GBA Emulator Creators Vow To Take On Nintendo

Justin Nolan writes "According to a PDALive article, Kyle Poole of Crimson Fire Entertainment has decided to take on Nintendo after their legal threats regarding his Zodiac Tapwave-based Game Boy Advance emulator, Firestorm gbaZ. The following post can be found in his forum: 'We believe that the US Patent No 6,672,963 does not apply to Firestorm gbaZ, as the patent clearly covers optimizing an emulator based on detecting a predetermined video game title... Because of this, we have decided that we will release the emulator early next week as a free open source project, covered by the GPL license. We will of course provide a compiled version for you to use, but the full source code will also be available. This will provide us further legal protection, as we will not be profiting from it.'"

Comments

Scorched Earth approach

[Operating Thetan]

Because of this, we have decided that we will release the emulator early next week as a free open source project, covered by the GPL license. We will of course provide a compiled version for you to use, but the full source code will also be available.

eg You can stop us making a profit, but we'll use what we have to fuck you over in return.

Re:Scorched Earth approach

[0x0d0a]

It's still possible to make a profit, just indirectly. The GPL doesn't mandate releasing associated data files with programs.

I've never figured out why emulator groups were always so rabid about keeping their emulators closed-source -- they are tinkerers, systems people, reverse engineerers, and seem like *exactly* the kind of people that fit into the open source world. Yet emulators stayed closed source for the longest time, with much duplication of effort and people screaming that people stole code from them...ack. How many people have really made a decent sum of money from writing a console emulator? Given the number of closed-source projects out there, probably not many...

It is nice to see this open-sourced, though. Since VisualBoyAdvance is also GPLed, perhaps the two projects could share effort to some degree.

Re:Scorched Earth approach

[Haeleth]

I've never figured out why emulator groups were always so rabid about keeping their emulators closed-source...

Because there are a lot of lamers out there who like nothing better than to steal other people's work and pass it off as their own.

Why might these people target emulators in particular and not other types of program? Because in an emulator, unlike (say) a text editor or an original game, the majority of the difficult code is in the engine rather than the interface, but its visible output is very well defined: two emulators might be totally different inside, but if they do their jobs well enough their output should be indistinguishable.

That's the argument, anyway. In practice it doesn't actually seem to be true, but that's a different matter. ;)

Re:Scorched Earth approach

[mushroom blue]

I've been a member of this "community" for seven or eight years now. right when NESticle's source was stolen and released. and almost every year, someone complains that the community is dead.

they claimed the emulation community is dead when Sardu's box got hacked, and NESticle was leaked.

they claimed it was dead when AOL'ers came on IRC asking for roms.

they claimed it was dead when Sony bought Virtual Gamestation, and sued Bleem!, because corporations were gonna ruin the fun.

they claimed it was dead when UltraHLE was released, and for a few months the IRC channels were flooded with newbies wanting to get current games.

People complaining that the "community" is about to die are fun to watch. they're like that stereotypical long-haired, bearded old man holding the sign saying "The End Is Nigh"; nothing but a bunch of Chicken Littles running about, telling everyone the sky is falling.

now they claim it's gonna die because the mainstream attention is going to bring more people into the emulation community.

the community will somehow implode on itself from growing too big.

right.

last I checked, zophar.net, emuunlim.com, retrogames.com, emuforums, et all were experiencing MUCH higher participation than they ever have.

Zsnes has 6 active developers, up from the original 2, and quality is better than ever.
MAME is seeing more commits than ever before.

emulation, and the community surrounding it, is better than ever. the only people angry are the ones that dislike it being an "insider" thing. the same people who hate a band or artist when they become popular. once everyone knows the secret, they feel like they've lost something.

get over it. find a new hobby.

Re:Hmm...

[NintenDoctor]

Read the first article:

To all those that have already shown their support for this project and have pre-ordered it, you can a) request a full refund b ) exchange it for any other game c) donate it to Crimson Fire to help our impending legal costs as well as the development costs

Why would he?

[0x0d0a]

They got what they paid for -- a Gameboy Advance emulator.

The fact that some other people get it for free doesn't change the fact that they evaluated what something was worth to them and made the choice to buy it.

Biblical parables are not all that popular on Slashdot, but the workers in the vinyard really does illustrate this point nicely. Humans have this weird psychological quirk where they measure what they have very directly by what their peer is getting.

Re:Why would he?

[focitrixilous P]

but the workers in the vinyard really does illustrate this point nicely For the uninformed, the story goes like this:

A farmer needed workers in his vineyard. He went into the city and gathered some workers, offering them some money to work for a day. They happilly agreed, being unemployed. Later he went back to the city and got some more workers, offering them the same amount of money to work for the rest of the day. He did this a third time before the day was over. When he paied all the workers, thie first group was upset because they had done more work then the others, yet recived the same pay.

So yeah, don't complain if you bought the emulator and now they are giving it away.

Smart

[NanoGator]

"Because of this, we have decided that we will release the emulator early next week as a free open source project, covered by the GPL license. We will of course provide a compiled version for you to use, but the full source code will also be available. This will provide us further legal protection, as we will not be profiting from it"

Brilliant move. I'd have more respect for these guys if they started it as an Open Source project to begin with. Now they're just being asses. What they should have done instead is marketed it as a development tool.

Let me give you all a piece of advice: Don't use Open Source to advocate (either directly or indirectly like in this case) piracy. You don't want corps like Nintendo burned by actions like this. How do you really think other software development houses are going to see it?

Re:Smart

[MMaestro]

How do you really think other software development houses are going to see it?

They're going to see this as an reason to NOT use Open Source. The public and corporations (most of them) are idiots. If push comes to shove in this case and Nintendo stomped on them, every techie news site will report something along these lines :

'Nintendo Stops Open Source Piracy Project, Claims Open Source Is A Danger To Intellectual Rights By Bypassing Anti-Piracy Systems.'

Good friggin luck

[xenocide2]

This guy's written a closed emulator, and has taken preorders for it. He advertises with screenshots without mentioning any standard way of interfacing gameboy games into the platform his software runs on. Of course Nintendo's pissed, he's selling tools to pirate games. Ironically, now several of his own customers are pissed as well and want their preorder money back (dipshits, its not like software runs out).

You'll notice in the patent several emulators and website references to emulation. The patent makes several claims, and I'm not certain the only claim made within the patent is an emulator that can determine what kind of game is played. This "innovation" would be to look at offset in the rom that indicates which platform the game is intended for. Its also hardly revolutionary. No$gmb can accomplish this feat. And I believe visual boy advance can as well.

The lesson is that most companies take a dim view of profiting from their hard work. If you just want to build an emulator, the easiest part of steering clear of trouble is to make it open source. It's worked for zsnes and snes9x. And in the process we've seen a far greater application of emulators than before when handled by a small clergy of programmers and friends.

No profit?

[Gothic_Walrus]

This will provide us further legal protection, as we will not be profiting from it.

In that case, there go your legal defense funds...

Seriously: how the bloody hell will these guys be able to defend themselves against Nintendo without any money?

This is insane.

[silentbobdp]

I can't imagine a better way to fuck oneself. Not only are they going to kill themselves off, they're going to hurt Open Source in the process.

Do they honestly think this will uphold in court?

[GaimeGuy]

Seriously, I don't see how this can uphold in court: an emulator which copies the hardware structure of a game boy advance deliberately meant as a development kit or a way to get free GBA games just won't cut it. Either way, they're taking Nintendo's product and distributing it that directly interferes with Nintendo's business: If they market it as an emulator, it gets ruled against for the piracy of games: If it's marketed as a development tool, it gets shut down for a deliberate attempt at prevention of revenue for Nintendo: Development kits cost money to make, and this could legally be proven to unlawfully interfere with Nintendo's business practices.
Not to mention the fact that this "development kit" was designed for use with a Nintendo product which, by law, Nintendo owns all rights to, including the ability to deny and/or approve of who can develop for it. Saying that what they're doing is legal is just a load of bull
Even if Nintendo still makes millions, the law applies equally to everyone: It protects small companies from the loss of their products, and, depending on the size and/or stability of such company, potential bankruptcy. It also protects the large companies, like Nintendo, from being denied the profits of their products.
Whether you like it or not, the law just wouldn't be justified if it didn't apply equally.

-1, Wrong

[EvilSporkMan]

Not to mention the fact that this "development kit" was designed for use with a Nintendo product which, by law, Nintendo owns all rights to, including the ability to deny and/or approve of who can develop for it.
WHAT law? They have rights to all the standard libraries, sure, but if someone were to write code for the machine from the ground up, make carts, and sell them, Nintendo couldn't do a damn thing (provided that there was no use of Nintendo seals on packaging, etc.). See all the public-domain ROMs for reference, or Feet of Fury for the Dreamcast.

Re:Do they honestly think this will uphold in cour

[toast0]

In past court cases, emulators have been fine, so long as they do not distribute copyrighted code in the hardware, such as bios images, without permission.

Furthermore, it has been held to be legitimate to copy copyrighted code, or statements about licensing in software required for interoperability. See Sega v. Accolade.

If Nintendo were to patent the entire operation of the Gameboy, it might be possible to sue emulators for patent infringement, but the novel parts of a Gameboy are going to be the circuit implementation and electric specs, which aren't emulated at a level that would be infringing.

Precedent

[Anonymous Coward]

Sell a product that plays a version of their games that can be acquired without paying Nintendo a cent, and you can bet your ass Nintendo will crack down on you.

They won't, because they can't. Richard Bannister has been selling Mac ports of Nintendo system emulators for years unmolested. Nintendo threatened to sue Gambit Studios into a fine mist if they released Liberty, a commercial Game Boy emulator for Palm OS; Gambit did, Nintendidn't. If you read Nintendo's correspondence with Crimson Fire, the only specific claim is infringement of a patent covering a nonessential feature; the rest is the same FUD Nintendo has been spreading for a decade. If they could sue someone, they already would have done so.

Remember Conectix and Sony?

I remember Sony buying VGS after getting the circuit court to add to the body of case law favoring emulation, yes.