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Arguably, but not really, the most popular emulators on the Android Market have been yanked by Google. The *oid line, developed by Yongzh, seems to have finally rubbed Google, or some console developers the wrong way.
Engadget has noted that Mr. Zhang has moved his line of emulators to the SlideME store where they will be free for the time being so users who purchased the apps in the Market will continue to receive updates for the time being.
On a sentimental note, I just realized that it was just over two years ago that I first reported NESoid being released on the Market, and I continued to root for him through his releases of Gensoid and SNESoid. I really didn’t think I would be reporting the death of Yongzh’s Market tenure anytime in this life.
[via Engadget]
They may be gone from the market, but they’re not gone from the internet.
From what i know they are available on slideme for free currently
http://goo.gl/qRois
What’s funny is that those apps that supply ROMs, which are in fact illegal unlike emulators, are still up and running fine.
Pretty ridiculous. I really hope it’s just the game developers, otherwise I would be pretty upset with google right about now. Even the apple market hasn’t been this hard on emulators lately =…
What? You have no market for emulators (at least, none that you’re allowed to upload your own ROMs to).
That said, it’s probably just GPL license violations.
indeed, so many paid rom downloaders are still there but genuine rom emulators are being removed :((((
A little checkbox is becoming more and more important. It can be found under Settings > Applications, and it is called “Unknown Sources”.
I knew years ago that this checkbox would be important for this very reason.
That’s what this asshat gets for violating about every single open source licence (GPL, mostly). Because no, yongzh didn’t develop these emulators. He stole the source code from existing emulators (Snesoid is Snes9x code, without the author’s permission) and attributed it to himself, making hundred.
So yeah, he deserved it. Don’t get all mad on Google. They did the right thing.
Most of his paid emulators were in the 100,000 – 500,000 downloads, each selling from $2 to $5. So I’d say he’s made millions, not hundreds.
At least he made an effort to release them. Constant begging to the windows platform dev and their emulators predominantly went on deaf ears. Oid emulators rock, so either you are a non-gamer or an iPhone luver…. Both? ;)
Or someone with….standards. ;)
i think the main reason the emulator was pulled was because he is charging for them when he doesnt own the rights to the code. if it was on the market for free maybe they would have stayed? im just guessing im not sure
These emulators are the single biggest reason I ditched my iphone for a Droid. Google, you have to understand that the lifeblood of your OS is apps that may rub people the wrong way. You take that away, and you might as well be Apple.
The Google Market is just A source, not THE source for apps. Google can manage the app store any way they want. Android is still open to installing any app from other sources.
For now. Today they pull apps, but perhaps one day they do away with making apps available outside of the official store.
They’d have to disable the function to install non market apps which won’t happen.
Yeah.. Look how even AT&T caved on that stance.
Really? I had been using emulators on my iPhone since before Android was even launched.
lmoa yea cause you have an SD card on your iphone you can store roms on
And I’ll be you enjoyed every minute of losing your warranty, continually battling a company to stay updated while remaining free to access said emulators.
You’re so lucky Android came along. Big Red was looking into jb detection, and knowing how anal that company is about their products, probably would have shut you all down. I’ll bet you anything that if Android didn’t get as popular as it did, your phone would be sitting inside a nice little jail cell right now.
I’m perfectly happy unchecking “Non-market” installs to access any non-sanctioned content.
To quote Norm Macdonald “ohhh Google” those emulators helped me get through many a long boring day
They ban a perfectly legit app, yet google wont do shit about the hundreds, if not thousands of spam developers.
This is not a perfectly legit app. He does not own the code, and is charging for it. The app itself isn’t violating the rules, but the guy who was selling them was.
Yeah to be honest F the tool who was basically stealing anyway. Google did what it should have… Besides there is no honor among thieves and anyone who paid for this guys emulators were kinda foolish…
Not saying I dont have them, but I didnt pay for them. (though I do have about 150 – 200 dollars worth of legitimately paid for apps)
I wouldn’t have an issue with Google pulling these old school emulators, if there was an effective, cohesive way to play some of these classics on smartphones. Let’s be real, no one is going to pay 5.99 for the Atari 2600 version of Missile Command, but I know people that would like to have a way to play it on their phones for nostalgia’s sake.
actually… now that you mention it… I think I would pay a few bucks for Missile Command… it’s a game that could translate over to full touchscreen controls rather easily… give me the classic black background look and the cheap flickering explosions, and throw in an updated look… I’d probably be willing to spend 2-5 on it, for sure.
Engadget is leaving a super important detail out. Yong Zhang the dev for all those ***oid emulators simply took open source emulators, put a java wrapper around the C code and published it on the AndroidMarket as his own application.
Thus violating the Licence of emulators like Snes9x from which he took code from. Google isn’t doing anything out of the ordinary other than obeying the law.
Google hasn’t taken down the other smaller emulators that run just fine as well, showing they still have somewhat of a soft stance on emulators (disregarding situations like psx4droid).
You really need to investigate whether this developer truly violated open source copyright and let us know. If he did, you are leaving out key information to this article and doing a dis-service to readers.
The only emulator I missed tobdownload was Nesoid. So sad to see this go away but its not license in order to put on the Android Market.
I avoided the Amazon App Store for the principle of not helping fragment the Android community of having to go to two different stores. My hopes were that the Android Market should be the one stop place for apps, but now that Google is becoming militant by pulling apps that have been on the market for years, it now means that we will have to switch to a new app store to avoid apps that we paid for from being pulled down.
I also don’t want to hear about Google taking the moral high ground when every other youtube video violates copyright laws, and their music service now seems to be arguably questionable on similar grounds. Google is now just picking and choosing the rules rather than being consistent.
There is another set of emulators on the Google market that I found they are called Tiger GBA and so on, he doesn’t have as many but they are all free and run fine.
looks like he moved over to slideME.. https://slideme.org/user/yongzh and they’re all free! (for now)
“Arguably, but not really, the most popular emulators on the Android Market have been yanked by Google.”
I can’t figure out what the hell this sentence means.
They’re not really the most popular emulators? If not, then what is the most popular?
They weren’t really yanked? Then what happened?
What is arguable about it? Is there another side to the story, but you don’t want to share it?
Here is the thread on Snes9x.com where they discuss that he is in violation of their licensing.
http://www.snes9x.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=4454
So yeah I don’t feel bad is the slightest, karma works in mysterious ways.
Looks like the time has come for talented developers yongzh and zodttd to move on to greener pastures. Let Google have this one. They are only hurting themselves. From now on, all my purchases will be either on amazon appstore or SlideMe.
@%+#(%!!! Yongzh has his N64oid on SlideMe!! Free development ftw!! :D