alt Hacker News> EMULATORS ARE PRIMARILY USED FOR PIRACY.
This is not a piracy issue. Please stop framing it as such.
The primary use case is to run all your games on a single device.
Nintendo want to lock customers into their ecosystem rather than competing on game quality alone.
They know if you have a switch then you will likely buy other switch games etc. If you buy and play Mario Kart on your PC then you are much less likely to invest in the rest of the ecosystem.
We should carve out legal provisions for emulators and circumventing DRM.
Nintendo can then still go against individual people pirating software.
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It is absolutely a piracy issue. Nintendo are using the DMCA to fight piracy.
It is extremely cut and dried in their eyes: emulation = piracy.
Mario Kart exists on many non-Nintendo platforms legitimately already. The existence of Mario Kart in the arcade or on mobile devices brings people into the Nintendo ecosystem, not draw them out of it.
It is a waste of time to fight individuals downloading games when the tools of emulation exist out in the open. that is why Nintendo are going after emulators themselves, at the current time, emulators are the big, easy wins.
> This is not a piracy issue
I don't think emulators or ROM dumps should be banned. However, it is a piracy issue because in the real world these are used almost exclusively for piracy.
I think a "know nothing" type argument is very weak.