
The Switch runs a custom version of Android, so they technically know at least one form of Linux
It doesn’t? The Switch uses an OS based on the OS of the 3DS which is based on FreeBSD and uses a microkernel.
I realized after the fact; at least it has a posix shell though
Doesn’t switch use freebsd
Oops you’re right my bad
everyone I know has heard of it, I’ve told em’ about it.
I only know alot of people who use linux here in lemmy and people who like privacy
Edit: excluding server side
ITT: people think emulators are only the ones you can download
In this comment: Someone who is not familiar with the history of Nintendo selling pirated versions of their own games and ripping off pirate emulators then passing them as their own.
Did the terms of the emulators they ripped off allow them to? Not saying it’s morally okay.
or the history of nintendo falsely claiming that emulation itself was an illegal practice when trying to bully and scare people into submission…
if its under GPL couldn’t they be forced to disclose the source code?
Only if they made modifications
What, where do you get that? Any publicly conveyed copies of gpl-licensed software must make their source code available, and be published under the same license. This is true regardless of modifications.
I could be wrong and I’m more then welcome to being proven that. But wouldn’t this be like asking me to redistribute the whole process of running ZSNES on linux? Seems pretty infeasible.
It would be more accurate to say it’s like requiring you to make the source code for ZSNES available if you were distributing copies of ZSNES.
That’s a fair correction
But they own it. I thought even I could download a ROM if I have the actual game no?
No, at least in the US, you can only back up your own ROM if you own the game, not download someone else’s backup. The real problem here is that Nintendo’s (idiotic) stance is ALL emulation/backups are piracy and here they are being hypocrites about it.
Maybe the emulator maker should sue
Maybe they wrote their own emulator
pull a WordPress and force a TOS in the license to say you cannot be affiliated with Nintendo in any way in order to use this software.
they want to emulate their hardware? then they can build their own emulator.
I believe they do have their own emulator. It logically would be what powers the Nintendo arcade
folks thought the same for the Genesis and Atari flashbacks but some tinkering found they were using FOSS emulation. IMO FOSS projects should start charging companies that use their products dependent on scale.
Agreed I would totally support emus using a business software license just because of how they’re treated by business.
The thing is, we know Nintendo does have in-house developed emulators that they used for Virtual Console and then NSO and the Classic Edition.
It’s fairly likely they didn’t take the effort to port those to PC for the museum, but still.
I assume most FOSS emulators have a non-commercial license, so if a company is using it to make money they are already violating the law, but who is gonna go after Nintendo for that?
If they had that, they’d no longer be FOSS and instead “source available” and half the community will raise the pitch forks. Best FOSS licence to protect against this sort of thing is AGPL because it’s toxic for corporations. But even that could be used in this case if they had the source on the same computer imo (IANAL though)
