No, the piracy part come in when that dumped game is distributed, and guides are made so even the most computer illiterate people are able to play Nintendo games free of charge.

Personally, I don't think an emulator or ROM dump should be banned. However, I cannot deny that these exist primarily to pirate games. In the long run, I think paying customers will feel stupid for spending money when other people aren't so they'll stop too. Eventually, it will get to a point where Nintendo can't make a profit.

I think if you love the games, which I personally do, the moral thing to do is pay so that those games can continue to be made. But that's my moral, not legal, assessment.

No, my argument is that the information on the web is about how to pirate games, no matter how it is couched in the tool documentation.

The case for homebrew is in the homebrew software that is available, and all of the homebrew software that I have ever seen is absolute shite. Toy programs and simple SDK test tools, nothing of value other than the 3rd party SDKs themselves.

It does not matter if you make a legitimate backup copy of a cart you own for safekeeping, emulation of legitimately owned copies of retail games is not an exemption of the DMCA.

It doesn’t matter if you own a copy of the game, making a copy for any reason is not in accordance with the DMCA, as far as I’m aware. Exemptions to the DMCA are granted every few years, and some exemptions are rescinded at the same time. Copying game cartridges has never been an exemption.

And even if it was, you can’t put your copy back onto a legitimate blank cartridge to regain playability if the original is destroyed.

It’s a shitty situation to be sure, and it is wholly unfair. Blame gamers who are “morally opposed” to paying for games that they play. There are a lot of them, and they play a lot of games, and are often popular streamers on YouTube and Twitch.

If people stopped pirating games so much, the homebrew and legitimate use people would have a solid defense and maybe even support in government, but the amount of piracy that goes on absolutely dwarfs legitimate uses of unlocked hardware.

I personally am fascinated with Nintendo hardware and the choices made when they design their systems, and despite repeated efforts to get a Switch dev kit, I have been denied approval time and time again. I have no interest in piracy, I have interest in hardware platforms. But I am in the extremely small minority with that focus.

If piracy slows somewhat dramatically, Nintendo won’t be able to do this with impunity like they do today. They will simply not have a leg to stand on when they say emulators are purely piracy mechanisms. But today, they really are.

How many new games come out for the SNES every year? How many SNES emulators are there under active development? Are you going to say that all of those emulators and all of that time spent making them and perfecting them, making them cycle-perfect is done so that 1-2 games can come out every 1-2 years? EMULATORS ARE PRIMARILY USED FOR PIRACY.

Until that changes, Nintendo will keep doing this.