I recently saw an article about how people are racing to perfect Tears of the Kingdom emulator.
I know Breath of the Wild has been emulated for awhile and there’s entire consoles worth of games being emulated. How and why do companies allow this?
Is it because they don’t expect to make any more money on a Dreamcast or GameCube game from 20 years ago so they just allow it?
What about when they remaster the game?
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They absolutely do break copyright laws. Well, the emulators themselves don’t – it’s the ROMs (the game files) that do. And even then, it depends on how the law is written and whether the people downloading the ROM own a copy of the game.
There are plenty of instances of companies going after emulators and ROM distributors, but it’s a bit of a murky situation.
You see, if I own the game, and I own an emulator, and I find a ROM of the game so that I can play it on my modern computer…
Have I broken my license agreement? Maybe.
Have I violated the spirit of copyright law? No.
Is the company likely to win a lawsuit against me? Probably not, depends on how the law is written.
Am I likely to have enough assets for the company to justify its legal costs? Probably not.
Really, it all comes down to that last one. There really aren’t a ton of people who will go through the trouble of finding emulators and ROMs of older games. Most of them who do, already own a copy of the game. So the company has already gotten money from them, and the people who are doing that are some of the most ardent fans of the games. So why would the company spend money to go after the limited resources of its biggest fans?
It’s ultimately a business decision. They judge that the cost of enforcement outweighs the benefits of recovery.
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