Atlus has filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown against the creators of the Playstation 3 emulator RPCS3, previously noted for running Persona 5. With the emulator, the game would be playable on PC, which doesn’t officially run the game.
RPCS3 is an open source Playstation 3 emulator capable of smoothly emulating numerous games. Atlus stated today in a notice on their website that they filed a DMCA claim against the project and its Patreon, which included regular updates about the status of getting Atlus’ game to run on the emulator.
“We appreciate the awareness generated by the emulation community for Persona 5,” Atlus said.
“Unfortunately, when our content is illegally circumvented and potentially made available for free, in a format we do not think delivers the experience and quality we intend, it undermines our ability to do so by diverting potential support from new audiences.”
Many prominent emulators, such as the WiiU emulator CEMU, avoid drawing ire from large companies but Atlus is known to be protective of their properties. In April, they announced a harsh policy against streamers playing Persona 5 warning of potential video takedowns if they played too far into the game.
The company walked back those restrictions three weeks later after negative fan outcry.
The emulator is still up, but, following this DMCA, all references to the game has been wiped from RPCS3’s website and Patreon.
Emulators are controversial for some in the gaming community who see them as pathways to piracy, but they have never been ruled illegal in a court of law.
Comments
5 responses to “Atlus Files Copyright Strike Against PS3 Emulator That Advertised Persona 5”
Has there ever been an instance where a developer has seen something like this and released a product on that system, as a sort of “we understood you wanted the game so here’s a legitimate means to it”, instead of just outright saying “no, don’t play our game”.
Piracy/emulation = A failure in the supply chain.
Piracy sure, emulation is a bit of a stretch though, especially for a game that is still in print. A PS3/PS4 game that only released on those consoles doesn’t really count as failure to supply to the PC market.
True, I made a generalization.
Atlus does not have a legal leg to stand on. Emulation is completely legal. The Bleem vs Sony case made it so.
Atlus just has the opinion that emulation = piracy and is trying to be a bully about it. That will never work.
But let’s be honest. A large number of people who emulate the game are pirating them. And from a company perspective, they would be losing sales.