In Depth: Are game emulators legal?

By Rich Wordsworth

Are game emulators legal?

As you may have read recently something rather weird happened in the field of videogame emulation. A NES emulator – a magic, digital aether-box that lets you play Mario on a thing that isn’t a NES – was approved on Xbox One. Mario. On Xbox. What a time to be alive. And maybe in prison.

The thing is, emulators are sort of… tricky, legally speaking. While playing Goldeneye on your PC might sound – to you – like an incontrovertibly superb idea, there are some who see emulators as a decidedly bad thing. People with teams of lawyers, burbling geysers that shoot money and who own the intellectual property rights to Goldeneye.

So, where exactly are you, legally, if you download an emulator? What if you make one? What if you make one and try to sell it (tl;dr: don’t)? Fear not: we have spoken to videogame lawyer Jas Purewal – of digital entertainment and technology legal firm, Purewal & Partners LLP – to find out how much trouble you’re in.

Classics for the masses

You’ve developed and distributed an emulator and now there’s a van parked across the street that hasn’t moved all week. You hear …read more

Source:: techradar.com – Gaming