Atlus made a statement recently admitting to having nuked the Patreon page for the developers of RPCS3 for having successfully emulated the PS3 version of Persona 5.

In a public statement on their website, Atlus stated…

“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 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!”

A lot of people who don’t own a PS3 were able to follow the RPCS3 quick-start guide to dumping PS3 Blu-ray discs after purchasing a legitimate copy of Persona 5, especially if they don’t want to download Blu-ray-sized ISOs from peer-to-peer networks or usenet groups. This can sometimes result in the game seeing actual physical retail sales as gamers attempt to get their hands on a copy of the game to dump it and run it via emulation, which is what happened with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild earlier this year when the Wii U emulator, Cemu, was enabled to play play the Wii U version of the game.

Atlus, however, does not see it as an opportunity to bring gamers closer to their content through emulation who otherwise wouldn’t have played it, they see it as piracy, stating…

“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.”

It seems like a lot of wasted effort to go after the emulation community, especially for people who don’t own PlayStation hardware but may take interest in the games running on the RPCS3.

What’s more is that this doesn’t even affect the actual piracy scene for PS3 ISOs at all, it only debilitates the finances of the RPCS3 team. Pirates are still going to pirate.

As noted by Operation Rainfall, you can’t leave a comment on the Atlus page where the announcement was made, but you can send them informative comments about why they may be moving in the wrong direction with this move by contacting them on Twitter.

(Thanks for the news tip Dizzy)