Yuzu is different because they settled. There was no lawsuit so the law need not apply. We will never find out what a judge would have determined.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Further Explains Why Game Boy Emulator iGBA Was Removed From App Store
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I don't care about the law, if I own a game, I see no difference between purchasing the hardware and pulling the ROM myself, or downloading it from the internet.
What sucks is that many of these games can't even be purchased anymore because so many have been thrown away or otherwise destroyed by time. And nobody is willing to sell them. Or for a lot of modern games they are no longer playable because the company shut down the servers. We need some kind of law that after 15 or 20 years a game must become freely distributable online, including providing the server software needed to make them work. If a game is shut down before that and requires a server, the software must be made available immediately.
What sucks is that many of these games can't even be purchased anymore because so many have been thrown away or otherwise destroyed by time. And nobody is willing to sell them. Or for a lot of modern games they are no longer playable because the company shut down the servers. We need some kind of law that after 15 or 20 years a game must become freely distributable online, including providing the server software needed to make them work. If a game is shut down before that and requires a server, the software must be made available immediately.
Nintendo wants you to buy their hardware to access their software. They don’t want people associating their ip with third party hardware.
Nintendo's Switch Online services has a huge catalog of first-party NES, SNES, and Game Boy titles you can play on the Switch. (And is a surprisingly reasonable $25 a year)
This of course requires a Switch, but it's still a completely legal, not-under-the-table way to play classic titles.
Apple are beginning to feel
- regulation (DMA, DOJ (super apps))
- looming competition (alternative application stores, sideloading)
- falling behind technologically (Samsung/Google's/Microsoft's AI offerings)
Good. Competition and pressure is good. Better products and offerings for us.
Is SNES considered 'retro' as well? We need an iOS Snes9x port... so I can play one of my favorite mario games of all time, Mario World...
And that is exactly why Nintendo doesn't do so. It would be the same as asking: "Why doesn't Apple release iOS for Android phones? Why doesn't Apple release MacOS for PCs? Why doesn't Apple release Pages, Keynote, etc. on Windows?
Nintendo is a hardware company first, and their main goal is to sell as many hardware as possible. They are a software company second. And the software they sell is either for that hardware or to entice people to buy their hardware + software.
Releasing full games on a competing platform? Isn't going to entice people to buy Nintendo hardware. So the money they gained from those software sales are lost in fewer hardware sales. (Nintendo does not sell the Switch at a loss)
Last edited:
These people don’t understand Nintendo business model. Its like asking them to release their games on PlayStation or Xbox
Hell yes a (rare) Apple W 🤩 ... Devs please hurry up with nice looking and working emulators we can BUY (pls no subscription model it sucks)
I just want an accurate retro Pac Man game (not all the new garbage versions), and someone that can please emulate Joust!
This part is interesting to me, I wonder how we're going to define a "retro console".
Will Gamecube/PS2/Xbox fall under this? 360/PS3/Wii are nearing 20 years old too!
Only if it uses code written by someone else. It is not a copyright infringement to write your own code to simulate functionality. This emulator that was approved and removed apparently is a copyright infringement because it stole code from someone else. It’s a fine line in the law but copyright laws seem to be inconsistently enforced. Every tech company sues every other tech company for IP reasons and sometimes they win and sometimes they lose, but it always feels arbitrary who wins, for instance the judgment that cost the Apple Watch some of its functionality. Did Apple rip off the code or did they write their own code that did the same thing? One is illegal while the other is legal.
I rather disagree. The review process is done by human beings who are not all-knowledgeable. Not everyone knows the emulator was a copy of someone else’s work. From the perspective of someone who doesn’t know that, they followed the rules and approved the app. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about tech, but I know next to nothing about game emulators simply due to lack of interest. I’ve never installed one and probably never will. I wouldn’t have known it was a ripoff and if I were a reviewer, I’d probably have approved it, too.
It’s likely the reviewer didn’t know. It’s not as if the app had a dialog on the screen that read, “This is a ripoff of another emulator.” They probably saw press reports that it was a copy after the fact. Maybe they read these forums? Who knows? But as soon as it was brought to their attention, they removed it.
Sure, knock them for ambiguity sometimes, but ambiguity played no role in this app being approved, just a lack of awareness it was a ripoff. How would they know about such a niche item?
Here's something then - search for the app, Happy Logger. I have reported it back in early February and again in early March. It remains on the App Store to this day. Others have also reported it. If you download and install the free app, you will see it does not match the function nor the screen shots shown in the App Store. It is a scam app - you open the app, it has a TikTok like look/feel to it. You watch videos and see your money grow. When it hits a certain point, you can cash out, but only if you pay money via a web page for "Apple High Value Tax". I'm sure the $28 to get access to your "earned" $1000 is 100% a scam - you pay, and never receive anything. This, and other clones of this app started gaining traction in the App Store 4 months ago, and despite using the Report feature, these apps remain in the App Store, while a few people fall for the scam.
Apple has multiple times now gone out of their way to point out that retro game emulators are now a-okay. I'm guessing this is to stem the tide of people using alternate app stores and side loading.