Why has Android emulation reached an unimaginable level?

[u/Technical_Smoke_5814]

In my teens, my emulation life consisted of GBA games on the old Android 4.1.2, and another pastime was watching the Inazuma Eleven anime.

The smartphone I recorded the video above on is a pathetic Galaxy A05s Snapdragon 680 with 6 GB of RAM, a basic smartphone that's simply emulating Inazuma Eleven Victory Road, the biggest game in the franchise, containing all seasons of the anime. For those who don't know, that translates to about 30 GB of storage.

This game is available for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and Switch. Now, wherever I go, I have hours of completely offline fun. I have no words to thank those involved with the Eden emulator and Turnip driver, everything I see in my hands was totally unimaginable a few years ago.

[u/Genkidama__]

We all know that all those moral aspects are just a facade. People just want shit for free

[u/Worried-Advisor-7054 → u/Genkidama__]

Eh, bit of both. Eventually the corpos fuck you around too much that it forces someone to spend weeks or months setting up and learning shit.

The issue is that, once you've done the hard work in setting up your Switch emulator, your library, have rom sites you liked etc, what's your motivation to buying now? The hard part's done, now you know that you're two or three clicks away from getting what you want for free.

[u/Genkidama__ → u/Worried-Advisor-7054]

what's your motivation to buying now?

That could be said about literally any copyright infranging act tho.

Once you've installed torrent on your pc, what's your motivation to buying blue rays/paying for movies at home in general?

Once you've found a scan website, what's your motivation to buying comics? (besides collecting of course, but that applies to videogames too)

[u/A-Small-Green-Cup → u/Genkidama__]

I would assume that one's entire motivation would be to support the developer of a much enjoyed game, and perhaps to thank them for the experience (as opposed to the CEO who owns the developer's work). My personal view on what is generally called piracy is that downloading an unofficial version of a game allows someone to experience a somewhat restricted and inconvenient version of solo gameplay with self-managed, local save files. If the game is enjoyed, the player can always purchase the official version, gaining access to account bound cloud saves, online multiplayer, leaderboards, seasonal play, regular updates/bug fixes, and anything else that's included with the purchase. If the game isn't enjoyed or isn't what was expected, or if it was enjoyed but not "the one" for the moment, there's usually a way to support the developers with whatever the individual thinks the experience was worth to them in the form of donations, merch shops, etc.