This may be hot take, but I think games are art and are part of our cultural legacy, and making steps that stops us from enjoying us from that legacy should be considered a crime, especially when they put at risk art disappearing forever.

I would start with simple rules:

5 years after last new copies of the game stops being sold, pirating it stops becoming a crime
10 years after platform (console?) stop being produced, if there is no official emulator available, all emulators of that platform become legal
intentionally trying to stop people from buying a game without breaking above rules (for example, selling one copy for price of 9999$) is a crime

As a result, I would expect all companies to either invest in backward compatibility on unprecedented level, or more likely start porting their games to PC (because they will keep being produced), even if that meant selling copies to be used with emulators. When there is money on the table, or perspective of losing money, corporations are really quick to find solutions.

[–] tobier 39 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Emulators are not illegal, where did you get that from?

[–] xenonisbad 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There are legal problems when creating emulators, sure people work hard to avoid them, but I don't think they should have to do that in those cases, so I specifically wrote "all emulators" should be legal. For example, Dolphin to work requires cryptographic keys that technically belong to Nintendo, so they may be sued for providing them. Some emulators require you to find bios on your own because they can't legally provide them, and their emulator doesn't work without it.

[–] tobier 4 points 1 year ago

If you bundle cryptographic keys, bios or other copyrighted content then yes obviously it's illegal.

It's not illegal to implement an emulator.

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