Pirrrrracy in Gaming

I tend to use emulators and ROMs all the time, so I've never thought of downloading them as a problem. Distribution of emulators/ROMs, though, is the part that I'm a lot more iffy about. If I had to choose a limit, I'd personally say that there's no problem with downloading a game or console that you own a physical copy of, since you bought it with your money or had it given to you. I've never used an emulator for any systems besides the N64, NES, Genesis, Gamecube, and PSP, but I imagine it'd be challenging to create emulators for some of the current gen consoles; especially the Wii U (though if someone manages to pull it off, I'd be curious to see)!

 

I use emulators for one of two reasons.
1. I don't have the console and I don't think I'll ever be able to get it, Such as NES or N64.
2. Pokémon

Otherwise I don't use an emulator. I have only used an emulator for consoles that I likely can't get, since, unlike movies, the consoles upgrade every few years.

 

Here's the thing; these emulators and ROMs are 100% legal if the player owns the original system(s) or game(s) of the emulators in question. There's no real way for law enforcement to give probable cause that someone may be "illegally" be playing on an "illegal" emulator. They can't just go under assumption, for that would be a blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. They could hypothetically bust and jail you without a warrant for illegally pirating games, but you could counter-sue them for infringing upon your rights; which is why a lot of these emulators and their creators (and users) are just left alone. If you live outside of the U.S. your laws ma be different. Maybe your country has a law similar to our Fourth Amendment? I would sure hope so.
I see no wrong in emulators. A lot of the fully functional emulators are all of older systems anyway, which all the systems and games have been discontinued. You can't buy the games new anymore, only used, which means the original producer isn't losing profit. Are used-game stores losing profit? Perhaps a little. A lot of people still buying the physical copies of particular games for collection purposes, OR they played a little bit of the game on an emulator, and thought it was so good, that it prompted them to go out and purchase the game. Excellent marketing, if you ask me.

 

I will only use emulators for games that I already own, that way I feel a whole ton better about it .

 

Honesty, I'm somewhat for and against it. Pirating old games are pretty helpful considering the consoles are either no longer available or the games are extremely hard to find. If anything, the companies that produced the games wouldn't even get the money from the old games either way. On the other hand, pirating new games is a little more wrong. You're cheating the companies from their well deserved money! I don't know. Piracy in video gaming is a little hard subject.

 

I only ever use emulators for games that're old and usually hard to buy or play nowadays, like older main series Pokémon games. They aren't on the Virtual Console and little brother broke my SP so playing normally is out of the question at the moment even if I do still have my old copies. That and the fast-forward option is really convenient when going through a game for the umpteenth time.. not that I don't enjoy playing through older games (wouldn't have replayed so much if that were the case) but speeding up certain events and arcs in-game can really make it more interesting so I can more quickly get to where I want to be.

Anything I can actually physically play I'd buy, including DS games.

 

To be honest, I think that old games can be awfully overpriced, and I don't understand why I should have to play $50 dollars for HGSS (which is even more expensive than the gen VI games somehow) when I can just get them for free. I used to emulate a lot of gamecube games, but my emulator lost some of the files when I transported them to my hard drive. My computer isn't the best for gaming, either, so it's kind of hard.

 

Video games are getting very expensive, so honestly, I don't mind.
But it hurts the company, big time.

 

I only emulate games I can't find anywhere else, or I own the game and would like to play it on my mobile