Board 8 > romhacks

(+) Yeah! (+)

are we allowed to talk about them

It'd be really dumb if we couldn't, but you never know.

We're not allowed to talk about emulation and where to get roms/emulators, but I think talking about the romhacks themselves is fine (outside of acquiring them or patching them in). Worth checking the rules and guidelines.

EDIT: Just quickly checked the User Content Rules, Help Section and Terms of Service (and by quickly checked, I mean CTRL+F'ed for "rom", "roms", and "emulat"), and can't find anything in regards to discussion involving anything emulation or romhacks. It may be covered elsewhere?

is it this https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/features/board_rules

it says users may not post any content that promotes criminal activity, including the spread and use of pirated games or other media

feels like it's probably legal to patch a game you legally own?

I talk a lot FE romhacks often. I just think you can't link to them.

Play Fire Emblem: Dream of Five

I'm not any sort of lawyer, but my understanding has always been that romhacks are no less legal than other forms of game modding, assuming there's no distribution of copyrighted stuff.

On a practical level, this means that as long as the hack only distributes a patch and you have to bring your own copy of the game to apply it to (And the patch doesn't contain copyrighted art/music/etc) it is generally fine.

Furthermore, I'm pretty sure creating (And using an emulator to play!) a backup rom of your own legally owned copy of a game is legal along the same lines. Distribution (whether sending or receiving) is obviously illegal though.

I would imagine talking about romhacks then could fall under "promoting the use of pirated games".

For example, someone could make a topic about a translation patch or a mod of a game to discuss it. Then someone else could see the discussion and go "this sounds cool, maybe I should give it a try!" and attempt to find or play the romhack in question themselves.

Either way, probably not worth it. Stuff like music from the romhack to rank in projects is probably fine but just talking about an entire romhack is a little risky.

paulg235 posted...

I would imagine talking about romhacks then could fall under "promoting the use of pirated games".

This is also probably true. Seems like something that would just be up to the discretion of however the mod that sees it feels that day instead of being a well-defined rule to me.

In fact, I actually had a topic SPECIFICALLY designated for discussing my playthroughs of FE romhacks that was here for quite a while with zero issues.

Emulating a game you already own is a legal activity, yes. I've used it as a device to practice certain parts of challenge runs in games that would be much harder or much longer to practice on the actual console.

MegaMan 7 Wily, for example. I can beat him buster only with no e tanks, but it never would've been practical to get to that level without such a practice device.

I have no death no etank/subtank no subweapons runs of half the series on the actual console, and it was a great help to it.

i mean there's vtubers with romhack playthroughs on youtube all the time and i'm pretty sure we've got FAQs on romhacks here on this very site. pretty sure the issue is never the playing of the romhack and more so the distribution of it. nobody's getting in trouble for owning a pirated game, they're getting in trouble for sharing a pirated game

I've never had issues talking about romhacks, even back when admins kind of cared about moderation policy in the early 2010s. Generally just don't link to anything and you'll be fine.

paulg235 posted...

I would imagine talking about romhacks then could fall under "promoting the use of pirated games".

For example, someone could make a topic about a translation patch or a mod of a game to discuss it. Then someone else could see the discussion and go "this sounds cool, maybe I should give it a try!" and attempt to find or play the romhack in question themselves.

this is equally true of talking about a regular game