As a lifelong gamer and someone that wants to preserve digital culture I support emulators. I also want people to buy the games they play because it's not only required by law but it's also ethical and moral to financially compensate people that create things you love. So when I recently bought Snake Rattle & Roll on the NES I didn't have a problem playing a ROM of it too. Partly because, in many cases the ROM is the best option for the platform but also because I hail from the 90's and cassette and VHS taping was part of how I grew up. It was pretty common to buy a CD dub it on tape to listen to in your car and later on rip that CD to listen to it on your MP3 player.
Recently Atlus, the developers of Persona, issued a DMCA copyright notice to RPCS3 the developers of the PS3 Emulator. I'll copy Atlus's post below.
"You might have heard earlier today that we issued a DMCA takedown notice involving emulation developer group RPCS3 and their Patreon page. Yes, it’s true. We settled upon this action for two reasons:
1. We believe that our fans best experience our titles (like Persona 5) on the actual platforms for which they are developed. We don’t want their first experiences to be framerate drops, or crashes, or other issues that can crop up in emulation that we have not personally overseen. We understand that many Persona fans would love to see a PC version. And while we don’t have anything to announce today, we are listening! For now, the best way to experience Persona 5 is on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3.
2. We appreciate the awareness generated by the emulation community for Persona 5 and know that it is a fantastic example of how much people are loving our game. We want to keep bringing you titles like Persona 5. Unfortunately, when our content is illegally circumvented and potentially made available for free, in a format we do not think delivers the experience and quality we intend, it undermines our ability to do so by diverting potential support from new audiences."
I'm not a lawyer so i'm not going to say anything about if what Atlus did was legal or not. With that, emulators aren't just things that enable piracy they also allow people to play games on modern systems while not needing to repurchase them yet again. I can see why Atlus might want people to repurchase their games on PC if they were to port them but why is it bad that you can play your old PS3 games on a modern PC? They said it's because of a bad framerates and such but that seems like a really contrived reason.
I also love it when companies release older games with the "HD re-release" treatment giving me yet another reason to open my wallet to buy it. Or even just re-releasing the game on PC is more than enough to get people to buy it again, which some people love to do.
As someone that had their PS3 die and be left with an orphaned library of PS3 games I can say that a good PS3 emulator would have saved me some heartache. In the end I got a friends old system and that works out great but sometimes just playing your old games on a PC is a better option.
http://atlus.com/atlus-and-emulation/
Recently Atlus, the developers of Persona, issued a DMCA copyright notice to RPCS3 the developers of the PS3 Emulator. I'll copy Atlus's post below.
"You might have heard earlier today that we issued a DMCA takedown notice involving emulation developer group RPCS3 and their Patreon page. Yes, it’s true. We settled upon this action for two reasons:
1. We believe that our fans best experience our titles (like Persona 5) on the actual platforms for which they are developed. We don’t want their first experiences to be framerate drops, or crashes, or other issues that can crop up in emulation that we have not personally overseen. We understand that many Persona fans would love to see a PC version. And while we don’t have anything to announce today, we are listening! For now, the best way to experience Persona 5 is on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3.
2. We appreciate the awareness generated by the emulation community for Persona 5 and know that it is a fantastic example of how much people are loving our game. We want to keep bringing you titles like Persona 5. Unfortunately, when our content is illegally circumvented and potentially made available for free, in a format we do not think delivers the experience and quality we intend, it undermines our ability to do so by diverting potential support from new audiences."
I'm not a lawyer so i'm not going to say anything about if what Atlus did was legal or not. With that, emulators aren't just things that enable piracy they also allow people to play games on modern systems while not needing to repurchase them yet again. I can see why Atlus might want people to repurchase their games on PC if they were to port them but why is it bad that you can play your old PS3 games on a modern PC? They said it's because of a bad framerates and such but that seems like a really contrived reason.
I also love it when companies release older games with the "HD re-release" treatment giving me yet another reason to open my wallet to buy it. Or even just re-releasing the game on PC is more than enough to get people to buy it again, which some people love to do.
As someone that had their PS3 die and be left with an orphaned library of PS3 games I can say that a good PS3 emulator would have saved me some heartache. In the end I got a friends old system and that works out great but sometimes just playing your old games on a PC is a better option.
http://atlus.com/atlus-and-emulation/
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Emulators are a slippery slope. I can understand both sides. It seems like companies should take advantage of the emulators and start releasing roms. That way they can control their content and maybe make a buck or two. History has shown that people are willing to spend a little more money rebuying games. By selling their own roms, they can then give the legal crowd a path to legally use emulators for existing games.
It seems like Sony would be able to issue this kind of takedown, but Atlus doesn't own the rights to the PS3 itself.
It's like if Metallica went after Winamp instead of Napster back in the day.
Will, I love the idea of companies releasing roms. Or even game companies releasing emulators for systems older than last gen. I mean we know Nintendo has emulators for their old systems. Sell them, print even more money!
If Nintendo released their own client for PC where you could download retro games for $5 a pop, they'd make so much bank.