Atlus didn't contact Patreon or RPCS3 ahead of time. Instead, the company immediately went after the monthly payments that allow the emulator to exist.From Atlus' perspective, even though the emulator itself can't infringe on their ownership of Persona 5, it allows other people to potentially infringe, which makes the developers complicit. In a surprising move, Patreon disagreed with this assertion, however, and pushed back on Atlus, arguing removal of the entire Patreon page wasn't necessary. References to Persona 5, fine. The emulator? No.(You can see the emulator in action below.)(The reason it's surprising is because of how copyright takedowns are normally handled by corporate entities. On YouTube, almost universal deference is shown to copyright holders, with creatives being tasked with mounting a defense that could easily backfire against them.)Atlus responded to Patreon with the following:"The PS3 emulator itself is not infringing on our copyrights and trademarks; however, no version of the P5 game should be playable on this platform; and [the RPCS3] developers are infringing on our IP by making such games playable"
"We kindly ask that you remove both for this reason – to make Persona 5 work on the emulator, the user has to circumvent our DRM protections. The following blog post provides specific instructions for "dumping the disc or PSN download" and discusses how Patreon finding [sic] contributed to this breakthrough: [link since removed]."
"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! For now, the best way to experience Persona 5 is on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3.
We appreciate the awareness generated by the emulation community for Persona 5 and know that it is a fantastic example of how much people are loving our game. We want to keep bringing you titles like Persona 5. 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."