Amazon has removed Emulation-Station from its app store because it "facilitates piracy"

198-1984019_emulationstation-emulation-station-logo.jpg

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.

:arrow: Source
 

Site & Scene News

Popular threads in this forum

General chit-chat
Help Users
  • No one is chatting at the moment.
  • SylverReZ @ SylverReZ:
    @mthrnite, Cheetah Girls, the sequel to Action 52's Cheetah Men.
    +2
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    Pokemon Black I played that one a lot
  • K3Nv2 @ K3Nv2:
    Honestly never messed with Pokémon on ds much
  • mthrnite @ mthrnite:
    I played pokemon once, was bored, never tried again
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    Oh Dragon Quest IX
  • K3Nv2 @ K3Nv2:
    Spent like 5 hours on switch one never touched it again
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    Sentinel of the stary skies
  • K3Nv2 @ K3Nv2:
    Ds is 20 years old this year
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    So MJ no longer wants to play with it?
  • K3Nv2 @ K3Nv2:
    He put it down when the 3ds came out
  • SylverReZ @ SylverReZ:
    @K3Nv2, RIP Felix does great videos on the PS3 yellow-light-of-death.
  • Jayro @ Jayro:
    Eventhough the New 3DS XL is more powerful, I still feel like the DS Lite was a more polished system. It's a real shame that it never got an XL variant keeping the GBA slot. You'd have to go on AliExpress and buy an ML shell to give a DS phat the unofficial "DS Lite" treatment, and that's the best we'll ever get I'm afraid.
    +1
  • Jayro @ Jayro:
    The phat model had amazingly loud speakers tho.
    +1
  • SylverReZ @ SylverReZ:
    @Jayro, I don't see whats so special about the DS ML, its just a DS lite in a phat shell. At least the phat model had louder speakers, whereas the lite has a much better screen.
    +1
  • SylverReZ @ SylverReZ:
    They probably said "Hey, why not we combine the two together and make a 'new' DS to sell".
  • Veho @ Veho:
    It's a DS Lite in a slightly bigger DS Lite shell.
    +1
  • Veho @ Veho:
    It's not a Nintendo / iQue official product, it's a 3rd party custom.
    +1
  • Veho @ Veho:
    Nothing special about it other than it's more comfortable than the Lite
    for people with beefy hands.
    +1
  • Jayro @ Jayro:
    I have yaoi anime hands, very lorge but slender.
  • Jayro @ Jayro:
    I'm Slenderman.
  • Veho @ Veho:
    I have hands.
    Veho @ Veho: +1