There are legal problems when creating emulators, sure people work hard to avoid them, but I don’t think they should have to do that in those cases, so I specifically wrote “all emulators” should be legal. For example, Dolphin to work requires cryptographic keys that technically belong to Nintendo, so they may be sued for providing them. Some emulators require you to find bios on your own because they can’t legally provide them, and their emulator doesn’t work without it.

This may be hot take, but I think games are art and are part of our cultural legacy, and making steps that stops us from enjoying us from that legacy should be considered a crime, especially when they put at risk art disappearing forever.

I would start with simple rules:

• 5 years after last new copies of the game stops being sold, pirating it stops becoming a crime
• 10 years after platform (console?) stop being produced, if there is no official emulator available, all emulators of that platform become legal
• intentionally trying to stop people from buying a game without breaking above rules (for example, selling one copy for price of 9999$) is a crime

As a result, I would expect all companies to either invest in backward compatibility on unprecedented level, or more likely start porting their games to PC (because they will keep being produced), even if that meant selling copies to be used with emulators. When there is money on the table, or perspective of losing money, corporations are really quick to find solutions.

It’s not the first time I’m hearing about it. In The Bachelor episode of Game Changer, wrong color of the bubble was used as main argument of why having an Android phone is considered red flag. I think most of the contestant marked having Android as a red flag. After that it was kinda hard for me to treat them seriously, like they are open enough to compete in a show to go on vacation with guy they are meeting for the first time, but they have a problem with that guy messages being displayed in different color.

To make it even more funny, when someone proposed they could use other communicators if they really don’t like green bubbles, the response was that they don’t live in Europe.