I want to know if a Japanese exclusive game being translated into English by fans of that game is perfectly legal or does not harm the game industry one bit. Because I happen to be playing Genealogy of the Holy war that's fan translated through an emulator. Should I delete the game if it does harm Nintendo somehow?
The distribution of fan-translated roms are illegal. I don't think the act of fan-translating a game is illegal, though, nor is distributing the patches for free online illegal, so long as the person using it is using a rom dumped himself from a legally-purchased cartridge or disk.
From my understanding - it is legal to translate a Japanese ROM and distribute the patch for it BUT illegal to distribute a patched ROM and/or the ROM to be patched.
It's kind of like how it's legal to distribute emulators but not the ROMs themselves.
These are legal (in the United States of America):
Making a copy of a game you physically own (I.E. Ripping your GBA cartridge)
Doing whatever you want with your product (E.G. Editing it with a Hex Editor, or patching it with an IPS patch)
Having and running an Emulator (This is only as long as you have a copy of your BIOS, or if the emulator doesn't require a BIOS. Homebrew is legal, as is playing your copies of games. Also, there have been emulators targeted at and used by official developers)
These are NOT legal (in the USA):
Obtaining someone else's copy of a game (E.G. Going to [illegalromsitehere].com and downloading a ROM)
Distributing a pre-patched ROM (for the same reason as above)
I don't know about the laws in India, but to be perfectly safe:
Go buy a copy of said Fire Emblem game for the Super Famicom (Seisen no Keifu/Genealogy of the Holy War goes for like $8-10 USD on eBay)
Purchase a product that will rip the cartridge to your computer
Patch your copy of the game
That being said, fan translations don't do any harm to sales. If anything, they will cause people to buy the product. I know for sure I wouldn't own my copy of Mother 3 if it hadn't been translated first. Not that any of that money actually went to Nintendo, since I bought it used because the company who made it doesn't produce it any more - just like 99% of the games that have been fan-translated.
Are you referring to the ROMs or IPS translation patches? ROMs are a big no-no. However, IPS patches are legal due to the way they work. None of the contents are derivative of the original file. They merely tell the patching program "change whatever byte is in offset 0xABCDEF to 4C", and repeat for however many bytes need to change. There are some patching formats that do contain remnants of the original file, but IPS is not one of them. It basically automates you having to manually change each offset for the translation to work. IPS cares not what format or file you use it on.
Running an IPS patch on a .txt file is pure hilarity.
If you're talking about the script itself, yes, it would be derivative. However, copyright is at worst of questionable legality due to fan-translations being made available for free. There have only been two Cease & Desists for fan-translations I know of: Final Fantasy Type-0 (which was planned for a Western release, but yet unnanounced), and Ef: A Fairy Tale of the Two (similar situation to above). Whether their efforts would stand in a court of law remains untested, as fan-translators don't have the kind of money to stand up against industry giants and usually bend over and stop.
On the other hand, game companies acknowledge fan-translations all the time. Clyde Mandelin received many letters and e-mails of thanks from several industry officials for his work on translating Mother 3. School Days' official release by JAST was originally a fan-translation (by the then-fan-translation-group Sekai Project). Steins;Gate as well. Ys: The Oath in Felghana is another fan-translation that was licensed. Most recently, The Fruit of Grisaia fan-translation was licensed by Sekai Project and is available now on Steam.
In theory? Probably. If you're only distributing the changes in patch form and the translation is being applied to a legitimate copy of the game, that's likely to be legal or at least near enough to it.
On the other hand, if you're patching them to ROMs or giving away the translation with the original game... that's probably a much less legal.
Basically anything regarding ROMs is illegal, but technically emulators and patches are not. Sites like Super Mario World Central just distribute the IPS patch and let you decide what to do with it.
ThePirateCaptain
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Not legal, but most fan translators work on basis of "don't try to compete with the sale of official translations".
That is they:
only translate games EXTREMELY unlikely to get a legitimate translation (and to cancel theirs if an official release does get announce)
some retranslate games only after they are years old and the official translation has already made most of its money
Due to copyright laws, the copyright owners could sue but usually don't want to risk it on a free fan translation patch for dead games. (the only other example is a mis-citation. Some think ASCII threatened legal action to a group for translating RPG Maker 2 for the Super Famicom, but it was actually because they got caught pirating a then-recent PC version)
Not legal, but most fan translators work on basis of "don't try to compete with the sale of official translations".
That is they:
only translate games EXTREMELY unlikely to get a legitimate translation (and to cancel theirs if an official release does get announce)
some retranslate games only after they are years old and the official translation has already made most of its money
Due to copyright laws, the copyright owners could sue but usually don't want to risk it on a free fan translation patch for dead games. (the only other example is a mis-citation. Some think ASCII threatened legal action to a group for translating RPG Maker 2 for the Super Famicom, but it was actually because they got caught pirating a then-recent PC version)
Take his word over mine. Especially if he's the KingMike.
However, go with your conscience. If you feel bad because you're playing a game "illegally" or even in a legally gray area, don't play it. Just know that the laws being discussed may or may not exist in your country to the same extent as they do in the US. Do some research if you really want to be sure.
Percent chance of this game getting localized is closer to 0 percent than 1 percent.
The game is no longer in print. That means the only person who would make any profit off a sale would be the seller, not Nintendo.
I'm assuming you bought Awakening or Radiant Dawn or something.
Just stop caring and play the damned game. Any self-righteous donkeyclown who tries to claim piracy is a deadly vice that harms Nintendo is just being a moron in this particular case.
This is a signature.
Link goes here now.
Screw you.
Also, companies might not be so quick to dismiss fan translations as it can give them free market research.
I wonder if we would've gotten as many Final Fantasy remakes/ports if the unofficial FF5 translation hadn't been made, telling Square that while VII might have just been released (with its... period... 3D) people still wanted to play V too. And they still translated the PS version of IV a couple years after it had been omitted from FF Anthology in the US (I know the PAL version of FFA was missing a game too but I can't remember which. Was it VI they didn't get?)
Though when Tomato was doing an indepth comparison of FF4 versions, I recall him finding a few pieces of the official PS translation with an inaccuracies and made-up stuff from the SNES fan translation, somehow. I wonder if the SomethingAwful shout-out in FF4A has already managed to spread itself into other versions...
Just stopped playing Genealogy of the Holy war after realising that fan based games are also illegal. Some life and I was beginning to like that game too! XD
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