Emulator frontend Emulation-Station has been removed from the Amazon Appstore, less than a week after its launch. The reasoning for the app's removal, is, according to Amazon, Emulation-Station, "facilitates emulating and pirating of games from third-party sources without explicit authorization from those sources", despite Emulation-Station merely acting as a frontend, and not actually including any emulators in the app.

The development team behind ES-DE has instead decided to go ahead with self-publishing the APK for the Android version of their frontend. In order to get the app now, you'll need to join Emulation-Station's Patreon, for $5.50 USD a month. You'll then be given access to the Android APK that you can install on your device. The devs note that you can cancel Patreon support after a month, and still keep the app and get future updates for it.

This is the second time in the past week that an emulator has been targeted specifically for "facilitating piracy", following Nintendo's lawsuit against the Yuzu Nintendo Switch emulator. If you did happen to purchase ES-DE from the Amazon Appstore, you can at least still install it, however the developers urge anyone who made the purchase to get the app refunded, as Amazon will not be paying the developers because the emulator frontend is "illegal".

News 2024-02-28: Amazon has decided to remove ES-DE from their Appstore because "The app facilitates emulating and pirating of games from third-party sources without explicit authorization from those sources." Everyone that knows anything about emulation knows that this is not true, and especially not for a frontend that does not ship with any games or any emulators. We have attempted to appeal this decision but Amazon has refused to reinstate the store entry.

Therefore we have decided to self-publish the APK instead of relying on any app stores. As a first step you can join our Patreon to receive a download link to the APK. Note that this is NOT a subscription, you can turn off recurring payments at any time and you will still receive future APK updates. But if you do choose to support the project long term in these difficult times then it's much appreciated. I have worked four years on ES-DE without making any money from it, and it's almost like a second job now. Supporting us financially instead of pirating the app is a way to make sure development will continue and that ES-DE has a future long term.



Please spread the word of what has happened and if you did buy the app from the Amazon Appstore then ask them for a refund and don't hesitate to criticize them for their decision. We have not yet received any money from amazon and due to them claiming that ES-DE is illegal we doubt that will change. Anyway, it seems like you can still install the app from the Amazon Appstore app if you have bought it, but there will obviously be no further updates published there.

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[The Real Jdbye]

they have some other issues on playstore i think ;P now they are posting on patreon but is there any anytypiracy system over there :X?

Not unless they implement their own checks (like linking the app with Patreon)

 

[Lamcza]

Not unless they implement their own checks (like linking the app with Patreon)

well lets hope they figure it out :X

 

[AdRoz78]

Yes, organization is now illegal only anarchy!

Amazon is anarchy.

 

[solitonmedic]

Ah yes, Amazon once again failing to see the forest for the trees. Apparently ES makes the emulators now.