WARNING: DON'T ATTEMPT ANYTHING I JUST DESCRIBED![/quote]Awwh. What a shame. I was going to print it off and put it on my wall as ROM dumping tips.
...In fact, I'm STILL going to do that. >
Anyways, back on topic once again, eh?
This is a bit of a tricky post for me to make in all honesty, Barver, because I admit I might be suffering from a full-on bout of 'well meaning naivety'. There might very well be good reasons for people asking for all that money, though admittedly I was more talking about pirate ROMs then prototypes. I mean, atop of the reasons you described, they might need to feed themselves, pay for rent, or cover another one of life's many expenses. >_<
But I dunno, it's for the very same reasons, that I'd RELEASE a ROM for free. Video games, let's admit it, are damn expensive these days. I mean, y'can buy the actual cartridges and the consoles but that's expensive too. Till you can afford those things yourself, I'll be damned if I keep a rare game from you. Emulators and ROMs allow us to test a game out before we buy, to entertain us when we've no money to spare on entertainment and, for me, to introduce you to things you never thought existed. If I were to ask for money, it'd be a donation box and that'd be that.
I suppose that's all I have to say as I pretty much agree with everything else you say, man, though I do have a few things to finish up with:
1. Yes, I can agree people generally don't give ROMs the appreciation they deserve. Especially when they can't be arsed to do try a simple Google search before asking if we could just send them the ROM. :facepalm:
2. As for preservation, well, I suppose I myself believe a ROM can be better preserved if it's shared out among many resources rather then just being stored in my hard drive or cloud storage. :\
So yep, that's all I can say about the subject. Feel free to disagree of course, as you said, we're free to have our own opinions. :thumb: But I must say, it's been nice to have the opportunity to stretch my debating muscles there.