That's why I said if we know exactly what happened. All of what you just said is just head canon.
You can't say nothing in this case. At the end of the day, it's still a software that enable the vast majority of its user piracy of current hardware. If the owner comes to your house to ask you to stop or even just a letter then im sure stopping is the respectful thing to do. Especially if it's a developer we're talking about. I'm also a dev and I had my share of asking for other devs to stop what they were doing and others asking me to stop what im doing. It's actually very peaceful. All interactions were always something like this:
"Hey, im a dev of xxx, I worked hard on this project, what you're doing right now is hurting me financially, can you stop? Thanks"
"Thanks for contacting, I really respect your work, didn't realize it'd be bad for you. I'll stop now"
I'm paraphrasing but it always went down like that, no friction at all. You might think that they can "well, what im doing is legal so fk you" but NO DEVELOPER will ever say that, not the one that actually worth their salt. Even if Nintendo is an indie company or just another lone developer, the dev has a high chance of respectfully stop. This is me also head canon but it's probably a combination of both respect and fear of retaliation since again, what you're doing (emulation) is not exactly legal (more below)
You seem to misunderstanding something. Emulator was never legal. Everyone in the internet using that argument always reference the Sony case against some cheating device back in the 90s which has nothing to do with today emulation. It's a grey area where the status quo is being kept by both the emulator's devs and the hardware companies. They only tolerate each others. I suggest watching a video by a lawyer on youtube called Moon Channel or something where he breaks this down perfectly.
Most ppl use emulator for piracy, i'm sure no one would argue with this, but we don't have the actual data or specificly these hardware company don't have that data cause these emulator don't have telemetry (or even if they have it it's impossible to determine if the user uses a valid copy of the game, only the hardware manufactor can do it) so it's a stalemate for them. But looking at things lately, there will appear some idiots that will break the current state and enable the final blow to the emulator scene.
Headcanon? That is...... what happened.... If you think otherwise, find information yourself, ig.
"Respectfully" asking is a myth and you are giving Nintendo too much credit. Besides that, there is exactly zero legal or moral argument you can make against people creating emulators to perfectly recreate and simulate targeted hardware. Besides that, emulators are critical for game preservation and making these games playable once hardware used to run it stops working, which is inevitable.
You are also making an argument that emulators hurt sales, linking it to piracy, but that was......proven to be false. You can find EU studies that prove that video game piracy does not lead to loss in sales. Those that pirate, were never customers in the first place. And that is for piracy itself, emulators being possible to use for that.....is not very relevant. Not only do I not agree, but you are just wrong.
Also it is very disingenous to claim that I am making up headcanons, while presenting something that is far less likely, with Nintendo's known and factual history of litigious actions and patent trolling (like they are doing with Palworld). Also, I don't think it's your place to speak on behalf of devs, like they are a monolith or like you know them. I know of cases where devs would be fine even if their games were pirated, just so that they could be enjoyed by another, so what you speak there collapsed on that merit alone.
I am not misunderstanding anything. You are just woefully misinformed and uninformed on legality of it in general. Emulators and emulation is legal. Precedents have been set decades ago. They always were legal. At worst they are in an untested legal gray zone, but illegal.......ABSOLUTELY NOT. Everyone is using that argument because there are cases that set precedent. Even without that case, there is zero laws that forbid emulation. Cases where emulators break the law is only when it's coming shipped with console BIOS, firmware and encryption keys ('illegal' is a misnomer, merely in the gray zone, because this part is untested) that must be sourced either by yourself from your console or pirating of course, however emulators do not provide those........ever......... Now, if they were happened to be reverse engineered, there would be zero legality issues with shipping those out, because of laws regarding reverse-engineering. If you think you can claim THAT is illegal, that would pretty much destroy countless pieces of software if it were the case......which is not.
[I]Sony Computer Entertainment v. Connectix Corporation[/I], 203 [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.3d']F.3d[/URL] 596 (2000), commonly referred to as simply [B]Sony v. Connectix[/B], is a decision by the [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals_for_the_Ninth_Circuit']Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals[/URL] which ruled that the copying of a copyrighted [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS']BIOS[/URL] software during the development of an [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emulator']emulator[/URL] software does not constitute [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement']copyright infringement[/URL], but is covered by [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use']fair use[/URL]. The court also ruled that [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony']Sony[/URL]'s [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation']PlayStation[/URL] trademark had not been tarnished by [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectix']Connectix Corp.[/URL]'s sale of its emulator software, the [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Game_Station']Virtual Game Station[/URL].
There is nothing to argue about emulation itself. It is legal. What most people use it for, is not relevant for legality of emulation and emulators themselves. "Final blow" without some insane astro turfing and new laws, cannot do anything to emulators. As I said already, only thing that must be tested is encryption. Nintendo does not wanna mess with that, because if they lose, they are completely fucked.
I do not understand why do you give Nintendo such massive benefit of the doubt, when their history has proven that when dealing with legal actions, they are not nice, kind or at all respectful. I also do not understand why do you think developers at all make any decisions regarding this matter. They almost never do. They shut down a charity event for fucks sake.......They are KNOWN to be petty and litigious. The whole business with Palworld should have informed you that they NEVER play nice.
Besides that, do you really think just because they 'asked nicely' would make Ryujinx devs to just GIVE THEM THE WHOLE THING or even stop working on it? Something they spent years working on, just......giving it away...... You are being naive.
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