91–100 of 214 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because Valve wouldn't want you to emulate Steam games as well (which people do, for online stuff). Valve and Nintendo are on the same side of this.
I'm confused. Please define "emulate Steam games".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait, why should Valve not have done this? I know Nintendo likes to bully smaller folks but it's not like Valve is small or that they rely on keeping good terms with Nintendo, right? Edit: I guess I didn't realize Portal was on Switch.
I think it’s pretty obvious most people using Switch emulators are getting the games on the net for free. So it’s awkward to show that on promotional material of another handheld device.
If getting switch ROMs were as easy as buying any other game on Steam, most people would probably pay, the same way most people already pay instead of pirating PC games.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In terms of moneymaking, copyright's long term is more relevant for video games in that it includes the right to make derivative works (i.e.: sequels). Certainly there are franchises that have lived longer than 20 years. Ports, remasters, official emulation, and subscriptions have given a longer "tail" for at least a handful of classics but even without that it's "the IP" that would be most jealously guarded.
I think it'd be a stretch to say sequels are covered by derivative works. Trademark would be the primary protection and would function for sequels with no copyright protection at all.
Trademark definitely comes into play, and is probably the more important form of IP here in practice (and for some series may be the only really effective protection). But you still couldn't go out and make a game with Master Chief or Nathan Drake even if you called it something other than Halo or Uncharted.
Trademarks are also interesting and somewhat unique for video games: the typical rule is that the title of a book or movie, etc. is not eligible for a trademark. You need a name that's being used for a series to get a trademark. But video games are excluded from this rule and can (and almost always do) get trademarks for their titles even when they're standalones.
Side note, is anyone using one of these as a daily driver computer for development? The specs look decent enough and the price is cheaper than a laptop.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
3 seconds in a trailer for a niche feature are not worth offending your competitor over.
Nintendo is not a direct competitor. And even if they were, what exactly does Valve have to lose here?
Oddly enough, the light that Humble Bundles have shone into gaming revenue cycles has made me question our copyright system as a whole. Stay with me. In Europe during the time of Mozart, composers were incentivized to be prolific by only getting royalties off the first public performance of their works. Now that is not fair today because of course we can losslessy reproduce such things infinitely. However, Humble Bun…
An advocate for the devil would claim that those creators were compensated upfront rather than over the lifetime of the product. Therefore, the company is rightfully collecting the revenue that the creator left to them that they already paid for.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait, why should Valve not have done this? I know Nintendo likes to bully smaller folks but it's not like Valve is small or that they rely on keeping good terms with Nintendo, right? Edit: I guess I didn't realize Portal was on Switch.
I think it’s pretty obvious most people using Switch emulators are getting the games on the net for free. So it’s awkward to show that on promotional material of another handheld device.
Have people already forgotten what Gabe himself said all those years ago? Piracy is a service problem, Nintendo does not provide any way to obtain these games legally for emulation (and often does not provide any way at all of accessing their games from previous platforms), so of course people pirate them. I thankfully still have a fully working launch year Switch so I can do whatever I want but it's not particularly convenient and most people don't have this privilege at all.
While Valve shouldn't have done this, Yuzu (and emulation) is completely legal. Nintendo cant do anything unless they want to go hard against emulation itself which brings us to the same are APIs copyrightable debate.
Emulation has been deemed legal? Since when? You're not paying for the system or the games and playing them freely?
For instance, I run qemu all the time to emulate various android devices.
I suspect that you're thinking specifically of game emulation though.
Running software on an emulated device is fine legally as long as it doesn't violate copyright law.
For instance, you can legally backup software that you own in the US [1] - that extends to games as well - and because emulators themselves are legal (although you may also need to backup the device's BIOS), you can have a completely legitimate archive of copyrighted games to run via an emulator.
That said, it's unlikely that most people archive software themselves, and it is not legal to distribute backups in the US, even if both parties have legitimately acquired copies of the source material.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it’s pretty obvious most people using Switch emulators are getting the games on the net for free. So it’s awkward to show that on promotional material of another handheld device.
Tbh Nintendo does make it particularly hard to pay and emulate. To legally emulate switch games you have to buy and then dump them, but if you hack your switch to dump them, you get banned from the estore so you can no longer buy them. Personally I'd be happy to pay money and get access to the game ROMs to run on an emulator because I find it more convenient to play them in an emulator than to switch a bunch of cable…
You actually don't, and I have to give credit to nintendo for this one, there are only a few ways you can get banned (the main one being installing pirated games, the switch has telemetry that sends back data about the signatures of the games you have installed) but just running simple homebrew isn't one of them, you can load up custom firmware and run a game dumper without getting banned just fine. You can even play online with it active (I have done it).
The bigger problem is that only very old models of the console can be hacked without having to solder a modchip so this is completely inaccessible to most switch owners.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nintendo is not a direct competitor. And even if they were, what exactly does Valve have to lose here?
Portal was released on the Switch, so presumably they do have some sort of relationship.