With Sony massively fucking up by shutting its stores down and updates disappearing from specific PS3 games I’m gonna do a thread on Emulation, Roms, and console hacking! You ready? HERE WE GOOOOO

let’s talk about emulation. First off YES it is 100% legal. Legal battles started by Sony In the 90s resulted in courts declaring that emulators fall under the first amendment and are considered “competition”.

This is why Nintendo hasn’t gone after emulatiors like dolphin. Legally Nintendo can’t do so and has no authority when it comes to it. So yes you can download an emulator and it’s bios and stuff without any legal issue.

Roms on the other hand. That’s a different story altogether. YES legally speaking it is illegal to download Roms. No it isn’t enforced at all by law enforcement or the government unless it’s a current gen game like Smash Ultimate or TLOU2 (just to name a few)

The reason for this is quite simple. Unlike movies where majority of films from the 80s can still be bought and watched with relative ease. The same can’t be said for games released in the 80s. Especially on the original hardware they released on.

A lot of these games are ether extremely rare and impossible to get or go for EXTREMELY high prices that most people wouldn’t be able to afford. Which is why most law enforcement and government agencies turn a blind eye to people downloading NES,SNES,N64,etc Roms.

I mean it’s a waste of resources and time. Why would they waste their time on arresting someone who downloaded Duck Hunt off of google and not on someone pirating Endgame. There’s no real good reason to do this thus why they don’t really care...until Nintendo sues a site

Yes companies like Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, etc can absolutely order the takedown of rom sites. As they are “illegal” and can be sued for distributing Roms. However it’s worth noting that Nintendo usually only goes after sites that have current gen stuff on it. Like the switch

So as long as you aren’t downloading PS5, Xbox X, and switch Roms you should be fine. Just stick with stuff that’s no longer sold in stores (Stuff Like 3ds is on board while PS4 is still off limits).

Now we get to console hacking...it’s both legal and illegal. Yeah it’s weird. There have been multiple lawsuits with different results. Some courts say console hacking is A-Ok while others say it’s completely illegal and shouldn’t be done.

It’s in that gray area where no final decision has been made about rather or not console hacking should be made legal or illegal and there has yet to be a big massive court case to truly decide it (like Sony trying to make emulation illegal in the 90s).

Now i have my own rules on what too and what not to download/hack. So I’ll share them with you guys.
First Rule: anything current gen console or still being supported with new games is completely off limits and should be avoided until they are completely abandoned

Second Rule: Be careful on where you download Roms for both games and DLC. Some sites are virus filled and should be avoided.

Third Rule: Be careful when hacking a console and follow instructions to a T. Console hacking can result in it being Bricked and there’s no real way to fix it (depending on the console)

To end this thread let’s cut down what we know
1. Emulation is completely legal
2. Roms are illegal but downloading old stuff from NES too 3ds isn’t dangerous as law enforcement and the government doesn’t really care.

3. Console hacking is both legal and illegal and there’s yet to be a major court case deciding if it is or isn’t as of now.

So for those planning on hacking your PSPs, PS3s, And Vitas good luck and have fun! A shame we have to do this to preserve games/dlcs on the platforms but sometimes we have no other way