Tech Informer

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Popular Emulators yanked from Android Market




Retro gamers who use Android devices to play classics from old-school systems like Atari, Nintendo 64, and Sega took a hit this week when emulator apps for those consoles and a handful of others were removed from the Android Market.
Yongzh's (also known as Yong Zhang) emulators have been among some of the most popular and highest rated in the market, but the emulator creator reports that his developer account has been terminated without warning.

The removal of yongzh's account comes just weeks after PlayStation emulator PSX4droid--the work of another developer--was also deleted from the market in the lead-up to the release of Sony's Xperia Play. Yongzh, who lives in China, took down his Genesis emulator last month after receiving a complaint from Sega, but apparently it wasn't enough to placate Google and/or those console makers who may have lodged complaints with Mountain View.

While emulators on their own are not necessarily illegal, using the game ROMs that give them actual value apparently is, at least that's what Nintendo's lawyers claim in a company FAQ.

Yongzh says he's now out one of his main sources of income; he's posted the emulators on alternate app market SlideMe, where he's made them available for free so existing customers don't have to re-pay for the apps. N64oid alone has already registered more than 23,000 downloads from the site since Sunday.


Source: http://news.cnet.com/

11 comments:

Doc_Waffles said...

Oh no :(

JustAnotherBloggerNamedCisco said...

why the hell do these companies give a crap??? whos going to go out and buy a Sega game from the 90's @ walmart
they are just mad because they arnt getting a slice of the cake

Brofessor Neeko said...

Technically, the roms and the emulator are not illegal. However, if you don't own the game and have the rom..you illegally have the game. Perfectly fine if you bought/own the legit hard copy of the game

CollinBeloin said...

Thats why you get an Iphone, jailbreak it, download the emulators and are fine =]

JDOGMMA said...

Looks like I made a back up just in time...

Kristof Unpronounceable said...

Really, thanks for updating us on this this is serious.

ah_poo23 said...

lol i jailbroke that shit, all the free games I want!: D

Snack Radius said...

Thats pretty dumb in my opinion. Something I would have looked forward to when I got a droid lol :/

Unknown said...

Darn...can never have any good things.

Intraman said...

this is why we cant have nice things :(

Alnair said...

iPhone/iPad + Cydia = 1000s of awesome retro games.