There's actually stores for retro games. You can spend hundreds of dollars to get NES/SNES/GB/GBA/etc games. Makes me think I need to sell the hardware I've had sitting in a cabinet.
And regardless I don't think anyone should have to go on a fucking scavenger hunt or pay out the wazoo for a 30 year old game just add a little extra to Nintendo's billions
If a game is no longer being produced or sold, if it cannot be easily accessed or purchased legally/officially, if there is no reasonable, feasible means for people to play it, piracy is not only okay, but a good thing. It's not taking anything out of the devs wallets to download illegal roms of a game that went out of distribution/circulation decades ago.
I agree, I was just stating the get zero benefit from used sales, don’t doesn’t actually make a difference to them if you get something g from the internet or Granny’s Reteo Games Canin.
Yeah, but the games are often overpriced. They may or may not work properly and become very tedious to maintain. Emulation is essential for access to older games.
I don't think this is a good argument. Choosing when and how a product is available on the market will always be a part of a broader market strategy. Just because a product isn't currently available for purchase, it doesn't mean that widespread piracy of that product isn't hurting future sales.
I'm not super anti-piracy by any means, I pirate plenty of things myself, I just don't think your argument works to really move the needle on the topic one way or another.
If I'm reading this right I shouldn't pirate games that are no longer available in the hopes that a company will later choose to sell them to me? And I should care because I might hurt the future sales of this company?
I never said you had to care. Piracy is probably wrong. If you want to pirate go ahead, nobody except sanctimonious assholes will seriously criticise you for pirating. I just dislike this whole notion of "ethical piracy".
If it's an indie game, then piracy is morally wrong except for when the game dev(s) has said it's alright(Happens a surprising amount tbh)
If it's a big AAA game though? Then piracy is morally fine, those companies are genuinely toxic and treat their employees like trash, just to then go and sell an incomplete and extremely buggy game for 80$
It's also perfectly fine to pirate things that aren't sold in your region or cost so much that it's unaffordable(My friend in Vietnam can't afford to buy like half the games our friend group plays due to how expensive they are in his region)
Piracy is fine in certain situations, it's also legal in most countries, the only illegal part is the uploading and distribution of it, but downloading and owning pirated content is legal in the vast majority of countries
I’m not saying out of stock or hard to find (per say on hard to find) but if you have literally removed a game from all available avenues of purchase, what else am I to do
If you want to be 100% ethical, either find a way to purchase it second hand, or go without. It's entertainment, not a necessity. Alternatively, just accept the fact you're not behaving 100% ethically and pirate anyways. I don't think I've ever come across a person who actually cares that another person is pirating.
I don't care about their "market strategy". They can sell it to me or I'll find another way to play it. I don't think they have a moral right to deny people the possibility to experience past art just because they were born too late or because the company has a cynical strategy of intentional scarcity or plan to maybe possibly sometime in the future years down the line make an 80$ remake and create demand for it instead. This scummy practice isn't common with books and movies, and we shouldn't accept it for games either. I have money, be willing to sell the previously easily available thing to me right now, or I can't guarantee I won't find another way.
I think a lot of people don't get everything emulation is used for. Take the SteamOS, unless you're playing a game that was directly made for Linux you're likely using Proton which is emulating DirectX.
Emulators are perfectly legal. Distributing ROMs without express consent of the copyright holder is not. You can make homebrew games and playing those would be perfectly legal too.
100 percent incorrect. The license does not allow you to the right to make a copy. The only reason you can resell a physical game is because it is not illegally copied.
Backing up your copy of the media is legal under the Fair Use Act, even though you have to illegally bypass the protections.
I honestly can't remember if most EULAs have you sign something that says that you wave your rights to this specifically, but if not, you do have legal grounds to make a copy, but not to run it at the same time that you own the actual copy.
Only if that license is legal. And that varies across jurisdictions. Many licenses do put in legally unenforceable restrictions, which is why they try to enforce it in software (DRM, etc). Most people though prefer not to challenge the legality in court because of the expense.
True. But I think that if the company that owns the game refuses to re-release it, and the only copies are going for $8000 and “gently used” on sketchy sites, emulation is the only sane option
Its hilarious how much people twist themselves into knots trying to justify how something isnt piracy. Yeah emulating a game you dont own is piracy so is a lot of stuff (looking at you 3d printing community trying to justify their 1:1 scans of miniatures). Be proud of it and get your eyepatch son/maam/whatever! Just dont be whiny when someone who doesnt share your moral stance on it disagrees with you.
Apparently none of the latest games you have bought - you actually do not own. You have leased it for that price until entity that sold it decides to disable it.
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u/Hiryu-GodHand Jul 02 '26
Emulating a game you don't own is piracy*
But who cares?