Nintendo and Sega emulators pulled from Android Market, developer account taken down
The beginning of the end for portable emulation?
Pocket Gamer recently ran a feature on how to run SNES games on your iPhone and iPod touch.
At the time, Android owners could use emulator Snesoid to do the same on their devices. That’s not possible any more, however, as it’s now been taken off the Market, along with all of the other emulators published by yongzh (many of which appeared in Pocket Gamer's top ten emulators for Android.)
Having ridden high in the paid apps chart on the Android Market, Nesoid, N64oid, Gameboid, Gearoid, and Gensoid have all now been removed, while yongzh (real name Yong Zhang) has had his developer account temporarily suspended.
Android Police suggests that the emulators may not have complied with licensing requirements, and that the suspension of Zhang’s account may be down to his repeated refusal to follow these rules.
Meanwhile, Google confirmed to the site that, “the apps that were removed were in violation of Android Market policies.”
This follows Google’s decision to pull PlayStation emulator psx4droid from the Android Market at the end of March.
This was originally thought to be associated with the release of the Xperia Play, which allowed users to play PlayStation games in a way that was less legally murky. This latest move suggests that all emulators may be objecta non grata on Android devices.
Engadget adds that Zhang has since moved over most of his apps to third-party store SlideME, making them available to download for free for a limited time. But does this mean trouble for other developers of mobile emulators? And will Apple follow suit?