Game developer 'Atlus' issues a DMCA takedown against open source PS3 emulator

Quoting: ScooptaSNES emulation is actually pretty much perfect. SNES emulation is incredibly accurate. Anything newer though and that accuracy more or less falls apart.

its hard to notice the difference by eye, just take a read at the article.
plus, its true that we can get an pretty much perfect emulator, if WE USE THE RIGHT emulator, the one quoted on the article (nowadays its the snes part of higan, the gameboy still has issues)

Quoting: tuubiApples and oranges.

not really, piracy is piracy dont matter what you're piraiting.
if people who use pirated photoshop dont use gimp/krita, why do you think they will use linux?
people took years to replace IE they would take even more to replace an Operating system, piracy only make this stuff harder

Quoting: tuubiIf someone already owns the game on a console, they're not likely to buy it for pc. If they pirated the console version to play with an emulator, they're not likely to pay for the game anyway. This argument is pretty much nonsense.

that is exactly the reason that they dont want people playing it on pc.
thanks for confirming that Atlus is right.

Quoting: tuubiAnd why shouldn't they be able to fund their project? Like Shmerl said, Emulation and software reverse engineering are completely legal in the free world. Might be a grey area in the corporate states of America, but what isn't?

That depends on the EULA of the thing You want to reverse engineering or emulate.

It struck me while I was at work this evening that Galoob v Nintendo may also be relevant to this in addition to the others I mentioned upthread.

Quoting: Comandante Ñoñardo

Quoting: tuubiAnd why shouldn't they be able to fund their project? Like Shmerl said, Emulation and software reverse engineering are completely legal in the free world. Might be a grey area in the corporate states of America, but what isn't?

That depends on the EULA of the thing You want to reverse engineering or emulate.

No it doesn't. An EULA often contains additional restrictions, but those do not override freedoms explicitly codified in law. If an EULA tells me I cannot make a backup of a game on my hard drive or some such bullshit, according to EU law I can simply ignore it and do it anyway.

Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: tuubiApples and oranges.

not really, piracy is piracy dont matter what you're piraiting.
if people who use pirated photoshop dont use gimp/krita, why do you think they will use linux?
people took years to replace IE they would take even more to replace an Operating system, piracy only make this stuff harder

You missed my point. I totally understand why people pirate Photoshop (and no I don't think they should), but pirating a text editor is pointless. You won't lose much productivity or convenience by switching to a free alternative.

Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: tuubiIf someone already owns the game on a console, they're not likely to buy it for pc. If they pirated the console version to play with an emulator, they're not likely to pay for the game anyway. This argument is pretty much nonsense.

that is exactly the reason that they dont want people playing it on pc.
thanks for confirming that Atlus is right.

Oh, I disagree. If they don't want people playing it on PC because "they're all naughty pirates who will only buy if we give them no choice!", Atlus is a bunch of idiots.

Quoting: vlademir1That was one that came into effect as part of the DMCA. It's relevant here because Atlus/Sega will at least try to argue (in court should it reach that point) that the primary purpose of this particular emulator is as a means of circumvention, that it has no other commercially significant purpose and that the use of whatever mentions of their game existed on the developers' pages effectively act as marketing for the emulator as a means of DRM circumvention. That last is probably the hardest to argue against in any sort of effective manner, and hence is likely why the solution is what it is.

Considering emulators actually aren't made primarily as means of DRM circumvention wouldn't it be easy to argue against that? Or at the very least wouldn't you have a very fair shot at that? All the counterexamples would be plain truth.

Quoting: tuubibut pirating a text editor is pointless. You won't lose much productivity or convenience by switching to a free alternative.

you're assuming that people know about those free alternatives, they dont.
it took me years to replace notepad with something better, i didnt even knew what synstax highlight where, or that this is possible.
auto complete is another killer feature, those things are important for productivity, so the text editor you chose do matter!

piracy became part of an culture, people arent used to search for alternatives when they can't pay for something, and as an result they dont tell their frieds, neighbors and family about those alternatives.

Quoting: qptain NemoConsidering emulators actually aren't made primarily as means of DRM circumvention wouldn't it be easy to argue against that? Or at the very least wouldn't you have a very fair shot at that? All the counterexamples would be plain truth.

Typically it's not the intended use case but the common in practice use cases these arguments are made from. It's reasonably simple to show that the most commonly discussed use cases for game system emulation in the public sphere online either directly involve or else encourage DRM circumvention.

Quoting: elmapulyou're assuming that people know about those free alternatives, they dont.
it took me years to replace notepad with something better, i didnt even knew what synstax highlight where, or that this is possible.
auto complete is another killer feature, those things are important for productivity, so the text editor you chose do matter!

piracy became part of an culture, people arent used to search for alternatives when they can't pay for something, and as an result they dont tell their frieds, neighbors and family about those alternatives.

That is, to an extent, certainly part of it, but there are also a metric ton of other factors. Consider, for example, the implications of the mere exposure effect and the anchoring effect on even getting people to try an alternative they do know about, let alone putting in time and effort finding ones they aren't already aware of.

Quoting: vlademir1Typically it's not the intended use case but the common in practice use cases these arguments are made from. It's reasonably simple to show that the most commonly discussed use cases for game system emulation in the public sphere online either directly involve or else encourage DRM circumvention.

So the argument will rely on finding more mentions of people talking about wanting to circumvent DRM rather than just playing it on another platform using the emulator in Google?

So many things to discuss... Emulators are clearly legal and have many non-infringing uses. Look no further than Nintendo, et al using emulators to re-sell their classic games. Further, Nintendo, et al are not known for making the most accurate emulators, so any argument about how other emulators may be inaccurate as well and "ruin" the experience is absurd--casual players don't care and hardcore players should learn well enough the trade-offs. Which leads to the point that the more accurate OSS emulators can be used in commercial products, either because they're dual licensed or they're GPL and (depending on the platform as many console SDKs are incompatible) is quite legal to open source their modifications; ie the open process is precisely the basis for a business model to demonstrate that "yes, you should buy our product and use it because it's that good".

In the specific case of Atlus and Persona 5? If I were a Persona 5 fan, I'd be fine with a decent PS3 emulator version than a horrible port as a lot of PC versions are. But I'm not a Persona fan at all, so there's no risk of a lost sale if there's a decent PS3 emulator, regardless. You can also look at my profile to see I'm not shy about buying a lot of games, if they're a good deal. That's the real crux of why Atlus and others are going to have an issue on the PC: at best a comparable experience for a one year old game while paying full price. If anything, as Atlus I'd want a PS3 emulator on the PC precisely to cut cost on the development time and be able to rerelease games at a discount to a wider audience at virtually little cost on Steam.

But, call me crazy.

Quoting: nieknooijens

Quoting: NyamiouI can certainly understand them, piracy is a real problem and they want to do something about it, but that's not the way. Actually the whole war on piracy never fixed anything, it most probably made it worse, as long as they can't change the mindset of pirates the problem is never going to go away and this is not helping.

well.. actually, an EU report stated that piracy isn't a problem at all:
https://thenextweb.com/eu/2017/09/21/eu-paid-report-concluded-piracy-isnt-harmful-tried-hide-findings/#.tnw_f90lLQ56

QuoteOn the contrary, in the case of video games, the study found the opposite link, indicating a positive influence of illegal game downloads on legal sales.

so as for video games: long live piracy!

Sorry but even if this is true, piracy is popular today because of a deeper problem where people more and more try to profit from society as much as they can while not being willing to do anything for it. The way it affect video game sales is irrevelant because in the end that is a dangerous behavior that we have to stop from becoming more popular to protect the fundations of our societies.