How is Emulation supposed to be "Game Preservation"?

[Box]

I get how videogame retrospectives, let's plays, and videogame museums preserve games, but I don't see how just one person having access to a game counts as "preservation."

1. "To legally emulate a game, you gotta own a copy, so technically, the number of folks with access stays the same."

2. "If you're not sharing the game with others, can you really say it's accessible to the public if it's just you who has it?"

If you emulate games that are unavailable to buy through retail & delete those copies as they become available through retail. As long as you're not also breaking copyright law with security cracks or profiting from the emulation of commercial products, it might be considered fair.

 

[Old Gamer]

Old games forever stuck in long dead systems are fair game.

Pun intended.

 

[Box]

Old games forever stuck in long dead systems are fair game.

Pun intended.

If those old games eventually get made available, would then purchase it legally?

 

[Old Gamer]

If those old games eventually get made available, would then purchase it legally?

I have. Hundreds of old games on GoG.
I occasionally look for remakes on PSN as well.

 

[Box]

I have. Hundreds of old games on GoG.
I occasionally look for remakes on PSN as well.

For me that's fine and justified, I draw the line when people claim to be preserving the game yet its still publicly available like Switch games

 

[Johnic]

The fact that publishers, Sony especially, lock old games behind old consoles, many not even available for purchase. Hundreds of PS1 and 2 games stuck on hardware people no longer have access to. And even if they did, software is incredibly hard to find. And that's in general. There's also region specific crap. Like Dino Crisis not being available in the UK store.

I've bought a few PS1 classics on PS5 and I subscribed to Premium just so I could play a few others. But I'll gladly start up DuckStation to play the likes of Dino Crisis and Parasite Eve, since Sony's not interested in preserving those.

 

[Summer Nightmares]

Some games are sadly only available through emulation/piracy. I would LOOOVE the be able to buy The Sims 1 on Steam. That game was my childhood, but sadly is not for sale on any store. You can only buy legally The sims 3 and 4.

 

[flaccidsnake]

I get how videogame retrospectives, let's plays, and videogame museums preserve games, but I don't see how just one person having access to a game counts as "preservation."

1. "To legally emulate a game, you gotta own a copy, so technically, the number of folks with access stays the same."

2. "If you're not sharing the game with others, can you really say it's accessible to the public if it's just you who has it?"

If you emulate games that are unavailable to buy through retail & delete those copies as they become available through retail. As long as you're not also breaking copyright law with security cracks or profiting from the emulation of commercial products, it might be considered fair.

Emulation is legitimate in all scenarios.

Emulation is not breaking copyright.

Breaking encryption is not breaking copyright.

Copyright sucks anyway and should be opposed.

 

[Systemshock2023]

If you are a racing game fan, game preservation is basically your best friend. Watch those licenses expire like crazy. The racing genre is basically 90 per cent abandonware at this point.

 

[ksdixon]

If those old games eventually get made available, would then purchase it legally?

For myself? Yes, Absolutely!

 

[Yurinka]

I get how videogame retrospectives, let's plays, and videogame museums preserve games, but I don't see how just one person having access to a game counts as "preservation."

1. "To legally emulate a game, you gotta own a copy, so technically, the number of folks with access stays the same."

2. "If you're not sharing the game with others, can you really say it's accessible to the public if it's just you who has it?"

If you emulate games that are unavailable to buy through retail & delete those copies as they become available through retail. As long as you're not also breaking copyright law with security cracks or profiting from the emulation of commercial products, it might be considered fair.

I collaborate with a game museum, game exhibitions and different game preservation entities. We preserved many games, mostly local arcade games doing different things:

• We store at least one original copy
• We research and document anything available about the game, its hardware and the team who worked on it
• We repair, restore and take photos of the arcade boards, arcade cabinets etc.
• We also scan or take photos of available documentation like original artwork for the cabinet side panels, marquee, control panel, border of the screen, or instructions to connect the arcade board to the cabinet or to repair it, sometimes also making the diagrams of the arcade board
• We dump and emulate the game, and store all the documentation normally in the MAME project

Some of these games, or specific variants (like a boottleg clone, a specific revision of a game made by company from a different country etc) only have a single or a few working copies.

This material helps to repair or restore boards of that game that appear in the future and are partially malfunctioning: maybe there's a broken ROM memory and it can be replaced with a new one, with the info we provided by dumping the game and documenting the board.

Very old games, specially in arcade can be easily broken, and some of them after some time will stop working. And in some cases, some components can be fixed or replaced, but in other cases don't. Certain boards have some componenents that aren't made anymore, sometimes because were custom stuff made specifically only for that board. And well, all games stored in diskettes, cassetes or cds over time will stop working too.

So preservation and emulation keep games that can't be bought anymore alive and playable in modern devices for future generations or for educational purposes for normal people but specially for game historians and game developers like me, who like to look at old classics to get references and learn about our origins.

Thanks to this work we discovered things like the first commercial game ever made in our country and even have a working arcade cabinet of the game. Or early big hits or important innovations that were made here that nowadays not even the gamedevs interested in game history like me knew about hem. We're like gaming archeologist. In fact we made a documentary in Spanish telling the story of one of these groups which would be translated as "Arcadeology".

I personally think it only should be done for old games that are no longer available to be bought to don't affect the business of the current devs. We only preserve games that are over 20 years old. I think that's game preservation: to keep old games and their history alive for the future, so people can know and enjoy them, and if their IP owners want, to rerelease them. I think i's fine for people to play games that aren't sold since decades ago.

But I also think that as of today, to play Switch (or any other game or device being sold) emulation -when you don't own the games- isn't game preservation: it's just piracy. But instead to emulate, dump and document Switch games storing them not available to the public, in order to have preserved for the future, it's game preservation.

 

[flaccidsnake]

I think that as of today, Switch emulation isn't game preservation: it's just piracy.

But you're completely wrong about this.

It's so hypocritical to be a enthusiastic about a "Game Museum" and not defend Yuzu, at minimum on the grounds that Switch emulator development is 100% legitimate, socially beneficial activity.

If those developers were passing around ROMs on their Discord, that is reckless behavior, and I admit they're opening themselves up to legal attack there. But the development of the emulator itself is entirely legitimate. This idea that you can't start writing emulation code until the hardware is obsolete is completely made up and has no basis in any legal precedent. The legal precedent is on the side of emulation. Moreover Nintendo doesn't recognize this standard at all. They take the most maximalist position on their "Intellectual Property" imaginable, and reserve the right to attack any project they don't like by any means for any reason.

The Bleem emulator for Dreamcast was SOLD IN STORES during the active life of the Dreamcast.

 

[Yurinka]

But you're completely wrong about this.

It's so hypocritical to be a enthusiastic about a "Game Museum" and not defend Yuzu, at minimum on the grounds that Switch emulator development is 100% legitimate, socially beneficial activity.

If those developers were passing around ROMs on their Discord, that is reckless behavior, and I admit they're opening themselves up to legal attack there. But the development of the emulator itself is entirely legitimate. This idea that you can't start writing emulation code until the hardware is obsolete is completely made up and has no basis in any legal precedent. The legal precedent is on the side of emulation. Moreover Nintendo doesn't recognize this standard at all. They take the most maximalist position on their "Intellectual Property" imaginable, and reserve the right to attack any project they don't like by any means for any reason.

To be specific, I think to make the emulator is ok, to dump and document their games to preserve them is ok and to use it when you have the console and the games is perfectly ok. I never have been and never will be against any (free, non commercial) emulator.

What I meant was that I consider piracy is when a people instead buying a Switch console+game they download it for free from internet. This is just piracy that hurts their devs, who should be paid for their job.

It's a very different story than playing an emulated game that no longer can be bought and ttheir creators aren't selling it since decades ago.

In our groups we also preserved (either dumping, emulating or both) arcade games when were newer than 20 years old, but didn't made their emulation public/included them in MAME until they were 20 years old.

We do it / think in this way because of ethical reasons, not because of legal ones.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

The fact that publishers, Sony especially, lock old games behind old consoles, many not even available for purchase. Hundreds of PS1 and 2 games stuck on hardware people no longer have access to. And even if they did, software is incredibly hard to find. And that's in general. There's also region specific crap. Like Dino Crisis not being available in the UK store.

I've bought a few PS1 classics on PS5 and I subscribed to Premium just so I could play a few others. But I'll gladly start up DuckStation to play the likes of Dino Crisis and Parasite Eve, since Sony's not interested in preserving those.

Dino Crisis is a Capcom game tho.

Parasite Eve is a Square-Enix game tho.

I mean yeah Sony has a lot of 1P not commercially available on their current platform when they should, but I wouldn't say that's "hundreds of games" per se. And I don't think many are clamoring for Sing Star re-releases.

For the 3P stuff, you gotta take it up with the 3P publishers who own those IP. Sony can't do anything about Dino Crisis or Parasite Eve if Capcom & Square-Enix don't care.

 

[flaccidsnake]

To be specific, I think to make the emulator is ok, to dump and document their games to preserve them is ok and to use it when you have the console and the games is perfectly ok. I never have been and never will be against any (free, non commercial) emulator.

What I meant was that I consider piracy is when a people instead buying a Switch console+game they download it for free from internet. This is just piracy that hurts their devs, who should be paid for their job.

It's a very different story than playing an emulated game that no longer can be bought and ttheir creators aren't selling it since decades ago.

Everybody agrees that serving unauthorized games from the internet is copyright infringement. It is officially criminal activity. Also, we all do copyright infringement. If you never torrented a game, I'm sure you broke copyright in some other form. This is why we're really spreading publisher propaganda when we use the word "piracy". Piracy is looting, raping, and pillaging on the high seas. I think we all agree that's bad. Copyright infringement is not in the same moral category. Hiphop wouldn't be what it is today without a freewheeling disrespect for copyright. Fastidious, letter-of-the-law fidelity to copyright is at odds with human culture. I agree artists need to be paid, etc, but that's almost completely unrelated to copyright. I pay for Spotify today, I'm on the right side of copyright, and artists are getting peanuts.

There's no reason for us to consider this an important issue, except to oppose it.

 

[Satoru]

It's so hypocritical to be a enthusiastic about a "Game Museum" and not defend Yuzu, at minimum on the grounds that Switch emulator development is 100% legitimate, socially beneficial activity.

Developing an emulator is ok, regardless of how old the platform is.

Using your website to point people in the direction of how to decrypt and pirate games is the problem that fucked them.
Using their discord to brag about how they managed to have yet unreleased games running on their emulator is what double fucked them

You seem to be more interested in defending piracy than understanding the underlying problem that fucked these guys, which is fascinating and kinda tells us a lot about your motivations when you constantly port beg.

 

[flaccidsnake]

Developing an emulator is ok, regardless of how old the platform is.

Using your website to point people in the direction of how to decrypt and pirate games is the problem that fucked them.
Using their discord to brag about how they managed to have yet unreleased games running on their emulator is what double fucked them

You seem to be more interested in defending piracy than understanding the underlying problem that fucked these guys, which is fascinating and kinda tells us a lot about your motivations when you constantly port beg.

The Yuzu website explained how to dump keys and games from hacked Switch hardware, totally legitimate to do. The way you're phrasing makes it sound like they were linking to torrent sites or something, and I don't think you can defend this.

Bragging about how good your software is is half the reason to write software in the first place. If you wrote an emulator so good it plays unreleased games, you should brag about it.

I don't believe I've "defended piracy" at all, and I've been careful to separate my opposition to copyright as such from the legitimacy of emulation/yuzu.

You calling me a "port beggar" is pure cope. Playstation is making PC games because they're trying to grow their business. It's not in response to some groundswell of PC gamers demanding it. They want a piece of the pie. You're mad they're getting it.

 

[Yurinka]

Everybody agrees that downloading unauthorized games from the internet is copyright infringement. It is officially criminal activity. Also, we all do copyright infringement. If you don't download games, I'm sure you broke copyright in some other form. This is why we're really spreading publisher propaganda when we use the word "piracy". Piracy is looting, raping, and pillaging on the high seas. I think we all agree that's bad. Copyright infringement is not in the same moral category. Hiphop wouldn't be what it is today without a freewheeling disrespect for copyright. Fastidious, letter-of-the-law fidelity to copyright is at odds with human culture. I agree artists need to be paid, etc, but that's almost completely unrelated to copyright. I pay for Spotify today, I'm on the right side of copyright, and artists are getting peanuts.

There's no reason for us to consider this an important issue, except to oppose it.

Obviously to pirate games isn't the same than pirating in the sea. I never said they are the same, but it's the word everybody uses.

I meant for me morally it's ok to play for free games that aren't being sold since decades ago and ran in hardware you can no longer get. But that for games being sold today, you should pay their creators to support them to continue making the games you like.

 

[ethomaz]

Emulation is fine.

But support dumped ROM is illegal and that is what most Emulators do.
So most if not all emulator are illegal.

When an Emulator choose the legal path of play official copies of the games it is totally legal.

For example an Yuzu that can play physical copies (SD cards) of Switch have no illegality.

 

[Dr Bass]

For me that's fine and justified, I draw the line when people claim to be preserving the game yet its still publicly available like Switch games

So does the law, despite what some people seem to think.