Developer yongzh, maker of several game console emulators for Google Android has confirmed that his Gensoid app has been removed from the Android Market. Gensoid is an app that made it possible to run classic Sega Genesis games on an Android phone or tablet. Apparently Sega asked for the app to be pulled from the market.

Game emulators have always walked a fine line. Most don’t technically violate any copyright (although a handful may include trademark violations in their names or logos). But they make it possible to run games that have been illegally copied and uploaded to the internet. Some folks figure it’s OK to download game ROMs from the internet as long you already own the game cartridge, but while that might be ethical, it’s not necessarily a legal defense.

All of which is to say, technically Gensoid may not have violated any laws, but I’m not surprised Sega asked Google to pull the app from the Android Market.

Yongzh still offers GameBoy, Atari, Nintendo, and SuperNintendo apps in the Android Market, but he suspects they’re all vulnerable to the same sort of take-down request.

This isn’t the first time a high profile game emulator has been pulled from the Android Market. Google removed the psx4droid Playstation emulator last month.

via reddit

Brad Linder

Brad Linder is editor of Liliputing and Mobiputing. He's been tinkering with mobile tech for decades and writing about it since...

4 replies on “Gensoid Sega Genesis emulator pulled from the Android Market”

  1. Something like this gets up my nose. Obviously there’s a *demand* for these emulators, so why don’t the companies themselves produce them? And if they’re too lazy, just want to cash in, they could *license* the damn emulators or make some other kind of deal. They all own the games, and that’d be found money for them if they could convince people to pay 99 cents a pop or bundle them as cheap collections. Everybody would win.

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