Since not many people still own a working NES or a Game Boy, this is where emulators come in handy where they allow gamers to play games from consoles that are no longer available. This has allowed many gamers to relive classics and nostalgia, although there are some that might argue that emulators are also essentially a tool for piracy.
Unfortunately for gamers who do enjoy their emulations, it seems that you will no longer be able to download these apps from the Windows Store. This is because Microsoft has updated its policy where emulators are not only banned, but those that currently exist on the Windows Store are being removed.
According to Microsoft’s policy that was recently amended, it reads, “Apps that emulate a game system are not allowed on any device family.” Now we should point out that this affects emulators downloaded from the Windows Store. Since operating systems like Windows allows users to download software from other sources, this means that gamers will just need to find a new place to get their emulators and games, which admittedly isn’t that hard to do.
While this hardly addresses issues regarding piracy, we guess at least as far as Microsoft is concerned, they have done their part in aspects of Windows that they do control.
Filed in . Read more about Apps, Legal, Microsoft, Piracy and Windows.