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Comment by kevingadd | Hacker News Reader

Preservation isn't a matter of flipping a light switch on the moment a console isn't "current" anymore. The Switch came out in 2017 - that's a long time ago. If not for people preserving firmware updates and 1.0 builds of games, emulator developers and users would have nothing to start from when they start development on an emulator from scratch in ~2025 like you suggest doing.

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The emulator could have been developed and released open source without the ability to decrypt Nintendo games, which (I believe) is a copyright violation and one side of the lawsuit. And also not put the latest emulator builds and private discord encouraging piracy behind a patreon paywall.

I have nothing against a Switch emulator existing at all, but making it conveniently easy for the masses to pirate games, condoning it in private spaces you manage, and profiting off the demand for the emulator due to that piracy are all against the ideas of preservation.

The pirates would just decrypt their games. That doesn't meaningfully change whether the emulator is used for piracy.

No it doesn't necessarily change what the emulator is used for, but it changes the optics on what it's developed for. If you develop an emulator without any methods of DRM circumvention built-in, then out-of-the-box it can only be used for homebrew stuff like making your own games/apps for that platform.

If you include DRM circumvention with the emulator, then there's an argument that it's developed specifically with piracy in mind.

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