Game Boy Emulator Developer Permanently Removes App From Google Play Store

Sad that it has to come to this, but understandable. I'd be scared too.

Wow, this victory really spooked the emulation community.

That said, Nintendo goes after ROM piracy sources and people helping to enable current-gen piracy. Nobody cares about this dude's Game Boy emulator.

when is nintendo going to realize you can just download roms straight from archive.org and sue them out of oblivion as well lol

This is a losing battle for Nintendo.

@kepsux don't give them any ideas!
Hopefully soon emulators make a real comeback. Developers need to hide their identity and host emulators outside of Japan and the USA.
They're not even illegal, but Nintendo has enough money and power to ruin lives if one tried to defend themselves.

In the case of Yuzu (being both a current gen console emulated and the raiding donations) I can understand why it garnered that level of negative attention from Nintendo.

But in the case of older systems, I am very much in support of game preservation. While things are a tad better (we even had a Bill and Ted collection), look at the wealth of 3rd party games exclusively on older systems that have long since faded from memory for example. Emulation keeps some of those games alive and accessible where they would become otherwise further forgotten.

What doesnt help also is that we no longer have the great Virtual Console services of old. We have NSO that is slow to add and tied to subscription features not everyone uses.itd be nice if there was a more effective way that game conpanies could facilitate in encouraging official lasting channels of old game services that could cover or encourage coverage of more than what we get.

Perhaps the worst thing by far is how limited licensing is. We had a fantastic opportunity in having games like Xmen and Simpson's arcade games and Marvel Vs Capcom 2 on XBLA - then they become delisted and lost. If not for how limited and easily worn out the 360 controllers got I would have kept a 360 for those games but even when given the chance we inevitably lose such games.

I feel like a lot of people misunderstand Nintendo's reason for taking down Citra and Yuzu. The whole thing that the devs of those emulators did to get on their radar in the first place. Emulators by law aren't illegal, but what was illegal was how the devs used patreon to sell people patches for a game that wasn't yet released. One of the devs for Yuzu even got early copies of switch titles, and would leak them out to people I'm pretty sure. Of course, taking down the emulators was overkill (but Nintendo took the chance to take those down while they had the legal right to do so).

This gameboy emulator was safe, and the dev had 0 reason to have to take it down, unless they were illegally making money off of it. Donations are fine, but if they were locking Nintendo's property behind a paywall, that's the issue there. Just seems like an overcorrection of someone who didn't really look deep into why Yuzu/Citra were taken down in the first place.

I'm weird, I prefer playing official rereleases and original cartridges on original hardware. There's the preservation and accessibility aspect, sure, but I'm too busy with contemporary releases to bother diving into huge swaths of old games I'd never finish anyway. A few big name retro games every now and again is more than enough for me.

"My family comes first" makes it sound like Nintendo is holding his wife and children for ransom, lol. If he doesn't cease production within the next 48 hours, Big Lenny is gonna take 'em out.

Sounds like someone about to start a patreon.

@Not_Soos I think the point of his wording is to say if Nintendo sues him, he won't be able to financially support his family. Yuzu devs have to pay $2.4 million in damages, and while that doesn't seem like a likely amount for a GB emulator at this time, I wouldn't want to take any chances.

@JRiegler
Nintendo already effectively won their battle against Yuzu, Pizza shutting down is just collateral damage.

@DarkScythe13
Yeah the loss of the virtual console was really disappointing/frustrating for me as mentioned in another comments section i loved the idea of being able to still purchase classic games on modern consoles and the reason why im not a fan of NSO as a replacement (to put things lightly) is because there is not the option to purchase/keep the games (while digital is flawed it has a lot more "safety nets" than service based gameplay, for example people can still play their purchased wii VC games long after the service ends which the same cant be said about an online service)

Really when nintendo mentioned about not wanting to keep reselling the same games via VC and the introduction of the account system i thought (hoped) it would mean that the next iteration of the virtual console would carry over purchases, instead the games literally weren't sold again.

sorry just a bit of a ramble since im a fan of retro gaming and on the plus side it has meant that we have gotten some nice collections recently including some containing previously unlocalized games such as Trials of mana and even some localizations of super niche games like the Marl kingdom ones.

Nintendo is worse than Denuvo, they are the corporate embodiment of DRM. The most filicidal company I've ever heard of. Just awful

@Altaria_97 I know what he meant and I support his decision, his phrasing just tickled me, lol.

Nobodys gonna take my dads head.

Everyone should switch to Retroarch for Gameboy emulation anyways. I own them all and stopped using pizza boy ages ago. I stopped using Myboy after they updated for the first time in like five years and ruined the browsing interface. Anyways though, it's not like the apps will be gone.

I feel like a lot of people aren't going to read the article and assume Nintendo forced this, lol. But yeah, this was probably safe. Yuzu screwed up because they tied a Patreon to it and were shouting from the rooftops about how you can download TotK a week before release.

I can totally see his reasoning. I'm glad he made the wise choice to choose family over the brokees after seeing Blackbond's video.

Zero evidence that's the case but it's not like it takes more than a fart in the wind to rattle those sabers, as already seen above. If anything would spook someone on this topic it would be Gary Bowser paying whatever scraps he has to Nintendo for the rest of his life, not this latest case.

Yuzu poking the bear has ruined the fun for everyone.
They should have just waited to "preserve" Switch games, its not like they need preserving right now anyway.

@Ralizah Not exactly. Until recently, Game Boy games were available to buy on 3DS and Game Boy games are currently available via NSO on Switch. Still, Nintendo doesn't care whether no one cares about them, they just care about their property.

Yuzu and Citra shutting down isn't exactly the end of their scenes. Citra, at the very least, can still run (haven't tried Yuzu) and there is nothing stopping the community from rolling their own versions. They did it with AM2R and Nintendo seemingly ignored all of the community efforts after the initial C&D.

I think they might have jumped the shark. Nintendo doesn’t sell any Gameboy games of any kind. Hell, they had Gameboy VC games on the 3DS when this emulator was released. I get it, they don’t want to risk it, but I think Nintendo would’ve hit them over a decade ago

Thanks to emulation and a passionate online community I was able to use one of my 3ds to play a pokemon crystal romhack on an emulator. If anyone here is a gen 2 hater like myself the romhack is called crystal legacy, it fixes all the issues that bothered me with johto. Liked it more than hgss

Apple could just be an apple

Emulation will always live. It has never died out since the 90s and will continue to be the most impossible hydra to defeat. Totally here for it as well. Love all the strides the community makes in developing their softwares and I’ll continue to support it.

"My family comes first"

The fandom will absolutely not have a field day with that phrase in the context of memetic "Nintendo ninjas".

Yuzu weren't ordered they settled.

@Serpenterror

Well that youtuber was insufferable. Turned it off after 30 seconds.

Just don't make money off of it or promote piracy directly and you're within the legal parameters. The current gen emulators are really a no go.
We can also say that there is clearly a gap in the market and if developers of these old games can sort out the licensing issues and rerelease retro games on current systems or PC for easy access I think that would cut down hugely on piracy.

Emulators remind me of that Bill Hicks bit about 'farming equipment.'

We made an emulation tool to reproduce the function of a video game console. And do you know what pirates did with it?

@SBandy1 yeah, he was a bit of a ThereWeAreThen

@Rambler
Absolutly, you must update your Software regulary to keep it in the Store, a stupid and time wasting procedere.
So maybe it was just not worth it.

Did he charge Money for the Emulator?
Because in the End there are multiple free ones out there, just throw Retroarch on the Device and you are done

He could also throw the Emulator out in the Wild to allow Sideloads or put it on F-Droid.

I keep seeing game preservation thrown around as an excuse for these illegal dealings.

Nintendo are not saying YOU or I cannot preserve our gaming memories. They are saying that people cannot do it for the masses and profit from it. And profit DOES include donations.

If you're concerned about preserving games... fill your boots and do it. By yourself. For yourself.

Downloading someone else's work, which in itself is copying other people's work, to play games you never once owned, and donating a few quid as some sort of justification because Nintendo aren't releasing their own games fast enough on their own service... you are preserving nothing and fooling nobody. You are consuming. And you're consuming illegally.

And that's before we even consider the sheer and utter pointlessness of it all since most people that use these emulators and collate all these games spend next to no time actually playing them! We all have our backlogs, but adding thousands of retro games onto it is madness!

I'm the words of the great Dominic Toretto, "Family."

@nocdaes, Well, I see the Nintendo Defense Force is here.

@nocdaes

People pirate games if:

• They aren't aviable
• They aren't aviable for a normal price
• They bought the games and don't have the hardware to copy the rom/image themselfs
• They are broke

I have a Retrode2 and i copies all of my games.
I have Pirates of Dark Water on the Super Nintendo, but when i see the prices of that game on ebay, i suggest people to pirate it.
Nobody wins if someone buys an old module for up to 300€.
Same with other games, i did look up how much they cost and i just did pirate them.
The devs don't get any money out of it.

Also, i have Super Mario World since its release, got it on the GBA and on the Virtual Console (Wii U), also played it on Switch over Nintendo online.
But i did pirate the NTSC Version for Rom Hacks, as they are never done for the PAL Rom i ripped myself.
Nobody gets harmed of it.

But it shows, if it is aviable for a reasonable price, People will buy it.

Same with the Rerelase of Wild Guns, Joe and Mac and Cotton 100%, got them from Dragon Box.

It seems Nintendo itself is seeing it like that, they only go after people if:

• They are doing it in a comercial way, as that Rom Side some years ago
• It is a current system or project

Also other Companies, they put in the DRM in the first few months, as most of the revenue is done in that period.
After that, a first discount comes out to convince people undecided and than most games only sell with high discounts.
The DRM than often gets removed, as it makes no sense.

@JRiegler

are you using my avatar to troll me? it appears that you actually copied it from my profile pic, as the crop is pixel for pixel the same as the one i personally took from source.

if not, is it too much to ask that you change it? i've been using it a good long while now and it is jarring to scroll past and see someone else talking out of my face, so to speak.

thanks for your consideration ✌️

@JRiegler @-wc-

@Ralizah

I'm really feeling spidey on this one 😅

If it doesn't include the boot ROMs, then there's nothing Nintendo can do.
I can only imagine that having a family means the author doesn't have time to keep the expectations of further development one might have of a paid product.

@Rambler That's extremely rude and inconsiderate. You don't know how much time the author spends with their family. Having a family doesn't mean they have no time to themselves.

@Specters Emulators aren't piracy by themselves. I have ROMs of over 200 GB/GBC games I dumped from carts I own.

@-wc- ha ha I’ll change it. Copying is a form of respect, right?

This is the desired outcome Nintendo wants. It’s less about the money (although I imagine they are at least annoyed about millions of stolen copies) and more about the message that if you’re given an inch you shouldn’t take a mile.

@Azuris Forgot the most common one

• They don’t want to pay money if there is a free alternative available especially for current gen games that didn’t even break street date yet as Tears and several other Nintendo Switch titles has shown.

Guarantee you with all the brag threads that dropped before Tears dropped it wasn’t because “poor third world country gamer” or “GAME PRESERVATION”. Why pay $70 for a new game when you can get it for free and won’t get in trouble for it after all right?

@JRiegler

thank you!

I feel so much better now 😅👍

love the new one ❤️ thanks for being cool about it. ✌️

Nintendo is not a great company. They make good games, but they aren't a good company. This article makes me sad.

@Ralizah there's nothing wrong with current generation emulation. FYI

The Yuzu devs were keeping links to Switch game roms behind a paywall on their Discord. They were profiting financially from their emulator. That is why Nintendo came down hard on them. Your Gameboy emulators should be fine, as long as you don't hand out the roms.

It's not good for emulation scene to be in the front row, rather than making it available on playstore, just distribute the apk on the website so people that want to play it can download and install it themselves. And of course, no patreon lol.

@KingMike Didn't say that though. But that's cool for you.

@Arawn93
ahh but most Games are cracked at the first day, some even see the light of day before release.
It never has a true impact on the Revenue.

These People are not the majority the Comapnies will make money with.
These People wouldn't buy the Game, even if it costs a Dollar and you do everything to please them.
Some are just the Complainers that complain about everything, some are just broke and than there are also People with other Reasons.

You can see this also with Baldur's Gate 3, the Game came out on Gog the same Day as on Steam.
It has no DRM and the Copy can be spread out without any Problem.
Netherless, the Games sells wildly.

The Music Industry also sells its Music without DRM, after they learned from Napster, Kazaa and Limewire.
Easy Access is more important than DRM.

@Azuris Millions+ of prerelease downloads says otherwise. It objectively did impact revenue and Nintendo specifically cited Tears in this case that is approximately 10% of potential loss sales which is actually a decent chunk. What if I took 10% of your monthly earnings and I just wrote it off as “I wasn’t getting a job anyway so you might as well give it to me…?”

You can’t speak for all of them that “they wouldn’t have got the game anyway” in an environment where there was a free alternative available. Take that away and it’s a reasonable assumption that a lot of them would have caved and bought the game just like everyone else. After all they liked the game enough already to steal it to begin with. As I said before they are not all poor third world gamers. Not remotely close.

I bet the trolls living under the bridge at Nintendo legal must be pretty stuffed after eating that many good things in one sitting.

It's hilarious that choosing between getting sued for a ridiculous amount of money and his family is a difficult decision for him. 🤣

@Ralizah If you think that, you don't know Nintendo. Nintendo had a problem with people holding private Smash Melee tournaments that have cash prizes, running completely independent from Nintendo, a game they've done nothing with for 23+ years

@Deviant-Dork If you pirate someone's games you're undermining the work of hardworking of people purely for your own benefit.

Is that nice?

@progx I'm sorry to be that person but that's not what jump the shark means - you mean jump the gun. Jump the shark refers to the moment when a TV show departs from its original premise and loses its appeal.

There was alot of internet reports that Yuzu supposedly had Tears of the Kingdom before/on launch day. It also seeminglt made alot of money from Patreon and of course the Switch is a live system.

Of course Nintendo turned its attention to them.
Let's not pretend other companies wouldn't.

I've come to the conclusion that Nintendo seems to generally ignore these things until they either make money, or are current console or conflict with its planned releases.

Basically Yuzu was making too much noise and money for Nintendo to ignore so it went after it.

Of course it also scares off others doing the same and of course you can't remove them all but you don't want your console being in a position where its latest game is easily pirated. The easier it gets the more people will do it.

@Dr_Lugae You're conflating piracy and emulation. Unless you're just asking a random question.

@Roibeard64 It was misreported that they had it early. And yes if you make money off of emulation then that's wrong. IMO.
If you're doing it for fun and for other people for free then it's fine.

"My family comes first".

Or, "I'm jumping off the tracks before the Nintendo Litigation Express™ arrives".

@lizardbish yeah, I meant that one. Thank you for catching it

@Not_Soos

They would end up in Doug Bowser’s castle for sure.

@Arawn93

You are mixing theft with the download of an illegal copy, it is not the same.
You should also be very careful with the numbers you are throwing around, a potential loss is easily spoken, until a judges wants you to proof it, than it gets hard and most avoid it.

As said, if it would really have such an impact, than the industry would have been dead in the 80s and 90s.
Any kind of DRM is killed off right at the first day and the game is easily aviable for those that don't want to buy it anyway.

Another example is the music industry, they abandoned DRM at all.

Or take Paolo Cuelho, he puts his books himself for free into the internet and he still sells them in several Millions.

Your media must be easily purchasable, than it sells.

@Azuris Kind of hard to be more “easily purchasable” when you got free copies leaking around before street date is being broken, but yeah sure lean on semantics that piracy is completely harmless when you had artists for decades that said otherwise when citing loss revenue lol

Man I'm late to the party. I was wondering why I couldn't find his apps anymore. That sucks. I really like how well it ran on my AYN Odin. Sad : (

Nintendo are slowly boiling the emulation scene but they might not like what springs out of the pot in the future.

Counter culture is inevitable and they are only radicalising, for lack of a better word, the community even further. We’ve seen this story play out time after time when it comes to digital products.

The only people Nintendo will notably discourage are those who wish to document or monetise the emulation work on mainstream social media.

There’s nothing stopping anyone from operating their emulation infrastructure within a country using hosts that are far from the lawyer squad and spreading the word on defederated platforms.