THE PAPERWORK
Legal, disclaimers, and privacy
Last updated 2026-08-09 · plain English on purpose — if any of this is unclear, ask before you rely on it
This page is the agreement between you and EmuDoctor when you download, install, or use the EmuDoctor application, the emudoctor.com website, or the EmuDoctor cloud services. If you don't agree with it, don't use EmuDoctor.
Independence and trademarks
EmuDoctor is independent software. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the RetroArch/libretro, Dolphin, PCSX2, DuckStation, or PPSSPP projects, EmuDeck, RetroDECK, Playnite, LaunchBox, Valve, Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, or any other emulator project, launcher, or console manufacturer. All product names, logos, and brands mentioned are the property of their respective owners and are used only to identify the software EmuDoctor can configure.
The emulators themselves are separate works by their own authors under their own licenses. EmuDoctor does not include, modify, or redistribute them.
The hard line: no games, no BIOS, no circumvention
EmuDoctor does not download, provide, locate, name sources for, or help obtain game copies (ROMs or disc images), BIOS files, firmware, encryption keys, cracks, or any means of circumventing copy protection. Requests for these are refused by design, and the refusal is enforced in the software, not just in this paragraph.
EmuDoctor operates only on files already present on your machine. You are solely responsible for ensuring that the games, BIOS files, and firmware you use with it were obtained lawfully in your jurisdiction — for example, dumps you made from media and hardware you own where that is legal. Emulation software is lawful in most places; how you obtain the content you run on it is your responsibility, not ours.
What EmuDoctor does to your machine
EmuDoctor edits emulator configuration files, applies controller profiles, installs or updates emulators through official package sources, and launches emulators — and it does each of these only after showing you the exact change and receiving your explicit approval. Every changed file is snapshotted first and can be restored. The AI never receives a shell or arbitrary command execution; it selects from a fixed list of guarded capabilities.
That consent step matters legally as well as practically: when you approve a change, you are the one making that change to your own system, with EmuDoctor acting as the tool that carries it out.
AI can be wrong
EmuDoctor's diagnoses and suggestions are produced with the help of AI models. They are informed by your machine's real configuration, but they are predictions, not certainties — a suggested change may fail to fix your problem or may make a specific game behave worse. That is exactly why every change is previewed, approved, snapshotted, and undoable, and why repair visits are only charged when a fix verifies. Review what's on screen before you hold to confirm.
Privacy
The application runs on your machine and stores its state there. When you use AI features, EmuDoctor sends the described problem, relevant configuration values, and hardware metadata to its model provider, with home-directory paths and secret-like values stripped first. Full configuration files, your file library, and your personal documents are not uploaded. The cloud service keeps anonymized problem fingerprints and outcome counts (what fixed what, and whether it verified) — not your identity — to make future diagnoses better. Model requests are sent with storage disabled at the provider.
The website sets no analytics cookies and runs no trackers. Purchases are processed by our payment provider; we receive your license status, not your card details.
The verified-fix guarantee, precisely
"If EmuDoctor doesn't fix it, you don't pay" means exactly this: a visit credit is deducted only when a repair verifies — by read-back, a successful launch, or your confirmation. If a repair does not verify, the visit is not deducted, and anything the repair changed can be rolled back. The guarantee is the visit credit itself; it is not a promise of refunds beyond that, of compensation, or that any particular problem is fixable on your hardware.
No warranty
EmuDoctor is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that it will resolve any particular issue. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain warranty exclusions, so parts of this section may not apply to you.
Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, EmuDoctor and its author are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for loss of data, saves, configurations, profits, or goodwill, arising from your use of (or inability to use) the software or services — even if advised of the possibility. Our total aggregate liability for any claim is limited to the amount you paid for EmuDoctor in the twelve months before the claim arose. Nothing in this section limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.
You use EmuDoctor on your own systems at your own risk. Keep backups of anything you can't afford to lose — EmuDoctor snapshots what it changes, but it is not a backup product.
Changes to these terms
We may update this page as the product evolves. The "last updated" date above changes when we do, and material changes are noted in the application's release notes. Continuing to use EmuDoctor after a change means you accept the updated terms.