So....how do you feel about ROMS and emulators?

[Rin Heartilly]

Some hate them, some adore them, most say it's not legal :/

I used to play romulation GBA and DS games when I was younger like Harvest moon, tactics a2, advance wars...etc mainly because I had no access to obtain these games and I had no money.

Nowadays I don't because I can afford to buy my own games and I much prefer having a physical copy I can hold in my hands anyway. And I also want to support my favourite game publishers/companies too.

So how do you feel about the use of emulators and roms?

[Fynn]

Pretty much the same, since up until the GBA era Poland really didn't have access to any of those games. Just like you said, now games are more available and I can afford them since I have a job, so I never emulate anymore.

[Mirage]

How do you define "legal ROMs"? ROMs you've extracted from your own cartridges for personal use?

Emulation is in most countries not illegal, so if you have the game you're not breaking any laws by inserting it into a system where you run it through an emulator.

Any ROM you download, no matter how old, is causing copyright infringement in some way or another, even if you own the game yourself. By downloading a ROM, you are instructing a remote computer to make an unauthorized copy of the file. Even if you own a game, that doesn't mean this remote computer has the necessary rights to make a copy of its version.

It's not legal just because it's an old game.
It's not legal just because it isn't released in your country or region.
It's not legal if it's a fan translation of a game you would otherwise not be able to understand.
It's not legal to download a ROM of a game for one platform just because you own the game for a different platform. Owning FF7 on PC does not make it legal to emulate the PS1 version of FF7.

If you insert a PS1 game disc into your PC and run it through a PS1 emulator that doesn't contain copyrighted code (such as an official BIOS, unless you dumped this BIOS from your own PS1), this is legal in most areas.
If you make a copy of a PS1 game disc for personal use, such as running it with a legal emulator, this is legal in some countries (norway, for example). This is equivalent to making a MP3 rip of a CD you own in order to use it with your portable MP3 player.

The DMCA in the US forbids you from circumventing anti-piracy technology, no matter for what purpose, which means it is probably illegal to emulate most new consoles there, and also forbidden to modify a console to run game backups, even if you actually are only using it for game backups, not pirated copies.


Now I don't really care about any of this, but just don't try to pretend like what you're doing isn't illegal

In short: Downloading ROMs is almost always illegal. Running emulators is in most cases legal.

[Fynn]

I'm not saying it is legal, I'm just saying my justifications

Also, at the time this was not regulated at all by Polish law.

[Mirage]

I'm not saying it is legal, I'm just saying my justifications

Also, at the time this was not regulated at all by Polish law.

I was mostly replying to Rin. When was this, if it wasn't regulated by polish law? Copying ROMs should fall under practically any generic copyright law.

[Fynn]

I'm not saying it is legal, I'm just saying my justifications

Also, at the time this was not regulated at all by Polish law.

I was mostly replying to Rin. When was this, if it wasn't regulated by polish law? Copying ROMs should fall under practically any generic copyright law.

Late 90s to early 2000s. We really didn't start regulating anything related to the Internet until later. The joys of living in a post-communist country You know, the only console available in Poland throughout the 90s was a Pegasus, which was an illegal Russian copy of the NES that could only run some games. So yeah, there's your video game law regulation.

[Mirage]

to be fair, even non-ex commie countries were pretty bad at regulating the internet back then. I have no doubt that if tried in a court back then (assuming the people in that court understood what was being talked about), downloading a ROM would count as copyright infringement on the same level as copying songs from the radio with a casette recorder, which was a real thing back then too, but rarely considered something the police should care about spending resources on.

although i guess if your country didn't care about international copyright laws at all, then it would technically not be illegal to get them

[Fynn]

It's still largely irrelevant at this point, since now everything is regulated as it should be

Still, i think the thread is less about the legality of it all, and more about ethics. And ethically speaking, I think it's always better to buy than emulate just to show support to the company making the games you like, giving them more opportunities to make better games.

[Mirage]

Ethically, I think it's fair to pirate anything that the publisher doesn't care about making available to my region. Especially now that online distribution is a thing, there is absolutely no good excuse to not make any game available in both europe and america.

If my region as a whole isn't worth the effort of putting it through the PEGI board and uploading it to a distribution service, then they don't deserve my money.

I also don't care if I illegally acquire a game for a different platform than I bougt it for. I generally don't buy a game several times unless they've improved it noticably, or there are some really practical benefits of buying it again. Such as automatic steam cloud saves. I have however not pirated more than two games that were released during the last 5 years, so I don't really have problems sleeping at night.

[Fynn]

Oh, I agree with this! I actually can't remember the last time I pirated something. But yeah, Europe often got the short end of the stick.. I heard Australia got it pretty bad too. That right, Rin?

[Galuf]

All these games id never have played if emulators never existed. Ff1-6(not 3) well probably all becasue ff6 got me into the series. And many many more. And ff8. I like emu's

[Skyblade]

Largely, the existence of official Virtual Consoles has made these irrelevant. The only time I emulate these days is for games that are not legally accessible where I live (release your games worldwide, and I'll stop emulating them!). These days, I can find almost everything on a Virtual Console, PS store, etcetera. So it's not really worth it any more.

[Slothy]

I would disagree about virtual console and playstation classics and the like making this stuff largely irrelevant since none of those even come close to offering the full libraries for the consoles they seek to emulate.

And I'll also say that, legality be damned, we're fast approaching a time when it will be nearly impossible to play some games if it weren't for the efforts of those who make Roms available, and the people coding emulators to play those games. There are simply too many companies that no longer exist to even re-release these things, a general unwillingness by the industry to adequately preserve most titles, and a time limit a far as how long consoles and their physical games can even last before playable copies no longer exist in large numbers.

[Spuuky]

I will play Seiken Densetsu 3 with a fan translation on an emulator with no qualms; as well as any other game that functionally is not for sale to me.

I don't really play games I could just buy, although I did when I was younger (just like in high school I pirated all kinds of games I'd have never been able to purchase). I'm a retired pirate.

I don't care in the least about copyright laws though, they're so asinine.

[sharkythesharkdogg]

Yeah, I can totally understand people who are into retro-gaming and don't have the means to play the older games easily.

Unless you plan to rent out warehouse space and drop a ton of money on a lot of different, older systems a la Classic Game Room there's no other way to play a lot of old games. Plus, keeping a lot of those older systems running can be difficult at best.

A lot of the studios that made those games don't even exist anymore, so buying a copy of the game is great if you simply want to own a physical copy of it, but it's not like the creators are getting any of that money.

Stealing brand new games that you can still buy copies of is one thing, but downloading a copy of 1942, or whatever, seems pretty harmless.