You might have heard earlier today that we issued a DMCA takedown notice involving emulation developer group RPCS3 and their Patreon page. Yes, it’s true. We settled upon this action for two reasons:
- We believe that our fans best experience our titles (like Persona 5) on the actual platforms for which they are developed. We don’t want their first experiences to be framerate drops, or crashes, or other issues that can crop up in emulation that we have not personally overseen. We understand that many Persona fans would love to see a PC version. And while we don’t have anything to announce today, we are listening! For now, the best way to experience Persona 5 is on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3.
- We appreciate the awareness generated by the emulation community for Persona 5 and know that it is a fantastic example of how much people are loving our game. We want to keep bringing you titles like Persona 5. 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.
We want to continue having a dialogue about where and how you would like to play our games. Please let us know what you think.
I would love it if you guys released your games on PC. I’d buy them in a heartbeat. I love and adore your games, but I don’t like how game consoles get replaced over time or how limiting they are graphically at times. Persona 5 for example is a gorgeous game, but by being on the PS3 and PS4, its being limited in the sense that those consoles can only do so much. If they were on PC, people would be able to play them at 4k or even 8k one day, and such graphical control would help the games’ beauty show even more. Plus as I said, I prefer the longevity of PCs. If I buy something, I want to always be able to play it on a modern platform. I don’t want to have to hope that there’s a port on a newer system each time there’s a new Playstation console or something. The longevity of games on PC is something that’s great, and so because of this, I would love it if you guys released and sold Persona 5 on PC. The same goes for other games too. Shin Megami Tensei V, Catherine, the whole works.
RPCS3 itself is not infringing on Altus’s copyright, so I’m not sure on what grounds you could issue a DMCA against it.
And if you are listening to your fans, realise that what they want is an end to the anti-PC attitude that the company seems to hold, which alienates a large number of its potential fans.
TL;DR , Atlus strike is valid, if you hate the company over this it’s your loss, don’t believe everything you read on reditard. FOR GOD SAKES ATLUS STOP MAKING GAMES FOR PSVITA!!!!!!
What most people don’t realize is that if the patreon page was listing Persona 5 or using any imagery on their page to help promote the emulator they were making that is grounds for a strike. If they make it able to run persona 5 without asking the company first that also enables a strike. Like it or not, it’s similar to online streaming where yes, they can’t shut down web site services for streaming movies/tv shows, but they certainly can make sites take down their intellectual property. Same principal. If the patreon group stopped making the emulator when they didn’t have to or Patreon themselves canned the page that’s on them. That being said I enjoy emulators for games I own for the reason I don’t have to hook things up, but anyone that is not going to support Atlus over this is punishing themselves. There is a ton of piracy with emulators that people pretend doesn’t happen, and the defense the “ps3 is old,” well it’s also on PS4 and the game is not old. Side funny note, people that claim they never played this game and don’t own a console but are still complaining is pretty comical and a good example of why Atlus did this.
So much negativety on this page my goodness.
You guys do whatever you think is right. You have my full support.
yes i would like persona 5 in pc.
Everything is very simple. You refuse the exclusivity of Sony, you release the game on the PC platform. As a result, get even more fans. Without any emulators and other things.
Otherwise, it will be easier for people to download this emulator, and play with crashes and glitches. But play.
Not all players have the desire / ability to buy the console for some games.
So, it is worth considering and the fact that the PC has long been less piracy. Not in vain does Square Enix release most of its titles, but do not make them exclusive. Although they could well.
Other studios also began to release their exclusive games with consoles on the PC.
1. Just because you don’t like what someone is doing in relation to your products doesn’t give you the right to try and kill their project. Not only is trying to destroy an emulator to keep people from using it to play your games a real douche move, it is completely outside the scope of the DMCA. Emulation is not copyright infringement, no matter how much the software industry would like it to be.
2. As far as I can see the emulator itself doesn’t bypass any DRM, Yes, users are required to bypass the DRM on discs by decrypting them so that they can be used in the emulator, but the emulator itself doesn’t do the decrypting. Therefore the emulator itself isn’t violating the DMCA, which means that your takedown notice was baseless on the circumvention issue as well.
Further, unless I’m mistaken, the DMCA doesn’t even provide for sending takedown notices over circumvention, only actual infringement.
Not to mention that PS3 piracy existed before a working emulator was produced and will probably continue to exist regardless of the existence of the emulator.
Which brings me back around to my original point that it was a douche move to attack an emulator project.
Lest you think I’m a pirate who just wants to use the emulator to play games for free, allow me to state for the record that I don’t even own a computer capable of emulating the PS2 properly, let alone the PS3. I’ve also never played any of your games, since it looks like they’re all JRPGs, which really don’t appeal to me. Well, actually, it’s the RPG part that I don’t care for, I have nothing against Japanese games, (assuming I can understand them).
I don’t even own any game consoles from the last decade. To be honest, I really don’t like the way game systems today have become so tightly integrated with online services, making you install updates and online content, even if you only want to play the single player campaign. I don’t even like the way computer games now require online registration.
You have zero intellectual property in RPCS3. This is clearly an abuse of the DMCA for which you have no legal standing.
Tire manufacturers do not get to determine on which cars a consumer may place their products. Where would the world be if PC application developers had threatened legal action to keep consumers from running their software on anything but “Genuine IBM” PCs? You should not try to restrict the options of your customers in such a ridiculous manner.
If logic doesn’t work, perhaps a boycott will. I, for one, will never buy another ATLUS game until you retract your DMCA letter and apologize to the RPCS3 team for threatening to use the legal system in such a clearly frivolous and chilling manner.
I’ve spent a large amount of money supporting you during the last 10 (or so) years. I’ve bought and given away PS2, PS Vita:s and multiple copies of your games to allow friends to experience your games. A large part of your fans have spread the word of your games and we did help you grow larger, inviting new players, new sources of revenue.
It saddens me to say, that I will not be able to support this company and the games you create if this is your stance. This legal misuse, this petty behavior, I hope that you do change your stance, understand your legal position and make a public apology to related parties. If not, I guess myself and many others will spend our money on other corporate entities.
This joke about you wanting to have a dialogue while you disable comments helped me decide to cancel my pre-order of your ~200$ vinyl soundtrack.
Shame on you,
Marcus
Way to go Atlus, don’t mind pathetic pirates who’s wheeping. Like the game? Cool. Buy it and show support, tha’s how it should have be. Even thou i make so little due to reasons, i still bought Take Your Heart edition. Because the game is so good, it deserves it. Money spent well.
So, any plans fora switch port or something’?
So there is a lot of emphasis on how you guys care about the experience. Are you implying that if people perfect ps3 emulation, you’ll let it slide?
Way to directly go for someone’s funding, Especially when you have no right to do so, RPCS3 Is a Ps3 emulator, not a persona emulator, you have no right to attack their patreon directly, why not issue a warning first? Ask for all imagery and copyrighted material to be removed from the site? Atlus as a company can feel as they like on the best system to play persona on, but you can’t dictate that they can only play on that system. Especially when you still need a copy of persona 5 to play it on the emulator to begin with, with the RPCS3 Devs condemning piracy for all games played on their project. If someone wanted to play persona 5 for free, they very well could, with or without an emulator, Piracy isn’t just on PC.
I can appreciate the message here, but the fact of the matter is, you still don’t have a right to touch them. They aren’t breaking any laws by creating open source software that does not distribute any proprietary files anywhere, Emulation Is necessary to preserve our video gaming history, the ps3’s life cycle is ending and as such so is it’s profitability, when sony stops giving a crap about it, It’s up to people like them to make history playable after 5, 10, 20 years. Heck They’re the people who will make the game even better to play, Better AA, Better Framerates, and other improvements have been done in other emulators in the past.
A final note here: I’ve never played persona 5, I loved persona 3 and 4, and I played them both on an emulator, Despite owning a ps2, and disks for both games, and it was an absolute pleasure to have added graphical fidelity to the ps2 era graphics (HD scaling, MSAA), the support for quick-saving whenever I got one shot by a light or dark skill (don’t judge!) and the possibility to experience this game whenever I don’t feel like unpacking my ps2 and hooking up it to a modern tv setup. Thank you for reading all this, apologies if I made some of it sound repetitive or if I rambled a bit too much.
Thanks for Persona 5.
Are you taking action to remove the actual pirated copies from the web? That is very important.
While I understand your position, you are abusing the DMCA system. Emulators are perfectly legal and have already been tested in court (feel free to do your own research):
Atari v. Coleco
Nintendo v. Epsilon et al.
Sony v. Connectix
Simply put, you do not own or have contributed to the development of the emulator. In addition, the PS3 is owned by Sony but the emulator shares no part of the inventions or intellectual property of Sony Corp.
All that being said, if you want to find and persecute the people distributing copies of your software, the world would be a better place. But to disrupt a software project using a bogus legal argument is frankly insulting. I am not affiliated with any of the above and I have purchased your games in the past. This along with the Streaming nonsense you tried to push with Persona 5 are insulting and despite me loving your catalog of games I have to think twice before my next purchase.
I am a software developer, for you to try to shackle those producing their own software that is in no way associated with your creations or inventions is a threat to ALL software produced. Please reconsider your misguided attempts at what you think is right and consider the harm beyond your yard that you may cause.
I understand I’m speaking to ASLUS USA, and not ALUS Japan, but I’m going to say this anyway, knowing full well this probably won’t be read. Here goes:
I understand that Japan has different philosophies about the freedom the PC platform offers, and they have concerns about mods and pirating, but it’s all really silly when you realize how much games like GTA V on PC have made in terms of pure, raw cash, even when they were originally console exclusives. I personally suffer from motion sickness, and while I love the persona franchise, Persona 5 was unplayable for me at 30FPS because it gave me headaches and nausea. I would pay $100 for such a beautiful and perfect game, but with my medical condition, I cannot play it in the current state. With this in mind, I have turned to “buggy emulation”, which has a half-working 60FPS hack, which makes the game slightly more palatable, but not to the point where I can enjoy/complete it. I would love to see a version of Persona 5 on a huge and expanding platform, with options that would make people like me able to enjoy it. I hope you hear our concerns and take them to heart. 🙂
I think it’s like this: people love Persona, and they would gladly buy it… but sometimes the cannot afford to buy a PS3 or PS4 to play it. So if P5 would appear on, for example Steam, it will get a lot of sales and ‘thank you’ feedbacks in the first week.
I think emulation’s point is to make great games available for everyone, but not to rip off the creators.
Recent researches are quite interesting:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/eu-study-finds-piracy-doesnt-hurt-game-sales-may-actually-help/
the core trouble here is that a PC gamer who might try P5 for free can’t actually buy a game, because there is no such game on PC. And that would be great to fix. Give gamers a chance to pay for the game. It’s something like that what’s on people’s minds.
KOEI TECMO who avoided PC for a long time is now releasing Steam versions at the same time as console version. That means they found it profitable (otherwise, why should they?). And everyone is happy. PC users can buy Dynasty Warriors All Stars and they do it gladly.
One more thing about PC-users. Since you’ve noticed people are ready to play laggy emulated Persona, that fact shows PC users are not that sensitive to laggs and glitches as long as the game is working.
Whilst your entitled to an opinion on emulation, you don’t have a legal leg to stand on, as emulation has already been in the courts (Sony vs BLEEM, 2000) and it was ruled that emulation is completely legal.
So I’m sorry to say Atlus, but your completely in the wrong on this one.
Please just bring Persona 5 and your future games onto PC, I’m sure plenty of dedicated fans would rather pay to play an official cleaner version of any given Atlus game if they were available. I don’t know how much of a say Atlus USA has on porting games to other platforms, but it would be a dream for me to be able to play a PC edition to Persona 5.
Personally, I think the best way to experience Persona is playing Persona, it doesn’t really matter which platform. Also, Emuation doesn’t necessarily mean piracy, the one player could perfectly have a bought copy of the game and then use that to play the game on the emulator.
And about that piracy you guys are worried about, they are already modding the game, so I’m guessing the PS3 version is already pirated. That means that whoever did that (or got that pirated version) is already enjoying the “best way to experience Persona 5” on PS3.
BTW, to use the PS3 emulator you need a high end PC which cost much more than a PS3, so I’m pretty sure that the people that are playing the pirated version, are doing so on a PS3
Persona 5 on Xbox one would be great. Also Persona 4 ultimax being on Xbox one backwards compatibility is something else that should happen.
Thanks!
Between this and the streaming thing it’s amazing how oppressive and draconian y’all can get with your game about how oppressive and draconian society can be.
Dialogues aren’t normally prompted by a surprise attack on an open source project. Considering
A) Both PS3 and PS4 make use of open source,
B) This blog site is managed using open source, and
C) You completely misused the DMCA,
The position you’ve taken is both hypocritical and greedy. If it were not for open source projects, you would not have a platform to develop exclusively for in the first place. I find it highly unlikely that you use no open source internally either, so unless you’re funding all of the projects you profit from, you have no room to talk about anyone else. Did you pay for git, any of your code editors, or has the FreeBSD project gotten one penny from you? I highly doubt it.
I am boycotting Atlus until a full apology is issued to the RPCS3 team. I am also joining the RPCS3 patreon. For a company making large amounts of money by riding on top of open source, you have very little respect for the thing that makes it possible for you to profit.
I wonder, when you want take down/DMCA this site:
https://nicoblog.org/?s=Persona+5
for illegal copyright/piracy of Persona 5 game download for PS3 console also it playable on RPCS3.
I believe, I has make report 5 times on this website including to atlus japan website for piracy issues.
I’m not new to the Persona, or the SMT games for that matter, however I would still like to play at the very least a buggy and gltichy version of Persona 5 to see if its any good. I was introduced to Persona with 4 and SMT with SJ, and based on my experience with SMT and the direction the gameplay has gone with the travesty that is IVA, I don’t feel confident enough to buy not only Persona 5, but either a PS3 or PS4 to play the damn game without trying it, and unfortunately I don’t know anyone who has one that I can barrow it from.
As I remember when it was launched SMT Persona in the years of the PSone did not exist plans to launch it in America because there was a stigma about the American market would not accept it, it is true that in America SMT does not have a fandom of the weight of which FF but what is certain is that possibly SMT did not leave the coast of Japan if it was not for the work of the port for PC with translation to English that made fans who considered that this work should have more diffusion, I take this echo to emphasize how sad is that Atlus Usa considers that the SMT market is limited to an English-speaking public, the language barrier that prevents the Americans from playing the first persona is the same that today limits their public in Spanish-speaking countries and others, I know it will surely be ignored but I would like to make clear the reason why people use emulators, for games that are not available in their regions, for lack of economic income, and for the difficulty of being able to run those games on their original hardware when dealing with old hardware difficult to obtain and to maintain.
I think you should stop doing that. Emulators is a good thing, because it gives you opportunity to play old games even if the console is no longer sells. Emulators is not illegal and you know that.
Besides in the future games like Persona 5 will be available in 4K@60FPS and people who played them on PS3/4 will have the opportunity to replay games on their PC. You showed disrespect for the community under the guise of fighting with piracy. But let’s be honest, people who downloaded P5 for free are not even a 1% of all the players. There is no good about you trying to close emulator funding (they have tiny $3K/M for 2 main devs, they obviously just passionate guys who do not have lots of money from this), it looks very bad like you are so greedy enough to surf the web in case somebody taking breadcrumbs from your table. Come on.
And if you are listening to the community — do not steal the opportunity from people to enjoy your games. Let’s face it: even piracy brings you some fans (it’s not good but if you really want more players to experience your game — let it be).
If you want to know what the community thinks — read the Reddit conversation on RPCS3 subreddit.