Rogean and Nilbog are Breaking the Law!

[Whale biologist]

Originally Posted by Jibartik [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

bro the young lawyer is way off about this.

you cannot make mods of nintendo games go find me some roms right now.

The only reason any mod can exist is out of good faith.

ALTTP randomizer, FF6 T-Edition, Radical Dreamers?

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by Whale biologist [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

ALTTP randomizer, FF6 T-Edition, Radical Dreamers?

I think people are getting confused about emulators, mods, etc. Making a counterstrike mod with all custom assets, code, etc. would not be illegal, for example. You couldn't SELL the mod for money, because that would be using the game's IP to sell your own stuff, but you could release the mod for free. Those examples you mentioned are mods that are free, and they do not include the original game, so there is no issue.

The problem with something like an Everquest emulator is Everquest is a "games as a service" style game. This changes the way the IP holder looks at emulators. This is because an active emulated server is basically "stealing" potential customers away from their business, because another entity has provided a free version of their game.

That is why the P99 dev team should be heavily praised for maintaining a good relationship with the Everquest IP holders, and making sure they were not making a profit off of the game. That is why they stick solely to donations intended to keep the server hardware going, and they ban RMT. Honestly P99 is practically a miracle.

EDIT: This is why I was saying it's a weird area to begin with when it comes to the EQEMU. Yes, the EQEMU code by itself is made by the EQEMU dev's (to my knowledge), but it is currently being used in P99 for emulating a "games as a service" game. So I am honestly not sure how the EQEMU dev's could bring a legal case (and make money) without also entangling themselves in the Everquest IP side. As I said before, if someone simply took the EQEMU code and used it for something not related to Everquest, then the EQEMU dev's could potentially go after them, as it doesn't involve Everquest anymore. However, even then I am not 100% sure how the law works with a server emulator, as the EQEMU code is basically a reconstruction of the Everquest server code using packet sniffing. So technically the EQEMU code is being developed based on someone else's code, which is not open source. That is where it gets really weird.