thoughts on emulation

[Vyk]

Nowadays, I really prefer to buy my games if only to show support to the company. That said, emulating something you own on your computer is A-OK, especially if you like modding or want to use some filters or other things you can't do on a console.

I'm going to take this a step farther and say that I personally believe emulation is totally fine as well if there is no option to buy older games new. Buying them used doesn't benefit the developer and if there's no way to buy it new them said developer clearly isn't interested in making money from it anyway.

And if we're being honest, most of the people who made classic games probably aren't benefiting from many classic sales now anyway since a lot of them have likely moved to other companies, left the industry, or their companies or games were bought by other publishers, etc. I'm honestly in favour of an overhaul of IP law anyway since much of it is just absurd in the modern day, but basically, I'm not going to give anyone a hard time for emulating anything.

I would take this one step farther myself and make an argument about companies not making a good enough effort to make things conveniently available. Virtual Console is about the best argument one could make, and even that is locked to a couple of Nintendo products. The best anyone could hope for is that everyone puts all their stuff onto Steam; since most people have a computer. Not everyone has a Wii(U), and not every game is available on Virtual Console

If nobody is making a good effort to make their ancient game available and convenient then they just don't want that money. I don't even emulate much these days. I'm one of those that's come into an expendable income so it's become less of an issue, but I still find nothing wrong with it when other convenient alternatives are a rarity, and like most people have said, the developers themselves aren't getting compensation, and aren't getting stolen from