145
Previously paid Nintendo DS emulator app on Android goes free (DraStic DS)
(www.androidheadlines.com)
this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
145 points (98.0% liked)
Android
27897 readers
220 users here now
DROID DOES
Welcome to the droidymcdroidface-iest, Lemmyest (Lemmiest), test, bestest, phoniest, pluckiest, snarkiest, and spiciest Android community on Lemmy (Do not respond)! Here you can participate in amazing discussions and events relating to all things Android.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules
1. All posts must be relevant to Android devices/operating system.
2. Posts cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
3. No spam, self promotion, or upvote farming. Sources engaging in these behavior will be added to the Blacklist.
4. Non-whitelisted bots will be banned.
5. Engage respectfully: Harassment, flamebaiting, bad faith engagement, or agenda posting will result in your posts being removed. Excessive violations will result in temporary or permanent ban, depending on severity.
6. Memes are not allowed to be posts, but are allowed in the comments.
7. Posts from clickbait sources are heavily discouraged. Please de-clickbait titles if it needs to be submitted.
8. Submission statements of any length composed of your own thoughts inside the post text field are mandatory for any microblog posts, and are optional but recommended for article/image/video posts.
Community Resources:
We are Android girls*,
In our Lemmy.world.
The back is plastic,
It's fantastic.
*Well, not just girls: people of all gender identities are welcomed here.
Our Partner Communities:
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Who's paying for a DS emulator when there is open sourced & free options anyway?
Drastic has been around for a long time, and for a good while, it was the best supported one on Android. It was definitely worth the flat, one time $5 charge that I paid like 10 years ago.
Really, that's the ideal: flat, reasonable charge for lifetime use of the software that is still getting updates a decade later.
But realistically speaking, the dev hasn't actually done much work on it in the last few years beyond bug fixing (not that there's much left to add in the first place). The price wasn't terrible but the insistence on the keeping it paid hurt the ability to sideload it when you needed to. It should have been free a long time ago, especially after it got so much competition.
This timing is very interesting with the Yuzu/Citra shutdown - do you suspect the change has anything to do with not want to make money from a Nintendo emulator as be less of a target? Or is there something fundamentally different about Drastic?
Yeah, he had a blog post that says exactly that.
Thanks for the followup!
definitely sounds like the dev got spooked
I will add that I don’t mind if, on top o the flat rate, there is a few years of free updates until you have to renew your license, as long as you can keep using your “outdated version“ for as long as you want. I see this model in many professional apps I've used over the years (Sketch or Affinity apps for example) and I find it very reasonable because I understand that ongoing development requires investment.
That doesn't make sense. You have to pay before using it so you won't know whether it is your favorite or not when you pay.
Maybe you went to somewhere like APKmirror or some other site to get the APK because you refuse to pay them find out you really like it and want to support development. I've done something similar before with steam games, which isn't the same thing, but they're both in a similar ballpark.
Well, Drastic is on the Play Store. Citra wasn't last time I looked (which wasn't long ago because I wanted to play Phoenix Wright again) So anyone who doesn't know how to or doesn't want to sideload .apks would be my guess.