[HN Gopher] Drastic DS Emulator Pulled from Google Play Store
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Drastic DS Emulator Pulled from Google Play Store
 
Author : tosh
Score  : 55 points
Date   : 2022-02-20 21:12 UTC (1 hours ago)
 
web link (play.google.com)
w3m dump (play.google.com)
 
| lelandbatey wrote:
| I wonder why it was this _specific_ Nintendo DS emulator that was
| banned? Other Nintendo DS emulators such as vDS[0] are still
| available.
| 
| [0] -
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.icorewwwi....
 
| hd4 wrote:
| Drastic is due to be added to RetroArch as a new core, so it's
| not all bad I guess.
| 
| https://www.drastic-ds.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=13901&start=1...
 
| endisneigh wrote:
| Interestingly there's a Web Assembly port of DeSmuME
| (https://github.com/44670/desmume-wasm), so it works (to a
| certain extent) entirely in a web browser. You can ban from the
| stores, but as long as browsers are allowed, it'll never be
| banned completely.
| 
| The greatest scam of Google and Apple is convincing millions of
| developers to learn Swift and Kotlin to make apps on their stores
| that can be swiftly (pun intended) removed from their stores.
| Though the average developer is unlikely to ever be banned, why
| even risk it?
| 
| Think about the performance hit of apps that don't need to be
| native apps being ported to Web Apps. Let's be extreme and say
| it's equivalent to a Native App for a device 10 years older.
| Alright, so a modern Web App is equivalent in performance to a
| 2012 Native App running on a flagship. That's iPhone 5 and Galaxy
| Note 2. Make this conversion once and optimize your app and
| you'll never need to worry about your app being pulled ever
| again. Not to mention you can write your app once and it'll work
| on all platforms.
| 
| At least in the case of this particular app it can be sideloaded,
| so it'll be fine in the end, probably.
 
  | kevinslashslash wrote:
  | > The greatest scam of Google and Apple is convincing millions
  | of developers to learn Swift and Kotlin to make apps on their
  | stores that can be swiftly (pun intended) removed from their
  | stores
  | 
  | I certainly won't defend Apple and Google's app store
  | monopolies and control. However, Kotlin was actually a case of
  | Google listening to the developer community. Google could have,
  | and wanted to, push Dart (see Flutter) on Android. But the
  | Android development community was already adopting JetBrain's
  | Kotlin. Google listened and embraced Kotlin instead of pushing
  | their own thing. It was not a hostile act.
 
    | Larrikin wrote:
    | Dare I say Google embracing and pushing Kotlin on the Android
    | ecosystem was the last good thing I can remember Google
    | doing. The language is such a joy to to work in without the
    | pitfalls that come with Scala
 
  | rp3 wrote:
 
  | bogwog wrote:
  | The solution isn't for everyone to make web apps, it's to
  | regulate the app markets.
  | 
  | Web apps are still at the mercy of Apple and Google. Plus,
  | they're always lagging in features. Wordle for example wouldn't
  | have been able to implement the sharing feature before ~2019
  | because the web share API wasn't supported by major browsers
  | (even though it's a thing native apps could do since forever)
 
    | lucaaa wrote:
    | Wordle could have used copy to clipboard or link to share eg.
    | Twitter https://twitter.com/home?status=blabla
 
      | frosted-flakes wrote:
      | Wordle _does_ use copy-to-clipboard.
 
        | bogwog wrote:
        | No it doesn't. The share button opens a native share
        | dialog, which is only possible with the web share API.
 
    | dmix wrote:
    | You really think those regulations won't be heavily lobbied
    | by Nintendo and DRM loving lawyers, and somehow end up even
    | worse for consumers or more importantly small developers?
    | 
    | Maybe I'm cynical but I highly doubt it's going to be "make
    | your app stores completely replaceable without
    | DRM/billing/taxation/etc schemes and allow unrestricted
    | sideloading".
 
      | bogwog wrote:
      | It can't possibly get worse for consumers
 
    | endisneigh wrote:
    | > The solution isn't for everyone to make web apps, it's to
    | regulate the app markets.
    | 
    | I'm not really seeing how regulation would really fix the
    | scenario in the OP. What regulations that are likely to pass
    | would prevent Apple and Google from removing apps
    | arbitrarily?
    | 
    | > Web apps are still at the mercy of Apple and Google.
    | 
    | Not really. Apple and Google don't control the entire
    | internet. Though they do have some level of control of the
    | APIs available, ultimately they themselves use the same APIs
    | as well, so...
    | 
    | In any case I disagree with you - web apps are the solution
    | because every app that becomes a Web App instead of native
    | app results in a loosening in the grip that is the
    | Apple/Google duopoly. Once at a critical mass, sites will pop
    | up to curate all of these new found web apps, APIs will be
    | developed to facilitate payments for these apps, and so
    | forth.
    | 
    | Ironically Google initially was not able to compete with
    | Apple with respect to app store curation and promoted PWAs
    | aggressively, but no one really bit. If people just went with
    | that to begin with we wouldn't be in this situation now. So
    | instead of going with PWAs, Google just ended up copying
    | Apple and now both of them just rent seek instead of one.
    | 
    | Prior to PWAs, there were "responsive pages" and Steve Jobs
    | in 2007 actually thought that it would make more sense of all
    | iPhone apps were just responsive apps instead of native apps,
    | and locked down the API to strictly first party apps.
    | 
    | Hackers jail broke the iPhone to unlock all of the
    | functionality, forcing Apple to launch the App Store,
    | resulting in the situation now before us.
    | 
    | We're being given a second chance here with WebAssembly.
    | Let's not screw it up this time around, ya?
 
      | josephcsible wrote:
      | > I'm not really seeing how regulation would really fix the
      | scenario in the OP. What regulations that are likely to
      | pass would prevent Apple and Google from removing apps
      | arbitrarily?
      | 
      | Regulate the markets by letting other stores compete, not
      | by regulating the current monopolistic stores. Force OS
      | developers to make it easy and practical to use alternative
      | app stores, and able to compete fairly with the first-party
      | ones. On iOS, you can't do so at all without jailbreaking,
      | and on Android, there's tons of scary warnings, and there's
      | some stuff like automatic background updates that are
      | impossible for anything but the Play Store unless you root.
 
        | endisneigh wrote:
        | Why would regulation result in more permissiveness? From
        | my reading most implemented regulation has resulted in
        | more restrictiveness, and things like DRM.
        | 
        | If that happened I'd love it though, as the precedent
        | would presumably allow for all stores, like game
        | consoles, appliances, etc. to open up their operating
        | systems to allow any arbitrary software to be installed.
        | 
        | Even if there were more app stores I bet it would result
        | in all apps having to be signed by Google, in the same
        | way anyone can purchase their own domain but are still
        | limited in that DNS is centralized.
 
        | josephcsible wrote:
        | > Even if there were more app stores I bet it would
        | result in all apps having to be signed by Google
        | 
        | That's the kind of thing I'd want the regulation to ban.
 
        | endisneigh wrote:
        | I'm sure, but what I'm saying what proposals that are
        | realistically going to pass do that? Look at the history
        | of software regulation, it generally restricts things.
 
      | bogwog wrote:
      | > I'm not really seeing how regulation would really fix the
      | scenario in the OP. What regulations that are likely to
      | pass would prevent Apple and Google from removing apps
      | arbitrarily?
      | 
      | Forcing them to allow alternative app stores for starters.
      | The only reason they can get away with doing this stuff is
      | because they each have 100% market share.
 
| rendall wrote:
| What was this app meant to do?
 
  | haunter wrote:
  | Nintendo DS emulator
 
  | [deleted]
 
| dindresto wrote:
| Can't even access it as someone who bought the app... That's
| really unfortunate.
 
  | mastazi wrote:
  | You will probably have to uninstall the Google Play version and
  | reinstall through sideloading
 
  | kragen wrote:
  | Are you saying that you have the app previously installed on
  | your phone, and it has ceased to work on that same phone, even
  | though you didn't do something like a restore-from-backup in
  | the interim? That's my interpretation of your comment but I
  | could be misreading you.
 
    | dindresto wrote:
    | No it works on devices where I still have it installed :)
    | just meant I can't install it from the store, which is
    | different from Steam where you are still able to install
    | games you bought even if their store page got taken down
 
      | kragen wrote:
      | Thank you for the correction!
 
  | ktzar wrote:
  | Is there a way to request your money back? I'm surprised Google
  | can just pull an app you've payed for. But well... Ts&Cs you
  | never read.
 
  | tasha0663 wrote:
  | I think this is part of why they make it so damn hard to find
  | apps you already bought or downloaded before. AFAIK there's no
  | way to search these, just a huge list to scroll through in no
  | identifiable order, and anything that was removed or
  | incompatible with the current device just isn't there.
 
| smoldesu wrote:
| I wonder if this is because of BIOS licensing. I haven't used
| Drastic in a while, but I do know that "perfect" DS emulation
| requires a couple files that are only available by dumping from
| your own machine... Nintendo has been on a copright troll-roll
| with the recent GilvaSunner takedowns, I almost wonder if this is
| part of that initiative.
| 
| In any case, this is another one for the "why sideloading is
| important" wall, it shouldn't be too big of a deal since the
| Drastic developers can continue distribution with or without
| Google's blessing. No Bleem! politics here, just a little bit of
| downtime so the devs can set up their own payment portal and dump
| the credentials of their paid customers for continued support.
| Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if they just open sourced the thing
| and threw it to the community. DS emulators are a dime a dozen
| these days, and the devs have probably already made their money
| here. Any way it breaks, it should be a win-win situation though.
 
  | Gigachad wrote:
  | It's been a very long time since I used Drastic but I remember
  | it being vastly better than the other emulators at the time.
  | Was the only one able to run DS games at full speed on my 2012
  | Nexus 7. The open source alternatives may have caught up by now
  | though.
 
| fartcannon wrote:
| Nintendo as a brand is dead to me.
 
  | Larrikin wrote:
  | They seem very polarizing to the adult community. I loved video
  | games from all kinds of companies when I was younger and had
  | hours a day to play games. But as an adult I can't imagine
  | buying a non Nintendo system. The few hours a month when I
  | actually want to play video games and have the time I'd rather
  | load up some guaranteed fun, versus sit through huge chunks of
  | AAA game story plot points just to shoot the Nazis, monster,
  | etc or spend those same hours researching indie games that
  | might be as fun as whatever Nintendo has put out recently.
  | 
  | Only thing really worth taking the risk on these days is music
  | games, but the good ones are few and far between. The
  | international Bemani community has seemingly fully committed to
  | the arcade rip and Konami doesn't seem to care to try and bring
  | them back to the home console since they aren't cutting into
  | arcade unit sales.
 
    | kcindric wrote:
    | Yes. As I grow older I'm more drawn to Nintendo ecosystem
    | than any other due to games that are so much packed with fun
    | and pretty immediate in their delivery.
 
| wnevets wrote:
| and yet the Beijing 2022 Games[1] app with known security
| vulnerabilities [2] is still on the Google Play Store.
| 
| [1]
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.systoon.do...
| 
| [2] https://citizenlab.ca/2022/01/cross-country-exposure-
| analysi...
 
| trollied wrote:
| The developer is also missing:
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Exophase
| 
| Must have been banned.
| 
| Reddit thread discussing this:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/EmulationOnAndroid/comments/sx1tzw/...
 
| Shadonototra wrote:
| i once thought of purchasing an android based handheld console
| like the ayn odin, i'm now more convinced the Steam Deck is the
| perfect choice, linux to the rescue, as always
 
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(page generated 2022-02-20 23:00 UTC)