Android Market's most popular emulators disappear without a trace

http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/29/android-markets-most-popular-emulators-disappear-without-a-trac/

by berberich • 15 years ago

75 69 15 years ago

cma3• 15 years ago

So, from Honeycomb onwards, Android is no longer open source aside from the places where they are forced to be (through the GPL), and the market is more of an Apple app store.

(or were there some copyright claims involved here? e.g. making a TI-89 emulator should be ok for the market, but you can't include TI's ROM)

starnix17• 15 years ago

"e.g. making a TI-89 emulator should be ok for the market, but you can't include TI's ROM"

I don't think so. For example, I know the PSX emulator didn't include any of the required BIOS files and they are all still removed.

It seems that if someone big enough complains, Google will remove any emulator.

burgerbrain• 15 years ago

Well, despite acting pretty similar in the past in a few key cases (I crack my self up :P), TI has usually acted more or less sane when dealing with their hacker community. They have no issue with the numerous emulators out there for their calculators so long as you don't distribute one of their roms.

EDIT: occurs to me people might not have gotten that pun: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Texas_Instrum...

Kylekramer• 15 years ago

The boilerplate response: Android's open (except for Honeycomb), Android Market is not and has never been open and is nearly completely at Google's discretion, and you can normally install these apps outside of the market in cases like these.

That said, it is a frustrating move. The problem is similar to the one I foresee happening soon with the Mac App Store. Sure, it is great to have the convenience of the one true app store alongside the freedom to install what you please, but the power of the first tends to undermine the second until the freedom is mostly theoretical as the platform still is nearly entirely in one company's hands (e.g., the current state of Android).

theBobMcCormick• 15 years ago

The big difference is that with Android, you only need to change 1 checkbox in your settings and you can download apps from outside the Android Market (That's how you install the Amazon Market for example). With the iPhone, there's no way to download apps from outside the App Store.

cma3• 15 years ago

That's not true of all Android branded phones.

Daniel14• 15 years ago

Android as an OS is open source, the Android Market isn't. The market is completely controlled by Google, and since you can still install .apk files without using the Market I don't think this is such a great deal as Engadget paints it to be.

Xuzz3• 15 years ago

Well, except Honeycomb. From what I've been able to tell, that will only be open sourced when Ice Cream Sandwich is released, which appears to near at the end of the year.

Someone• 15 years ago

Totally unrelated: interesting phrase, that "The market is completely controlled by Google". Especially given the (accidentally, I assume) missing capital M, it made me think of the "is App Store a generic term?" discussion. I think your post shows that generic words can, at the least, come very close to being specific terms.

foob• 15 years ago

So, from Honeycomb onwards, Android is no longer open source aside from the places where they are forced to be

That's factually incorrect and sounds like flamebait. They've stated that they're going to begin releasing the code again with Ice Cream Sandwich and not wanting to release bad code that was forced by a deadline isn't totally unreasonable.

the market is more of an Apple app store.

It's always been moderated. As has already been mentioned in another response the big difference is that on Android you can install apps from a different app store.

qjz• 15 years ago

What's factually incorrect? It's not open source if they don't release the code (no matter how bad it might be).

commandar3• 15 years ago

>So, from Honeycomb onwards, Android is no longer open source aside from the places where they are forced to be (through the GPL)

As others have pointed out, that's only for Honeycomb. Google has said all along that the code would be going public again once it's been cleaned up and the phone and tablet versions have been remerged for the next major release.

>(or were there some copyright claims involved here? e.g. making a TI-89 emulator should be ok for the market, but you can't include TI's ROM)

The comments over on reddit are suggesting that these emulators were based on GPL'd emulators and the developer wasn't complying with the GPL. If that's the case, Google was absolutely right in pulling them from the market. The market is minimally moderated, but blatant copyright infringement is still a no-no for obvious reasons.

yanw2• 15 years ago

Can we please stop the 'is it really open?!' silliness that gets triggered after every such incident.

They specifically said that there will be a code drop, as for the app removal it's probably due to copyright owner request and they had to comply.

potatolicious• 15 years ago

Your definition of open source must be different than mine - "we will drop the source if and when we feel like it" doesn't smell like an open source project to me.

lotusleaf19876• 15 years ago

So Android is basically giving up their biggest competitive advantage to iPhone gaming? Android's emulators always seemed to trump iPhones wider selection of native games.

This is almost certainly a result of the launch of Sony's Xperia aka Playstation Android phone. Can't you still just sideload the app?

Maybe Amazon's Android store will allow the emulators back in? Or will Google be able to block this?

commandar3• 15 years ago

>Maybe Amazon's Android store will allow the emulators back in?

If the speculation that these emulators were pulled because they were infringing on GPL code is correct, I wouldn't count on it.

lotusleaf19876• 15 years ago

It seems like the timing is too coincidental/coordinated with the Sony Xperia Play phone launching. Why would you buy games from the PSN store when you can buy an emulator for $8 and then get the games for free? It's in Google's interest to keep Sony happy, more than it is a few developers. Google also leaves a loophole because you can still side-load the apps.

mikemaccana• 15 years ago

"Android is basically giving up their biggest competitive advantage to iPhone gaming? "

Emulation is a niche. Mainstream audiences want touch touch-enabled games, designed for small screens (no tiny fonts) at their native resolution without the hassle of finding illegal ROMs.

lotusleaf19876• 15 years ago

I would think that more people would want to play Super Mario on their phones than Angry Birds just based on familiarity. How many billions of people know Mario and how to play it already? Final Fantasy 1/2/3 are selling well on iOS. What is your source for your assertion over what mainstream audiences want?

T-R2• 15 years ago

And emulators with touch screen controls are an even smaller niche. I play my fair share of classic games, but the iOS/Android emulators never struck me as compelling - Megaman, for example, is just not playable without actual buttons, and I'd happily pay for RPGs (even remakes) that have touch interfaces as opposed to simulated buttons.

runjake2• 15 years ago

Yet Google can't remove the crapware and cull Market for apps that steal your data.

Not trolling here, I'm a happy Nexus S (and iPhone 4) owner.

mail2345• 15 years ago

DroidDream was yanked, all though that was more malware.

dpcan2• 15 years ago

I want them to add categories and monito them. Why are chess, bubble popper games, and mole poking games in the top of the sports games categories?????

rodh2574• 15 years ago

What apps are you talking about?

runjake2• 15 years ago

Search for any popular app, like Angry Birds, and note that its normally pretty hard to find the actual app you're after amongst all the crapware (ringtones, live wallpapers, etc) that attempt to trick you into purchasing them.

For malicious apps, check all the press over the years regarding malicious Android apps in the Market.

Mizza• 15 years ago

Google still has not replied to the complaints set out by the Android Developers Union - this is a clear example about why we need demand #5.

http://www.andevuni.org

yanw2• 15 years ago

It is obviously a copyright thing and they had to comply with removal requests.

jbermudes2• 15 years ago

Emulators themselves do not constitute copyright infringement. For instance, if I wanted to write my own software to run on a Super Nintendo I can do so and run it on an emulator or build a cartridge and flash it on there to play it on the real system.

The copyright infringement starts when you're making unauthorized copies of the data on game cartridges.

baddox• 15 years ago

The world you describe sounds pretty reasonable, but don't count on it reflecting reality.

Tichy2• 15 years ago

"For instance, if I wanted to write my own software to run on a Super Nintendo"

That is not the same thing as writing a Super Nintendo emulator and selling it. I can think of lots of things that could be copyrighted about Super Nintendo's "OS".

Macha4• 15 years ago

The removed apps infringe the copyright of the emulators they were copied from as they do not adhere to the license terms (non-commercial only for snes9x in snesoid, GPL for Mupen64Plus in n64oid and so on). This isn't about the legality of all emulators, just yongzh's.

code_duck• 15 years ago

The emulator apps have companion apps which download copyrighted ROMs for you. They push the download system in the emulator app description, as well as within the emulator itself. I wonder if that was the problem? Looking forward to the details.

I'm pretty annoyed with this, as I've purchased two of yongzh's apps, and don't have them installed on my phone currently - I was expecting to be able to reinstall them anytime.

So now Android has lost the two main things I liked, emulators and Grooveshark. If they're going to bring us all the bad things about Apple's system and none of the good, I might as well just get an iPhone next time. Or, if yongzh was infringing GPL as a few comments say, never mind! Hopefully someone normal will release these apps soon. There's plenty of emulator code out there to go by.

jokermatt999• 15 years ago

The developer of PSX4Droid made it free but adsupported from his site. http://www.zodttd.com/wp/2011/04/psx4droid-3-0-0-is-out-down... I don't like the removals, but I'm happy I can still sideload them without any issues.

Macha4• 15 years ago

And he also finally released the source code. It has always been based on PCSX despite Zod's bullshit claims otherwise. He was violating the GPL with it, and I'm glad Google pulled his app from the store as he started to comply with the GPL as a result. If only saurik would do the same to Zod's iPhone apps...

Xuzz3• 15 years ago

Jay (saurik) doesn't actually have any control over what's available in Cydia, just as Ubuntu doesn't control what's included in a third-party repository you add. You can, however, take it up with the repository hosting the packages: but in this case, I think ZodTTD hosts them himself. You'd have to likely get the actual copyright holder to demand he take it down, or post the source code.

kelvie• 15 years ago

The issue here is that the author here used the emulator code bases (from the Snes9x project and others) and tried to profit from them, which is probably against the license of the underlying code.

He didn't even release his source code, so he was in violation of the original license, but tried to profit from it anyways.

avree• 15 years ago

The emulators were created with code that was stolen. Google is simply cracking down on licensing violations. They're not taking a stance against emulation in general, or anything like that.

I'm sure that if you submitted an emulator that you actually wrote, rather than stealing, and sold it, it would stay up just fine.

daeken• 15 years ago

Do you have a source for this? Not unlikely, but odd that it wouldn't be mentioned.

Macha4• 15 years ago

SNESoid code: https://github.com/Pretz/SNesoid/tree/

This is the stuff that is under a non commercial license that he is selling.

The readme also links to a sourceforge account with all the code yongzh has released. What's there is frequently outdated and some emulators (n64oid) are outright not there.

drtse4• 15 years ago

The issue here seems the same for all the mentioned emulators, while he have developed a common lower layer graphic library for them, the actual emulation code is from other famous open-source emulators (original project or ports, all with non-commercial licenses). E.g. snesoid is based on a snes9x port.

Anyone with a G1 or G2/Magic will remember when all the yong's emulators suddenly appeared on the market nearly two years ago, at the same time he published nes/snes/gba/mame emulators. Considering the time needed to develop a single platform emulator that supports a good share of games (usually years, maybe with few exception in the history of console emulation), developing them all from scratch would have been impossible imho.

dpcan2• 15 years ago

I don't know if this is why, but my sales are up about 10% today over compared to the last week's average, so I don't know how niche this really was but my guess is that emulation may have been curbing the gaming needs of many. Not sure though.

rodh2574• 15 years ago

Everyone always goes overboard with their reaction to any app removal from the marketplace. I don't see what the big deal is, I'm glad to see Google keeping the market from being too dodgey. All of these "oh well this is pretty much Apple" comments are silly. If you are doing something illegal, you can distribute the .apk online, anything else can go on the market without a lengthy review process. It's worlds apart.

tluyben2• 15 years ago

Wow the comments on Engadget are amazingly stupid. Maybe i'm just spoiled.

Android Market's most popular emulators disappear without a trace

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