Team Cemu, the team behind the PC Wii U emulator, saw a massive boost in donations when they started working on porting Zelda: Breath of the Wild to the PC a few months ago. Back then, they were raking in $15,000 per month in donations on Patreon.
Now that figure has almost doubled to $30,000 per month as of writing, backed by 6,800 individuals. This makes it one of the highest funded projects on Patron, despite the fact that the project is in a sort of legal grey zone.
The Cemu project emulates Wii U on PC, and their biggest game right now (and the one that attracted the majority of the backers) is Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which after the latest update seems to be running flawlessly on the PC.
Console emulators are legal, as courts have ruled in the past (Sony Computer Entertainment America v. Bleem 214 F.3d 1022). However, while it’s legal to emulate a console, it’s remains illegal to distribute the copyrighted code.
And it’s only legal if the gamer owns a copy of the game, which, let’s face it, isn’t the case with many people who run emulators on PC.
Things get muddy when money is involved as well — Team Cemu is raising a lot of dough right now, probably enough to attract attention from Nintendo’s lawyers (who have a reputation as being the most aggressive in the gaming industry).
What do you think of console emulators and games running on PC? Let us know your thoughts and experiences in the comments section!
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