The Octonaut

They were observed finding one ROM on the Internet, ever. They do have their own emulator(s).

Nintendo is a bunch of humans. If my boss asks me to see if I can find the installer for an old version of our software, you can bet I’ll check anywhere before volunteering to go scrape old hard drives.

They are not “banning” emulators. They take action against two sorts of problems: leaking, and distribution of copyrighted material. Yuzu was taken down because they stupidly started charging for help with playing Tears of the Kingdom before its release. Other emulators have been threatened because they included binary console OS software (rather than actually fully emulating the console itself) or actually distributed game ROMs.

Dolphin has been around for about 20 years now. Why? Because they don’t distribute copyrighted material, recommend against doing so, and don’t require to include any binaries from the console.

Here’s all they had to both say and adhere to, to “survive” the supposedly blood-hungry Nintendo for longer than some of the people reading this have been alive:

Where can I download game ISOs/ROMs?¶

Short answer: You don’t. Buy games and dump them with a Wii.

Long answer: Downloading commercial games is illegal and thus strongly frowned upon by the Dolphin developers. To prevent legal issues, this includes gray areas like downloading games which you purchased earlier. You don’t necessarily need to own a gaming console by yourself because you can buy a game disc and dump them with a friend’s console. On the other hand, copying a friend’s game dump is considered illegal again.

https://dolphin-emu.org/

Also, lol @ the idea that it’s hypocrisy for them to use their own game files. You understand that’s what a ROM is, right? It isn’t magic. It’s just a binary file.

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“Ripping” ROMs, or dumping them, takes almost no effort. If you have the cartridge reader its about as much work as taking photos off an SD card. Certainly nothing at all like cracking a game, which is pretty much software development.

Please consider informing yourself before forming strong opinions.

Just so we’re clear, are you under the impression that “ROMs acquired from the Internet” represent something other than Nintendo’s work?

It is usually also followed by “but I can download my installers and then I can have them whenever I like” as if it’s a sane idea to store terabytes of offline installers for the day that GOG goes out of business.

I mean, I also have terabytes of offline installers for the day that Steam or GOG go down. On other people’s computers. In a, uh, distributed distribution system.

GOG themselves literally said that you do not, even very recently. You own a license like every other customer, and it can be revoked at their discretion.

GOG choose to exclusively sell games for which they can sell DRM-free versions, which is a great option for consumers. It is not a straightforward decision however as this is, whether it is a priority or not, a tradeoff for the things that Steam integration provides - cloud backup, mod workshops, multiplayer functionality etc.

Steam also sells plenty of DRM-free games, and offer customers the informed choice when selling Steam DRM and Third-Party DRM controlled game licenses.

This is not an argument that Steam or GOG are objectively better. But it is a straightforward lie to state that the license you buy from GOG is legally different from the one you buy from Steam. What is different is the possibility or otherwise of DRM software being used to control your adherence to the license.

The idea is to change your passwords on other sites if they shared the same password (which is why you shouldn’t do this).

Delisting it just means it isn’t being sold to new customers.

Do you think many Beliz…ians loudly proclaim themselves the greatest nation on earth, and act like it too? Has Chile squandered a good deal of the world’s productive output to produce a literally civilisation ending military capability and put it in the hands of morons?

A blind person on the bus is only a problem if they’re driving.