Quote Originally Posted by Aussie2B View Post
Maybe if you average everything out that's true, but there are also plenty of niche developers/publishers who have had to shut down because piracy hurt them so bad. Action games and other such games with a lot of replay value may benefit from ROMs/ISOs if people are using them to "try before you buy", but with genres that people don't tend to replay, like visual novels, most will not bother to buy an official releases after they've played through it illegally. This is also reflected in how many games are passed for localization when a fan patch exists. The publishers know that will eat into their potential sales. Hell, even full Let's Play series hurt the sales of story-focused games. This is mirrored in other industries too, like how there are tons of people who blow through manga scanlations with a voracious appetite and never bother to buy an official localization of anything they've already read.
Well, sites hosting games from active consoles are simply asking to be sued. One has to assume that LOVEroms simply didn't heed the C&D's from Nintendo, and this is what it's come to. My point on the benefiting was in the Vice article. You had programmers who were inspired and even learned via emulation, not to mention current fans who couldn't afford many games. Plus you have many publishers and sites like GOG making money based on open source emulation that was only possible through piracy of games, of course.

As for EmuParadise, ehhh, I find their move to be strange. They've been on-line for 18 years, and no one outside of Nintendo cares. Are French Atari, slimey Cardillo's "Coleco", or Tommy Tallarico INTV going to start sending C&D letters, I doubt it? Hell even Sony doesn't seem to care. We know SEGA won't lift a finger. Had they just removed Nintendo first party stuff, would have been fine.