Microsoft Edge Browser Can Let You Play Mario, Tetris and Minecraft, But Not for Long

Microsoft Edge is among the more regularly used web browsers alongside Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox. Given its stature, such a platform hosting pirated content would come across to be a fair amount of trouble for Microsoft, and the involved party whose content has been wrongly duplicated. The latter now happens to be Nintendo, and the debacle involves classic games and emulators that are apparently available on the Microsoft Edge browser, via its extensions.

According to a report by The Verge, the Microsoft Edge browser extensions store has apparently been hosting copies of a number of classic games, which include Super Mario Bros, Mario Kart 64, Pac-Man, Tetris, different versions of Sonic the Hedgehog, and Microsoft’s own Minecraft. While browsers sporting classic games that you can play in a brief break from work on your non-gaming business laptop sounds like a very good idea, the problem here is that neither Microsoft and nor Nintendo have officially offered any of these games and their respective in-browser platform emulators, thereby creating a conflict in terms of piracy of content.

Microsoft, after being notified of the incident, appears to be pulling down many of these unofficial game ports. However, News18 can independently confirm that there are a bunch of other classic games that remain on the Microsoft Edge browser even now. For instance, an unofficial port of Temple Run is still available on the Edge extensions store, but we suspect that it will not remain available for too long – now that Microsoft has started cracking down on these games. A rather random port of a Mario game also still remains on the Edge extensions store, with an average rating of 3 out of 5 stars.

Browsers supporting in-window games via extensions is a great, novel idea, but the issue of piracy isn’t something that is the right way to go. Nintendo, for one, is typically quite hard in terms of cracking down on pirated content, and The Verge states that both Microsoft and Nintendo have individually stated that they are looking into this issue. At the moment, we’re pretty sure that if you already have some of these games installed as extensions, they will be rendered unusable in the near future.

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