Mame4iOS and Piracy.

If Nintendo, Sega , Sony or any other older, or even newer, game console/ handheld system legal brand and product owner would make their older games available thought third party , of course developed by them, emulator and have interactive store in that emulator from which anyone could legally buy older games ( they don't even have to optimize them much , just so that they can be played at normal speed ) , for reasonable price, that would be a perfect solution in my opinion.But it will never happen , so it's more than obvious why people want to play their childhood games even more when Apple doesn't allow it , forbidden fruit is best fruit.And , ironically , many older games are years ahead in gameplay compared to most games we get served in App Store.

 

I think it's pretty easy to see an ethical difference between emulating arcade games which were never released for personal purchase but only sold as arcade cabinets (and which have not been produced and sold as new for decades) and stealing games which independent developers are currently relying on to pay their household bills and fund their new and ongoing projects. They may be in the same ballpark in a legal sense, but one is clearly a lesser evil - and by a not insignificant margin.

 

Most people excuse piracy for anything they consider to be a retro game. If they can't buy it new, stealing it is okay.

...gotta be honest it is more of a moral grey area than stealing new games. Another example of ethics rarely being black and white.

 

Indeed. I'm not saying it's 100% A-Okay, just that acting as though they are exactly the same is facile and reductive.

 

I admit i'm one of those people. If i can buy it (Eg Raiden) i will as i want to have a 'proper' ios version of it. If i cant buy it i dont feel guilty in the slightest by playing some 30 year old game.

If it also works the other way round, so many companies had old games gathering dust doing nothing.

Then thanks to emulator authors emulation became huge, 'we' started playing the old retro games, companies realised they are still popular and started re-releasing them in packs on the PC, consoles and now iOS. So because of 'us' still playing these old classics we've kept many retro games 'alive'.

Same for MAME, if it wasnt for the mame team most arcade classic originals would have died a death, not preserved. Thanks to them people still loving playing these classics.

Companies make a lot of money by re-releasing retro classics, theres some games i've bought on several platforms from the ZX Spectrum to the Megadrive to Playstation to iOS.

Yep its a grey area, do i feel guilty when i play some 30 year old MAME game 'illegally' - not at all, i feel guilty about things like speeding in my car not playing some old relic of a game. Emulation has helped companies make a lot of money. I buy a magazine - Retro Gamer - every month, if it wasnt for emulation that magazine wouldnt be around. Retro is huge thanks mostly to emulators.

If i was an evil pirate i would jailbreak all my iOS devices instantly so i can find apps illegally and put every emulator known to man on my device and never buy re-releases as i do every month (Eg Rally-X, Galaga, Lode Runner etc).

I always buy retro re-releases on iOS even if i have the rom on MAME, again games i cant buy i dont feel guilty by playing those on MAME.

To be fair there will be a chunk of people who wont for example buy Metal Slug as they now have it for free on MAME which i personally dont think is good. But many of these people are the types to wait for games to be free and never buy many.

I spent £50 a month at least on iOS apps, so i dont feel guilty in the slightest when i sit down later to play Ladybug on MAME a 30 year old game i cant play otherwise.

 

To be fair not all jail breakers jailbreak just to pirate stuff or to emulate.

 

I don't know why personal conscience makes emulators ok to toucharcade. If you don't own a legal copy of the game then it's illegal to download. Just because you don't feel bad about it doesn't mean it's not pirating. Obviously, you aren't going to get in legal trouble for it and you aren't necessarily hurting any developers but the same can be said about pirating games that are on the appstore. I don't have a problem with it but toucharcade is a little hypocritical.

 

Depends what's being emulated when it comes to home computers up to the Amiga most of the old studios who made them don't even exist anymore without emulators the games and some real gems and history would all be forgotten.

I also see no issue with people playing games they bought in their youth or have in a cupboard somewhere, normally people use emulators for the nostalgia value.

 

So I take it that it's impossible to buy these games anywhere, they're just "out there" on the Internet?

 

Like I said it can be morally acceptable to download emulations but it is still illegal if you don't have an original copy. Even if the studio is out of business.

 

If a band breaks up can I suddenly pirate all of their songs legally? If a movie studio goes out of bussiness can I suddenly pirate all of their movies legally? I would think not.

 

You cant compare that to the games we play on MAME

If a band breaks up and you cant get any of their songs then i wouldnt care if i got their songs on youtube or the net.

If a band breaks up and i can buy their songs i buy them.

If i can buy these old games i will, if i cant i've no problem using MAME. I bought Bubble Bobble on iOS (Dire app to be honest), i've bought Raiden Legacy, the Metal Slug games.

For games which arent available on iOS i'll use MAME if possible.

Back in the mid 90's/late 00's you couldnt play Bomb Jack or Space Harrier on your PC, the only way to do this was to use MAME. So the games were 'gathering dust', you couldnt buy them if you wanted to. Eventually emulation got more and more popular, now companies re-release these old games and i buy them were possible.

Okay answer me this, did you ever tape music off the radio when you were younger ? Ever driven over the speed limit ? People talk round here like theyre saints.

I buy plenty of iOS games, i probably do much more for iOS companies/gaming than kids who constantly wait for games to be free or just get promo code after promo code. Again i wont lose sleep about some 30 year old game i cant even buy on the app store

 

I'm not saying it's wrong to do... I'm saying that it's still illegal.....

 

You used to be able to buy a bundled pack of CDs of emulated amiga games in big mainstream retail stores here in the UK (virgin megastore as one example) basicly it was a bundled emulator and cd set of every mainstream amiga game there was.

Now the company that made it (can't remember who), but there is no way they had the licenses for those games far to many and the package itself was priced at about £15 which is really nothng.

So basicly what your eluding can't happen actually happened and it was another company that did it and as far as I know profited well from it with no consequences legally. Same big stores also used to sell a PSX emulator as well if I remember right called Bleem!.

 

There are literally hundreds upon hundreds of ridiculous and antiquated laws in existence that have yet to be updated to reflect modern society and better fit into present-day technology. Copyright holders technically have a case against a guy uploading a home video to YouTube with the TV playing in the background, but morally the guy is hardly likely to be a criminal. It's a monumental task to have these laws updated as the wording has to be such that the needs and desires of the greater good are addressed while also taking endless amounts of possible loopholes and counterclaims into consideration. Right now the popular one is patent laws, with so-called "patent trolls" becoming a huge problem and destroying budding companies that could possibly be developing useful technology that ends up never seeing the light of day.

Kinda went off on a rant there, but the gist is that breaking laws necessarily doesn't make a person bad. In some cases it's better for people to make decisions based on their own morals and ethics than to blindly follow an antique rulebook. I have a nice collection of ZX Spectrum games that I would gladly have purchased were there a reliable and official (digital) marketplace for them. I buy all of my iOS, Xbox, PC, PS3 games, but I'm also a big retro fan and it's difficult to keep that hobby alive without cutting a few corners.

 

If you really read the eula agreements on any of the games you purchased(digital or physical) you would realize you do not even own the games you play.. you are just purchaseing the rights to play them, so essentially your renting them. And remmember, the grey area you speak of works in there favor ,not in yours...its the way the laws are written.

 

There certainly is (as I like to interpret things) a rather grey area around the whole legality of emulating older games, and my own interpretation of the law amounts pretty much to:-

a) If you have bought the rights to play the game, you can play it on any device you own, even if that involves emulation. 100% legal in my court.

b) If the copyright holder has given permission for the game to be distributed and used freely, again always 100% legal regardless of emulator use.

c) If the copyright holder has not allowed the game to be purchased for use in what is consider a satisfactory way for a reasonable length of time (let's say 10 years) then provided nobody else unduly profits from your playing it (advertising revenue from download site to cover their bandwidth costs is permissible), then whilst not entirely legal, it is still acceptable.

d) If none of the above conditions apply, then the legally recognised (not in all countries) "24-hour rule" still allows a game to be downloaded and played for up to a maximum of 24 hours from when it is downloaded, after which you should either purchase the right to use it, or delete it, or whatever you feel is acceptable.

I am not saying I personally do any of the above (especially (c) or (d) parts) which might not be completely legal where I live, only that it is how I personally feel about copyright and older games.