Video Game Emulation: Preservation or Piracy?

Video games as a medium are very unique and complicated compared to other forms of digital entertainment. Unlike movies, television, and music which use a handful of universal formats that can be played on virtually any device with no additional setup required, each video game is programmed to work specifically for the platform it is originally released on. In other words, with a movie, all your computer has to do is play a pre-rendered video. With a game, your computer has to work to create everything within the game from scratch, and each game system uses different methods to do so.

This is where emulators come into play. An emulator is a piece of software that mimics or emulates the components of another game console, allowing any computer to run games made for other platforms. As technology and the internet have advanced, emulators have become stronger and more easily accessible, but they have also sparked lots of debate and controversy over video game piracy. The presence of emulators allows consumers to download pirated games for free and run them directly from their computers without even owning the game console in the first place. But if emulation gives anyone the ability to do something so blatantly illegal, how could anyone possibly argue in favor of emulators?

Again, video games are a weird, complicated medium. Games can only be played on the specific systems they were made for, but with new consoles entering the market every 5-7 years, these systems and their formats are replaced very quickly with companies stopping production of older consoles and games as soon as they become dated. This makes it very difficult to obtain certain consoles and games today, and modern releases will almost certainly experience the same fate in the future. Companies have tried to combat this issue by re-releasing older titles on new platforms, but the vast majority of games, especially more obscure or niche titles, never escape their abandoned original console. In many cases, emulation is the only viable way for people to play these games at all, and if the developers, publishers, and retailers are no longer making money off of these games in any way, can it truly be considered piracy?

It’s also important to remember that not all emulation involves downloading unofficial copies of games from the internet. One of the most common ways people use emulators is to digitize their own physical library of games. By transferring your own games that you have already purchased to a computer, emulators offer many features that can enhance or completely transform the experience of the game. Whether it be the ability to display an old game in an HD resolution or the ability to change the controls of a game or use an entirely different controller altogether, these features offer the player completely unique ways to play the games they already own.

Of course, while emulation can be an excellent tool when used appropriately, its connection to piracy cannot be overlooked. It is almost disturbingly easy to download any game for free from just a simple Google search, and with emulation technology only becoming more advanced with the passage of time, there are now a plethora of emulators that can run games from consoles that are still on the market today. But with all of the positive applications of emulators for the preservation and enhancement of old games, it would frankly be a massive waste of potential to get rid of emulation altogether. The real problem lies in the lack of moderation of blatantly pirated content on the internet, and while that is an entirely different beast in itself and is much more difficult to grasp control over, it should be the top priority in ending video game piracy. People can only use emulators to play pirated games if they are able to download the pirated games in the first place.

By Jaden Ellman