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.

Source

 

[FanNintendo]

I see lot of E.S. DE apps in Amazon store, I'm curious if that is stolen source from real author also some ranges are from 3.99 to up. Maybe that is other reasons

 

[Bladexdsl]

wonder if nintenDMCA had a part in it's removal?

Spoiler: the answer

100 fucking %.

 

[LightBeam]

They're all getting absolutely unhinged

 

[Wolfy]

Not surprised given how anything that is emulator based sometimes gets yeeted like the Xbox store emus awhile back that worked for a bit. But also funny since you still have a ludicrous amount of pirated material on Amazon's store and nothing being done.

 

[Purple_Shyguy]

Doesn't it literally have a "scraper" that will download entire romsets for you?

Lots of emulation stuff recently they bundle in dumb stuff that will obviously get them taken down.

 

[K3Nv2]

The front page went from a crappy Pokémon announcement to Nintendo suing yuzu to Amazon removing emulation. lul.

 

[Ev1lbl0w]

Doesn't it literally have a "scraper" that will download entire romsets for you?

Lots of emulation stuff recently they bundle in dumb stuff that will obviously get them taken down.

The scraper is only for filling in game metadata and media, the app doesn't download any ROMs nor emulators.

 

[Purple_Shyguy]

I see lot of E.S. DE apps in Amazon store, I'm curious if that is stolen source from real author also some ranges are from 3.99 to up. Maybe that is other reasons

The official discord mentions there's a bunch of fakes uploaded. Those are scammers.

 

[Axido]

Yeah, and so do you Amazon. It's not even hard to find this shit.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=retro+game+console+with+built+in+games

The ones offering prime delivery are the best ones. Funnily, if you sell Emulation Station without any rom files, it's bad, but if you sell hardware that basically runs Emulation Station and has all the rom files included already, Amazon will gladly ship that shit from its warehouses.

 

[Kioku]

I'm convinced Nintendo is behind this... After all, the same backwards logic is being applied...

 

[AdenTheThird]

Okay, now this is just silly. C'mon, guys! Don't bow to Nintendo!

 

[The Catboy]

Amazon literally sells devices with pirated ROMs but ok
This definitely feels like the Big N’s doing

 

[BaamAlex]

Lol what piracy. Of course the people use it for their "backups". XD

 

[LightBeam]

The ones offering prime delivery are the best ones. Funnily, if you sell Emulation Station without any rom files, it's bad, but if you sell hardware that basically runs Emulation Station and has all the rom files included already, Amazon will gladly ship that shit from its warehouses.

Amazon is basically Aliexpress but much more expensive. The amount of stuff you think you'll get for cheap but actually you're paying like 10 bucks for fast shipping, and that's with Prime

 

[Tuhr]

This only opens up an opportunity for indepedent retailers not bound by Amazon's terms.

 

[Deleted member 194275]

1- we don't need amazon to get this thing

2- we don't need to pay to get this thing

 

[Dontuuch17]

*scrolls through amazon listings for android boxes with 10000 games*

Yea, that makes sense.

 

[AdenTheThird]

Amazon literally sells devices with pirated ROMs but ok
This definitely feels like the Big N’s doing

Yeah no doubt about it. This is Amazon trying to cover their ass so that they stay out of Nintendo's warpath.
It's puzzling, because
A. Nintendo definitely wouldn't go after Amazon, as Amazon has money to spend on good lawyers
B. As everyone here has pointed out, Amazon blatantly sells pirated content, so this action doesn't save them from anything if Nintendo wanted to go after them
C. They definitely aren't earning any street cred from consumers by taking that action
D. Nintendo going after a company as big as Amazon is unprecedented. They've historically gone against smaller companies and even individual people (Nintendo v. Lewis Galoob Toys, Nintendo v. Gary Bowser) and never the big fish, because that's what scares the most people out of emulation/hardware modding/etc. So Amazon making this choice is even more baffling.

 

[The Catboy]

Nintendo definitely wouldn't go after Amazon, as Amazon has money to spend on good lawyers

Cool bug fact
Although they definitely didn’t send their best, I actually sued Amazon and won. Internally, their company is actually a mess

 

[AdenTheThird]

Cool bug fact
Although they definitely didn’t send their best, I actually sued Amazon and won. Internally, their company is actually a mess

You... you what?!

Amazon not being organized doesn't surprise me. Seems like it's held together by duct tape. Probably some egghead read the headline, got scared, and sent the order down the chain of command without realizing that it was completely pointless.