[cubefox]

> Sigh... they have perfectly legitimate uses too.

The existence of those is a fig leaf for what Switch emulators are used in the vast majority of cases: piracy. There are much better ways to run homebrew than the Switch.

If you think piracy of currently sold games is in fact ethical, or if you simply don't care about copyright, than please say so explicitly!

[pdntspa]

When media is sold for more money than you make in a month, or is otherwise financially out-of-reach, piracy is ethical (they would have never gotten your sale anyway)

When media is no longer available for sale or pulled from the market, piracy is ethical (there is literally no way to pay the creators)

When media you had legit access to is now unavailable because your account got stolen or you are otherwise locked out of some required online service, piracy is ethical (they won't do business with you)

When media requires something that was stolen from you, lost, or otherwise destroyed, piracy is ethical (you already paid for it)

When media uses DRM, piracy is ethical (doctrine of first sale stipulates you cannot control something after you have sold it, and one should not recognize any "license" for which have custody of the physical bits)

[animuchan]

I think that there's no suitable ethics system to apply to large game developers / publishers, responsible for the predatory tactics such as

    - Microtransactions
    - Pay to win, punishing players for not having ample disposable income
    - Lootboxes and the like ("baby's first casino")
    - Blatant false advertising, especially coupled with preorders

Some of these predatory practices are actually illegal in some countries, but aren't prosecuted universally enough (or harshly enough) to be considered an issue by large corpos.

If openly preying on your customers, — in no small part, children and teenagers, — for huge profits is considered ethical, then merely copying some files is downright angelic behavior, is it not?

[cubefox]

No, you have the right to boycott a service if you don't like it, not take it for free. Apart from that, I doubt Nintendo engages in the practices you mention.

[animuchan]

The parent comment talked about ethics, which is largely unrelated to rights (you might have the right to a thing that's entirely unethical, such as owning slaves in the American history).

Given the current laws you are correct, sure. (Whether to follow each and every law is a quite a personal choice...)

The majority of games for Switch aren't worked on by Nintendo, so that point seems tangential.

[cubefox]

Yeah I meant the moral right.

[_piif]

I don't support piracy of currently sold games. I do however support piracy once a developer stops selling their game and obtaining a ROM (and bypassing any implemented DRM) becomes the only feasible way to preserve a game.

Yes emulators are unfortunately often used for pirating games. But they will also be the only way you get to enjoy your purchased games in 10-20 years when the vendor stops producing the hardware, cuts off online services and your device becomes a fancy paperweight either as a consequence of that or naturally.

[cubefox]

Yeah, for old games that are not sold anymore piracy seems defensible.