The vast majority may also do things legally. It annoys me that you jump all over people about obtaining games illegally, but you do it yourself. Most of those games are NOT freeware, NOT free to legally download.
I know a lot about emulation, way more than you would think. My experience with emulators goes back to before the Internet and heavily with gaming. You should get off your high horse about emulation and the games you steal.
And yeah, your excuse of preserving them is just that, a excuse.
First of all..
I know a lot about emulation, way more than you would think. My experience with emulators goes back to before the Internet and heavily with gaming. You should get off your high horse about emulation and the games you steal.
Maybe start taking your own advice. Also, if you were into the emulation scene back before the internet then odds are you were more of a "pirate" than I allegedly am. This isn't the mid 90s anymore, where pirating such games was costing these companies real money.
The days of Sega v. Maphia are long gone.
Secondly,
It annoys me that you jump all over people about obtaining games illegally, but you do it yourself.
Feel free to cite some sources with this. But for the record, yes I do look down upon most people who pirate simply because they don't feel like paying for a game and then never pay for it if they end up liking it or playing it for extended periods. Yes I have admitted to some piracy in the past, but any games I pirated I either A: Quickly deleted because I ended up not liking it, or B: Purchased upon completion to support the developers. Fact is I wouldn't have to pirate if PC gaming could come up with some sort of rental system, but alas that has yet to happen and odds are it never will. Sadly the days of shareware are long gone and game demos are increasingly rare,
the reasons of which are explained here. And you're obtuse in your thinking to equate emulating 25+ year old games with pirating modern software. It's not an apples to apples comparison. Me pirating a copy of Undertale, an easily legally obtainable game wherein I'm denying the developer hard earned money is not the same thing as "pirating" a copy of Little Samson for NES, a game that costs
literally thousands of dollars to buy (minus playing reproduction copies, which I think would technically also be illegal) and where NO money would be going to the original developers or Nintendo.
I'd also like to point out that I do not openly advocate for piracy via emulation, nor do I criticize people who choose to not partake (believe me, there are plenty who do so,
as you can see here.) But the fact of the matter is that companies like Nintendo do not care about people emulating their old games. The most obvious proof of this is in the numerous ROM hosting sites on the internet. This isn't like the old days of BBS sites and FTP site swapping, where secrecy was necessary and oftentimes trying to get such files exposed users to rather unsavory sites that could contain viruses or other unwanted files. Rather, these are sites that are a simple Google query away. So with all these sites openly sharing ROM files, why aren't game publishers and Nintendo throwing their massive legal teams after these websites when they're clearly allowing people to steal their copyrighted material? Because it's not worth the time and effort to them to do so. They're too busy upholding their legal IPs by sending Cease & Desist orders to various fan made projects that use them. Trust me, if this was REALLY affecting them adversely, they'd be doing something about it. Yes they go after people who are stupid enough to try and SELL and profit off of the individual games, but the fact that a number of these sites have been up since I was in college (I graduated in 2004) shows that Nintendo and other companies view us "Stealing" from them via emulation as a very low priority. And it's not like Nintendo doesn't go after such places.
See this example where it filed suit against a site that allowed for easy piracy of DS games.
And yeah, your excuse of preserving them is just that, a excuse.
Talk about twisting words. My point was that making digital copies of ROM files are essential to preserving these games, because the media they are on is going to inevitably go bad and cease to work. For crying out loud,
Archive.org has hundreds of dumped ROM files (not NES, but ROMS nonetheless) on their website to provide a digital archive so they can still be played by others. There's numerous current IPs on there, but you don't see all their owners rushing to shut them down. Come to think of it, the only one was Nintendo, when Archive.org decided to upload a bunch of the old Nintendo Power magazines. So Nintendo went all legal when it came to someone putting up scans of old magazines, yet not when it comes to old ROM dumping sites. Food for thought.
To wrap up, I would like to personally apologize for offending you so much that you took time out on this, the day we celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, to point out what a hypocrite and horrible person I am for "stealing" from these multi-billion dollar corporations, one of them being of the most anti-consumer of the gaming industry. Let's not forget that Nintendo is the same company that
sued to stop game rentals, artificially limits hardware supply with every console release (including the NES Classic) and steals ad revenue from YouTubers by throwing out DMCA claims on everyone that dares to upload footage of a Nintendo game. But alas, I guess in the grand scheme of things, we have to look beyond the fact that in my game libraries I have 309 games on Steam, 69 on Good Old Games (ALL of which could be easily pirated because GoG Games have no DRM), 21 on Origin, 16 on uPlay, and hundreds more on Humble Bundles, along with the dozens of other games that I purchased back in the dark ages before widespread high speed internet.
You know, I was hoping I could go to bed after writing all this, but it seems that you've continued on this moral crusade of yours, so let me amend my comments further:
I have seen him post about downloading games like this at least three different times. And your wrong, he jumped down my throat about Id games once, which source code had been released for.
First off, I'm sure your English teacher would be proud to know that their lessons about proper use of contractions has carried on to your adulthood, but let's look at the accusation leveled against me here.
I apologize if you felt that this was me, as you say, jumping down your throat:
Source
I'll make sure from now on to temper my comments to you accordingly when I've noticed you said something that was factually inaccurate.
And what I said is true. It annoys me and pisses me off when people have one set of values for themselves and a totally different set for other people.
Again, if this was an apples to apples comparison I'd agree with you, but emulating games that were made back before the person you're responding to entered elementary school where the developers can't make any money from them anymore, and pirating Fallout 4 (which was allegedly the most pirated game of last year) are not the same thing. In the most narrow of definitions, yes it is, but in PRACTICAL and real world definitions, it is not. If it were, then Nintendo and other companies would be fighting a lot harder than they currently are to stop it.
In closing, I leave you with this:
