I knew that Patreon would bite them some day. Any time money comes into a "offensive" open source project, whoever feels they are getting hurt can make a claim a lot easier. Somewhat surprised they haven't yet sued Ryujinx (the other Switch emulator project) for also having a Patreon.
I am not part of that scene, but I am sympathetic to emulation. Is there a notable difference between Yuzu and other switch emulators? I wonder if there are other reasons than Patreon ( money changing hands ) or there were other considerations?
Yuzu has amazing compatibility. I'm guessing it's getting too good for Nintendo. Their concerns with TotK are not without merit. I played it on Yuzu (on PC) because it was a much better experience than on the switch. Within a few days of the game being out, there were resolution and fps patches which made the game run much better. That said, I'm not sure how Yuzu can be blamed for TotK piracy. Guessing Nintendo is throwing a hail mary here and hoping they can connect the dots during discovery.
I hope this doesn't spell the end of Yuzu, because I use it to play switch games that I own on my steam deck.
Jennifer Crumbley was found guilty of manslaughter for doing nothing to prevent her son from shooting up his school.
That was criminal court with a much higher standard than a civil case.
Nintendo has consistently been one of the strongest protectors of their IP, and a defense that says “We tell users not to commit piracy” is about as effective as a sex workers disclaimer that “money is exchanged for time.”
That case is in regards to a guardian figure who has some level of legal responsibility for the children in their care. In that case it makes sense to hold someone accountable for the actions of someone else because the person in question agreed to that when they became a guardian.
Software developers should not be held liable for what their users do with the software unless the software itself does something illegal (such as malware that gains unauthorized access to secure systems). If developers were responsible for their users then you would have all kinds of bizarre lawsuits. You would be able to sue Microsoft for things written by users in Word. It wouldn't be a stretch to sue Linux contributers because someone used the OS to perform a DOS attack or to host a scam site.
I haven't looked at Nintendo's materials, but I would think they were able to find enough evidence to get them past any preliminary dismissal motions, and get to discovery in which case Nintendo would likely get access to all communications and electronic files (read: source code).
I think Nintendo would be banking that the Yuzu team likely had lax (if at anything) policies and processes for compliance to their public stance on piracy.
No because the primary use of Linux is not piracy. Whereas for emulation it is.
The whole point of emulation is that you want to play content for which the original hardware no longer exists. And so there is no harm being done to anyone.
This situation is obviously quite different because Nintendo is being harmed.
Perhaps that's true, but not because it would be piracy. Backing up media for personal has a pretty strong fair use claim, so I don't think it should be considered copyright infringement.
But there is also the DMCA, and the anti-circumvention provision, which can be attributed a lot more to the user backing up their game than it can be to the developers of the emulator. But that wouldn't be the same thing as copyright infringement.
That said, if the"interoperability exception" applies to anything at all, I feel like it should apply here. You are circumventing copy protection mechanisms for the explicit purpose of interoperability with other software.
On moral grounds, I also have absolutely no qualms whatsoever with someone circumventing copy protection mechanisms to make a copy of a thing they bought to use for personal use. The fact that that could be potentially illegal at all is disgusting.
If only we had a universal way to easily distribute data, without need to heavily license it, instead opting for easily accessible licenses from reputable sources at market prices...
(we do, but torrents got a bad name)
Netflix was a success not because it was a streaming service with a license fee, but because it provided unfettered access to data for a small fee.
Of course, now there are AIs which can or will shortly be able to trivially reproduce most data formats, so that's a separate issue as far as that goes (and that's bad too, if AI spells the complete death of DMCA), but it really didn't need to be this complicated.
Make your brand well recognized, make your products easy to obtain, go after the pirates not the users. I own a switch and TBH a lot of my enthusiasm is pretty chilled by Nintendo's dickery - I'm less likely to purchase their products (and I'll elsewhere with non-Nintendo stuff - and Nintendo's stuff is honestly becoming a lot of locked down crap these days).
Creating a private copy and using it is absolutely legal. Breaching an "effective" copy protection scheme can be illegal, but "effective" is defined through case law, and can range from "DVD DRM isn't effective" to "rolling ciphers on YouTube are effective" depending on court.
That's all well and good if true, but Patreon is based in the USA, so even if the people behind it aren't (which they presumably are, as the stated "Tropic Haze LLC" is also USA-based), they have to comply with the laws in that jurisdiction.
You need to use a less general term than 'emulation' to make that claim.
Your OS emulates. The companies that made the chips you run them on emulate their own hardware. The company in the headline emulate their own video game hardware and sell it to their customers.
Seems like it’d be more productive to reduce attrition of this sort by releasing a Switch with less-anemic hardware. There’s clearly a market for a “Switch Pro” or similar that can run TotK, etc at 60FPS without frame drops.
> Seems like it’d be more productive to reduce attrition of this sort by releasing a Switch with less-anemic hardware.
Truly, but you are preaching to the choir. I am a big fan of SMTV series, and since it was a Switch exclusive, I bought it on the release day. I wasn't happy about 30fps (which I knew about beforehand), but it wouldn't be a barrier for me to enjoy a great game, so I went into it despite knowing that.
Long story short, I dropped the game just a few hours into it, and decided to wait until it gets a release on absolutely any other platform (and luckily enough, it was announced just last week). Turns out, 30fps was an aspirational goal, as literally in the first non-tutorial area of the game (the desert, I forgot the name), 30fps would rarely even hit, and the game would hover between 15-25fps the entire time. I just couldn't do it, no matter how good the game is.
Nintendo straight up ruined a game for me that I was already liking, all due to the Switch hardware. I am not even asking for much, even 30fps would be fine. But I cannot stomach FPS oscillating between 15-25fps in multiple major areas where you spend a lot of time in a game.
> Seems like it’d be more productive to reduce attrition of this sort by releasing a Switch with less-anemic hardware.
That is difficult for Nintendo, the GPU architecture used on the switch is long dead, so Nintendo has no easy way of releasing a better switch. Because of that they will probably wait as much as possible and then release a completely new console with only limited backwards compatibility.
> That said, I'm not sure how Yuzu can be blamed for TotK piracy.
>> I played it on Yuzu (on PC) because it was a much better experience than on the switch.
I blame you, actually, (somewhat jokingly) because I own TotK for Switch, and ended up putting it away really quickly because the resolution in handheld mode looked awful. I actually couldn't stand playing the game in handheld mode while my wife took over the TV for her shows.
What exactly do you mean by "patches were created before the game got officially released" ? It was my impression that some patches had been going around, but that they certainly weren't created by or endorsed by the Yuzu project in any official capacity - I don't see how random people creating patches for open source projects should give rise to any legal liability to the original project.
What I mean is that the game got leaked like 2 weeks before it's official release, - so on 4chan I think some anons created 60 fps patches a few days later, effectively creating patches before the game even got released.
This had nothing to do with Yuzu, I'm just remarking at how fast the community worked on it.
Making money is not a factor for fair use, but one factor is whether it’s a for-profit endeavor; you can be making money to fund an operation without doing so for profit. And even then, courts haven’t been too concerned with that aspect when other aspects are clearly met.
You need some sort of legal entity to receive the money, with ties to some real persons. It makes some corp. going after you so much easier, compared to trying to get to 'rightbyte' or 'judge2020' for doing git commits.
Not the best idea to try to get around lawsuits by simply staying anonymous. Nintendo can sue GitHub and you as a John Doe to compel GitHub to give up all info it has on you, like IP address access logs (which can then be used to compel your ISP to hand over their records on you).
Because perfect security is impossible and you only have to leak your real IP once - especially with committing to github it would be so easy for a tool or plugin to leak that.
The topic of the thread was hiding your identity from litigious corporations of which only a part of that is hiding your IP.
THAT was the point but thanks for being the thread police and a conversation killer. Next time if I want to digress a little I'll run it past you first.
Tor browser for accessing the website. For commits a git+SSH config using Tor's socks proxy port will fail closed.
For other tools/plugins that you can't be certain about you would have to run things in a VM that prevents non-Tor connections - e.g. this is how Qubes/Whonix does things.
Maybe but you added a ton of red tape between you and Nintendo. Staying semi-anonymous when also committing no actual crime is likely a really good filter versus lawsuits.
> Making money is not a factor for fair use, but one factor is whether it’s a for-profit endeavor
Whether the use is for-profit is not a factor either. It's part of a factor. The first factor of the fair use test [1] is:
> the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
"including" is not "limited to", so something as simple as whether the use brings in any revenue, whether through donations or sales, could be one consideration within the first factor. Whether the use is for-profit is another consideration.
>yuzu is a Nintendo Switch emulator capable of running many games! With yuzu, you can play such games as Pokémon Sword & Shield, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Super Mario Odyssey, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Pokémon Legends: Arceus, Fire Emblem:Three Houses, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate — on your PC.
Regardless of the legal status of an emulator, I wouldn't list game titles if I were writing that copy.
Zelda BoTW being released 7 days BEFORE being on Switch, and 60FPS, and better gameplay on a real computer is what caught Nintendo's attention.
And with Yuzu and joycons, you can have EVERY game, including their online only stuff. And if you pay for those online only, piracy is the only way to guarantee that you'll keep them.
They've destroyed the: NDS, Gamecube, Wii, WiiU stores/online content. They never needed to. They *chose* to.
But they are not going after the piracy. They are going after the legitimate method of playing switch games on your PC. I'd argue that MP3 player apps are nowadays mostly used with pirated music, yet I don't see anyone going after them.
Well, there's a bunch of places where that's not true. Then it's a question of morality, although that usually gets unfairly asked of the individual but never asked of giant mega corporations.
Either way I'd argue it's in an emulator team's interest to not highlight specific games, especially when asking for money.
Thinking further on it I wouldn't write "Nintendo" either: "yuzu is a Switch emulator that runs your games on PC/Mac/Android - often with better resolution, framerates, ..." is fine - people already know about the games they want to play.
it's fully legal to state what you are compatible that
titles are mainly protected by trade markes so you can freely mention and speak about them anywhere as long as you are not creating a situation where s judge might find that Nintendo customers might thing Yuzo made by Nintendo or any of the listed games are made by Yuzu or shipped by Yuzo or similar
I'm actually surprised it took so long considering they were seeking crowdfunding while openly advertising the piracy use case and raking in thousands of dollars a month (now $30,000 - wow). Patreon rewards can be construed as profit-seeking; Patreon even charges sales tax if you donate under a reward tier (they don't if you go through the no-reward custom donation flow). It's cool to hate on Nintendo for being overly litigious these days, and they deserve that reputation, but with projects where piracy is clearly the main goal, and a significant amount of money is involved, I find it hard to sympathize. Even if it's technically legal, it strikes me as parasitic behavior.
It doesn't change much legally to my knowledge, given that Sony v. Connectix was about a commercial, for-profit emulator (literally sold in stores) that directly competed with a console being commercialized at the same time (the PlayStation) and Sony lost in that case, with the 9th Circuit declaring it was fair competition and legal for Connectix to emulate PlayStation games.
Keep in mind that it's not about winning or losing in court. Most people don't have the money to fight. So they give up as soon as they get a letter from a lawyer.
I don't believe so (the Sony v. Bleem cases mainly ended up in favor of Bleem), but also I don't think anyone has tried since the DMCA. It looks like Nintendo is taking a 'trafficking in circumvention device' legal strategy as opposed to a strictly anti-emulator legal strategy.
DMCA was in effect the year before Sony first sued Bleem -- and it's notable that Bleem mostly won the lawsuits, but legal fees bankrupted them anyway.
The DMCA was in effect but not applicable to the case since the DRM scheme of the PS1 doesn't block access to the files of the disc, but instead simply attempts to block the usage of non DRMed media on legitimate PS1s.
Right. What I hate about copyright is that winning a copyright infringement lawsuit with a fair use defense (fair use being by definition not infringement [1]) will still bankrupt you because of the legal fees.
Yep, Sony "lost," but they still killed Bleem and forced the creator into an agreement to, among other things, not make any more Playstation emulators. So really, Sony 100% won.
Bleem was a big deal, too. It let you just pop a Playstation game into a PC's CD-ROM drive and play it. When Sony finally nailed the coffin on them, they were working on a followup called "bleemcast" that would've let Playstation games be played on the Sega Dreamcast.
bleem! (PlayStation emulator) was sued by Sony and was forced to close down because of legal fees, so I guess that counts as a success for Sony.
I seem to recall a bunch of ROM sites disappearing as well, but not sure if that's because they got sued or for other reasons. Some must have been sued and consequently shut down, so maybe not a bad idea (for the companies) to at least try?
Modern consoles and arcades have anti-circumvention measures to restrict access to their internals. Software that bypasses such protections runs afoul of the DMCA even without any copyright violation.
ROM sites are different in that they are distributing the copywrited media
The only 'emulator' cases I've seen be successful are due to the same, they didn't get in trouble for the emulator, they got in trouble for distributing ROMs. I wonder if there's some firmware code being distributed here? that's a common annoyance when it comes to using an emulator.
By "online" do you mean a random ROM website, or any Yuzu provided/hosted/whatever page? I.E. are they linked to such firmware and key redistribution? I was under the impression there was no affiliation, but I may be wrong there.
By affiliation I mean something like hosted on the same server but officially unlinked, not obvious affiliations. If a core maintainer redistributing them on their personal website.
I think ROM sites were an artifact of the internet speeds we had access to early on. Where it wasn't practical to just download an entire library for an older console. Downloading an N64 ROM over dialup still took a little longer than an mp3, whole collections of them were out of the question. Even early broadband in many areas was limited to speeds where a single ROM was more practical to download.
Complete ROM collections were, and probably still are, available for most old systems as torrents and on usenet.
You don't need to do this. I bought a 1TB sd card because I heard that was enough space to store every retro game up to n64. I ended up copying over a small hand-picked selection of games rather than the full romset. We need some people to keep copies of the full romsets for the sake of preservation, but typical users only want certain, popular games.
Downloading N64 roms as ZIP files was not a daunting task. PSX ISOs, OTOH... those were badly ripped.
But most of the time you would just get Tony Hawk 2/3, the Zelda's, Mario 64, Jet Force Gemini, FIFA's, Wave Race and a few more in less than a week and the fun lasted months if not years.
Sony also sued Connectix and lost. Sony purchased the rights to the emulator made by Connectix a year or so later. Connectix shut down 2 years after they sold the VGS to Sony but it isn't clear their fate was negatively impacted by Sony.
This move by Nintendo is typical and there is no intent for it to ever actually go to court. It is legal bullying/posturing. The ironic/hopeful part is that team behind Yuzu does have some financial backing and this is going to create goodwill for them and they might actually be able to put up a defense (perhaps with the EFF getting involved maybe?)
This won't matter. The goal will be to run them out of money. It's an open source project and they most likely don't have the capital to fund any sort of lengthy lawsuit.
I really wish our system had some kind of financial handicap when it came to access to the legal system. Weaponizing the legal system to bankrupt people that would be found Not Guilty shouldn't be possible.
I always wondered what would happen if litigants and defendants could contribute to a common legal fund which would equally fund their attorneys. It would at maximum make litigation twice as expensive which may be worth it alone.
What I'm hearing is that it solves the problem of Nintendo being to outspend the defendant. If Nintendo brings a lawsuit and spends zero dollars on court cost, it should be rather easy for the defense to also contribute zero and the lawsuit is avoided. Problem solved.
And Yuzu spends $25,000 and maybe wins the first case but runs out of money during the appeal and defaults judgment.
Nintendo gets the pot because they won right?
As I pointed out to another user, this reverses the damage if they win, but does not solve the problem of preventing them from being able to win.
Now if you make it where if you want to spend $5 on lawyer fees, you have to loan $5 to the other side and if the other side wins they don't have to pay it back, that may work.
I think the proposal is not "each side contributes to a pot and the winner takes it", it's "if one side wants to spend 10mil on a case and the other side puts in 25k, then each side has 5mil and 12.5k to spend on legal fees"
The legal system has sort of recognized this as a problem, which is why many states have anti-SLAPP lawsuits. Unfortunately, I don't think this strictly falls under the definition of "public participation", so there is no protection available. (And, big companies just try to sue you in federal court or states with no anti-SLAPP lawsuits. So anti-SLAPP is not the big victory it should have been.)
An anti-SLAPP law usually works by giving you a special motion that lets you say "hey, I think this is a SLAPP lawsuit", which basically gives you access to fee shifting (making the loser pay the winner's legal fees). Copyright already has this built in.
Which is great news... for Nintendo.
The problem that Nintendo is citing in their lawsuit is the fact that Yuzu ships Switch common keys. For the purpose of DMCA 1201, this is a smoking gun[0]. There isn't really a good legal argument for why emulators should be allowed to ship decryption keys, or at least, the EFF refused to come up with one when Dolphin asked for legal advice on this point a while ago. So if you go to court and provide a completely legally baseless argument, Nintendo wins, and then they move for fee shifting, which means they get to prosecute the case for free[1].
[0] While it is true that the scope of DMCA 1201 is far wider than just encryption keys, in this case, Nintendo has only cited the keys being in the emulator and the fact that Yuzu is really useful for running pirated software, which is "good enough".
[1] In practice, it's more "for cheap" than "for free", because there's specific rules about how much you're allowed to fee shift, a whole bunch of stuff about 'lodestar amounts', etc.
That's the thing though, Yuzu doesn't ship with the common keys. Yuzu's quick start guide provides clear instructions for how to root a physical switch and dump the keys from the device, but it doesn't ship with the keys itself. What Nintendo is alleging is that providing the instructions to dump the keys is equivalent to providing them itself.
Yeah, sorry, I misread Nintendo's legal complaint.
That being said, I don't think two layers of indirection help Yuzu. It's one thing to say "this requires decryption keys and you have to rip your own games", and another to say "and here's where and how you get those things".
Put it this way: You know how emulator developers are very strict about not providing ROMs for obvious reasons? The decryption keys work the same way. If Yuzu had, say, linked to a ROM site and said "here's where you can get games for our emulator, wink wink nudge nudge", that'd be an open-and-shut case[0].
But Yuzu's instructions for getting decryption keys is for the correct, legal, way to do it. They're not linking to the sites where you can grab already-dumped keys - that would be the analogy to your example. The correct analogy would be if Yuzu told you how to dump your own ROMs - which is exactly what it does (and should do).
I'm not convinced that even telling people how to dump their own keys is legal.
DMCA 1201 comes in two parts: a law that prohibits breaking DRM, and a law that prohibits telling people how to break DRM. If someone just had a Switch and somehow managed to figure out how to get the keys and games out of it, then ran them on an emulator, it'd probably be legal[0]. This is because the part of 1201 that makes it illegal to break DRM has shittons of escape valves that are designed to ensure that previously legal behavior doesn't suddenly become illegal just because you put a digital lock on it.
However, the part that prohibits trafficking in circumvention devices lacks any of these escape valves. I believe this to be by design. Congress wasn't willing to, say, reverse the Sony Betamax decision[1] and criminalize home video recording, but they were willing to allow Hollywood to slowly shut it down. A escape valve for circumvention would render the whole law ineffective: so long as someone has a legal right to break the DRM, you can sell it to anyone, not just people who can demonstrate they need it.
The legal standard for what constitutes a circumvention device is very broad. Specifically, something is a circumvention device if either:
- It's only function is to break DRM, or
- It's only commercially significant function is to break DRM (read: courts, ignore Betamax), or
- It's advertised to break DRM
That last one is the tricky bit. Let's say I took an ordinary HDMI-to-composite video adapter and put a sticker on it that said "Copy Netflix Originals Quick And Easy"[2]. Streaming boxes and Blu-Ray players support unencrypted output at legacy resolutions, so the video adapter breaks no DRM, it's just a DAC. But because I've advertised it as a way to strip DRM, I've broken the law by selling it.
So let's go back to our key dumping tool. Even if it's literally just a shell script for whatever the Switch equivalent of GodMode9 is, because it's being advertised as a way to copy games, it's just as illegal as putting the production Switch keys directly into Yuzu's source code. As an emulator developer, the only way to avoid liability under DMCA 1201 is to provide zero assistance to people who want to rip their games.
[0] This isn't court-tested, and probably never will, but prior attempts to argue against format-shifting in US courts haven't fared well.
[1] SCOTUS would do that later on with MGM v. Grokster. Remember: the reason why Sony was in hot water was specifically because they advertised Betamax as being good for pirating movies, not just that you could do so.
[2] In the world where Congress did include safety valves for 1201(a)(2), this sticker would probably say "Make Fair Use Commentaries On Netflix Originals Quick And Easy".
>Weaponizing the legal system to bankrupt people that would be found Not Guilty shouldn't be possible.
They could open source and distribute the code in a decentralized manner. People could download, use and work on the software freely. The Pirate Bay is still going, based on these principles.
But if you're going to run a commercial enterprise based on what can at least be construed as enabling piracy, you're playing with fire and companies have the right to protect their IP in court.
Yuzu is open source though ?? I don't get what you're saying. I should also add the previous commercial (as in, sold in shelves) emulators competing with current-gen consoles have been previously declared legal and fair competition (see e.g. Sony v. Connectix, with Connectix emulating the PlayStation)
They're already making $30k/month on patreon and you can easily foresee that this legal action will cause a call to arms for even greater funding, if that was indeed their goal they could have targeted the much smaller ryujinx and set a precedent.
> Are there any cases of emulators being sued successfully?
Sony lost all their cases in the past. They claimed they infringed copyright when copying PS1 BIOS for reverse engineering purposes, court ruled that was fair use as it was necessary to gain access to the unprotected elements of the console. The other case was some bullshit about advertising, they had the audacity to claim screenshots violated their copyrights. They lost in court but won in the market by bankrupting their competitors.
Who knows what's gonna happen in 2024 though? Felony contempt of business model seems quite well entrenched at this point. Company puts "IP" into their product and suddenly they get to control what you do with it and it's illegal for you to resist in any way.
Common sense says emulators are alternative compatible implementations of the original hardware which increases consumer choice. People should have every right to make an emulator, doesn't matter if it's an old console or one that's just been released. Emulators are competitors to Nintendo. If they don't like it then they should drop their "exclusives" nonsense and start releasing games on PC where they belong with better graphics and performance and all the bells and whistles that emulators provide.
Who knows what these courts are gonna decide though. The copyright industry basically buys these laws anyway, there's no reason to believe they will rule favorably to the consumer.
Looking over the legal document, realistically, their arguments are so damaging from a software perspective that they should lose. IANAL, but from skimming the legal document:
The two major notions are that Yuzu violates Nintendo's copyright [1] by allowing people to play unauthorized copies [2]. In order to do so it allows for bypassing Nintendo's encryption (by taking in the keys, it does not embed the keys in the software) it falls under a violation of the DMCA [3]. Essentially, trying to argue that the keys are copyrighted. Additionally, they claim that every user that has either dumped Nintendo games they lawfully owned and play in Yuzu, or have pirated the roms and played in Yuzu have violated copyright and thus Yuzu should pay up [4].
[1] "In effect, Yuzu turns general computing devices into tools for
massive intellectual property infringement of Nintendo and others’ copyrighted work"
[2] "In other words, without Yuzu’s decryption of Nintendo’s
encryption, unauthorized copies of games could not be played on PCs or Android devices. "
[3] "Recognizing the threats faced by copyright owners like Nintendo in the age of digital piracy, Congress enacted the Anti-Circumvention and Anti-Trafficking provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”), making it illegal to circumvent or traffic in devices that circumvent technological measures put into place by copyright owners to protect against unlawful access to and copying of copyrighted works."
[4] "On information and belief, Yuzu users have (1) dumped Nintendo games they
have lawfully purchased and copied the game ROMs into Yuzu; and (2) obtained Nintendo games online from pirate websites and copied those game ROMs into Yuzu. Each such reproduction constitutes a violation of 17 U.S.C. § 501(a) for which Plaintiff is entitled to damages under 17 U.S.C. § 504 and injunctive relief under § 502"
True, but therefore setting up for the kinds of information that they'd be looking for in discovery. For instance, perhaps Yuzu keeps telemetry data around?
I'm not sure they're necessarily claiming the keys are copywritten (which honestly would be a terrible strategy), but instead that yuzu's ability to injest keys and encrypted copywritten works (decrypting them on the fly as needed like a switch would) constitutes a circumvention device banned by 17 US § 1201.
You might be right, I was connecting this with the Dolphin case which was making the argument that the keys are copyrightable. Essentially this is an extension of that, which is arguing that any circumvention is a violation of 17 US § 1201.
Not under 1201. They can form a copyright circumvention device without being subject to copyright themselves as long as they're used to protect an actual copywritten work (in this case the encrypted game images).
I'm going to assume the encryption is not custom. If it is "off-the-shelf" then they'll have a real hard time proving that without making every browser on the internet a "copyright circumvention device."
But regardless, if they "distribute" (ie, can be freely read off the device without special tools) the keys in the clear, it isn't used to protect anything.
They use AES, but a pretty custom key derivation scheme to get to the AES keys for a specific game given the game's metadata and pre shared root keys installed on the switch at manufacturing time. Yuzu implements that key derivation scheme so that you don't have to track down per game version keys.
A browser does not have the code to decrypt a switch ROM.
It sounds like even then, you'd have to agree to (or read) an EULA to know that this is some magical thing. It is certainly possible to implement something without ever doing either.
It's soft; like a lot of legal concepts, there isn't a black and white test.
At the end of the day it's what can be proven to a jury.
In this case for instance, I don't think there's a decent legal strategy for Yuzu wrt "we didn't know the encryption on switch ROMs was a 1201 protected device".
I don't think that's the case. The games are copyrighted. The keys only need to constitute an effective anti-circumvention scheme (any technological measure that “effectively controls access” to a work) to be illegal to code for.
'Effectively' has a different meaning than y'all are reading. It's not effectively as in 'an effective, well constructed lock', but instead as in 'for all intents and purposes'.
The law doesn't say 'it's illegal to break a lock until it's been broken'.
A door without a lock or sign saying "keep out" is not "effective for all intents and purposes." Further, you can buy a switch and never agree to any EULA or other contracts.
>>...technological measure "effectively controls access to a work" if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
> It's not copy protection. It may change the structure and content of the page that is sent but that is not copy protection.
It is though!
Often news websites use the user agent to detect e.g. the google crawler, and allow google to index the contents of news articles; but then throw up a paywall when anyone with a normal browser shows up.
I recall some news websites tried to threaten people making browser extensions with the DMCA/CFAA as they considered it working around their copy protection to illegally gain access to their content.
>recall some news websites tried to threaten people making browser extensions with the DMCA/CFAA as they considered it working around their copy protection to illegally gain access to their content.
Source? I spent two minutes looking and failed to find anything like that, hardly an exhaustive search though.
Hard to argue a user agent could be DRM though, considering it's a string I the user send to the website.
> [4] "On information and belief, Yuzu users have (1) dumped Nintendo games they have lawfully purchased and copied the game ROMs into Yuzu; and (2) obtained Nintendo games online from pirate websites and copied those game ROMs into Yuzu. Each such reproduction constitutes a violation of 17 U.S.C. § 501(a) for which Plaintiff is entitled to damages under 17 U.S.C. § 504 and injunctive relief under § 502"
How on earth can they claim that the developers of Yuzu are responsible for copying done by their users?
You can claim what ever the hell you want, doesn't mean it will last longer then 5 seconds in court. It's very common people make outlandish claims, these then get dismantled by a judge and jury into usually 1 that sticks. Even though you went in with 50.
Agreed. Most law suits throw everything at the wall and then see what sticks. The first thing the defense will always do is file a Motion to Dismiss listing a reason that each count of the suit fails to state a claim.
There's a concept of "contributory" infringement: while you're not personally infringing the copyright, you know about the infringement and you're helping it, encouraging it, and so on. This is what the studios sued Sony under for the Betamax. Of course, they lost, and that precedent is helpful for Yuzu, though not a total slam dunk: what they wrote on their website in terms of marketing and instructions and so on could matter here, what the devs wrote to each other or publicly that might reveal their knowledge and encouragement of infringement could matter, etc.
More significant is that the Betamax case is from the 80s and precedes the DMCA. The DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions are broad and have been interpreted broadly. The result is that the decryption is a problem all on its own, regardless of things like fair use that were a major factor in Sony's victory.
It's worth noting that Nintendo's first three claims are DMCA section 1201 anti-circumvention claims, with the other claims of personal infringement by the developers and contributory infringement (where the part you quoted is from) being kind of tacked on at the end.
Sony Music also sued Cox (and won) on willful contributory infringement because they were aware specific users were repeatedly sharing copyrighted material and still continued offering service to those users.
> The legal document claims that over a million copies of last year's The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom were downloaded prior to the game's official retail release. As a result, the company is now seeking damages and is demanding that the Yuzu emulator is shut down.
Quite the leap from existing as an emulator to inexplicably being held liable for some independent leak.
Not necessarily. It's fairly easy to prove that if the emulator did not exist, the leak would be fairly inconsequential; and considering how easy it is to show the percentage of pirating users versus legitimate users (probably 95%+), it's not a good look.
There's also the issue that, unlike prior emulators, Yuzu risks running afoul of DMCA anti-trafficking provisions for circumvention devices and software that uses circumvention devices. So, while per se emulating the Switch might be legal, decrypting the games may be illegal (as would software that is useless if it is unable to do that decryption).
> Not necessarily. It's fairly easy to prove that if the emulator did not exist, the leak would be fairly inconsequential…
Well, no. Pirated Switch games can be played on a hacked Switch or a flashcart with no emulation necessary. Common sense suggests emulation would be significantly more common, but can Nintendo prove that in court, or prove that the leak wouldn’t have happened without Yuzu’s existence?
Nintendo can't prove the leak wouldn't have happened without Yuzu. But they don't have to. They can simply show that Yuzu made it infinitely worse. Also, suing Yuzu does not preclude suing emulator makers or flashcart makers - they can all be sued as they all have culpability.
The law doesn't work on strict abstract principles. Windows has a million uses of which piracy is just one. Yuzu has two uses (playing legitimate backups and pirated backups), of which Nintendo may successfully argue, both are piracy (due to the circumvention of encryption in both cases). In which case, the only possible use in 99.9%+ of cases... is for illegal activity.
I don't think it's likely that software developers can be sued on the grounds of "some people use it for illegal activity". Can IP rights holders sue any torrent tracker on that basis? Not to mention that playing backups of your own games is explicitly legal in many places, and I'd be shocked if it isn't in the US. Lastly, one can make an argument that the purpose of Yuzu isn't playing "Switch games", but emulating the Switch hardware stack, which is legal. For example, writing your own Switch homebrew and running it on Yuzu is permitted.
One thing to take into account is that civil trials don't require the absolute highest standards of proof, such as proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Usually much lower evidentiary standards such as "preponderance of the evidence" and other malarky.
I'm confused as to how or why the Yuzu team would be held liable for this. Is it their responsibility to ensure that people don't donate money to them if the timing of that donation coincides with an unrelated leak of Nintendo's IP? If emulation is allowed and the Yuzu team itself isn't engaging in the promotion of piracy, I don't see what the case is here.
At the time Zelda leaked, it didn't work correctly in the release version of Yuzu. The lawsuit claims that the Yuzu team released a patched version that fixed the issue before the game's official retail launch date, but they have some sort of exclusivity period (looks like one week as far as I can tell) where new releases are exclusive to their Patreon before they become freely available. Nintendo is arguing that the large boost in Patreon subscribers was due to people wanting to get access to the patch so they could play Zelda early.
I think this would be a big issue for them if they specifically marketed it as "the Zelda fix" or insinuated that the only purpose of that update was to make this leaked game playable. Otherwise, they could just say that updates address the dissimilarities between the Switch hardware and the emulator. How can Nintendo prove ill intent here?
They (publicly) blocked discussion of TOTK fixes until the game's release day, but that's still 0th hour and any build to include the fix would have been early access for whatever the ea period is: https://github.com/yuzu-emu/yuzu/issues/10226#issuecomment-1...
That's an interesting argument, but I'm not sure it'll hold water with the judge unless they can't show such arrangements are very common with donation-funded software and was in place well before this leak, e.g. yes, we made money off this leak, but not because we designed the model to profit off people wanting to pirate/cause loss of sales, it's just how this has always worked.
We'll see. I'm not really sure there's anything they could have done better in that case as a positive defense if they had this in mind, though - like, releasing it not behind a timegate paywall could be an argument for actively destroy game sales even more, by that logic, and actively waiting until post-launch to release it could be argued to be around trying to extract more money from people to focus on it more.
Ouch, releasing patch before official launch sort of proves they pirated the game themselves, which somewhat undermines defense that they don't encourage piracy.
Not necessarily. I don't know the context, but bugs/issues reported from users may have been sufficient to patch their code without touching the ROM themselves.
If you read their writeup about fixing the game, the issues appear to stem from it heavily using a texture format that most GPUs don't support natively and almost no games having done much with that texture format before, so losslessly reencoding them was eating truly astonishing amounts of VRAM to avoid load time issues, and they reworked a bunch of memory management things to make it playable without 12G+ of VRAM.
I don't know if there were any other issues, but at least on that one, it doesn't seem like they needed deep knowledge of the game to try reworking it.
You can prove irrelevant correlation. They weren't even paid for TOTK. The fact that users may have intended to play TOTK is something Yuzu had no control over.
This feels similar to arguing that the Flipper Zero is a car theft tool because people went out and bought one after a video explaining how to use it to break some common car's lock was posted.
I mean, yes, they presumably turned a larger profit correlated to people going and buying it for something illegal, but it's not solely or even primarily used for that, people would be doing this without it, and they didn't have any involvement or encouragement that people do anything criminal with it.
> It's fairly easy to prove that if the emulator did not exist, the leak would be fairly inconsequential
That. Literally doesn't make any logical sense. That's like arguing that if computers didn't exist, the leak would be fairly inconsequential ... or if electricity didn't exist, the leak would be fairly inconsequential.
Well, let me put it this way. Why don't they sue Dell then? If Dell computers didn't exist, pirated games couldn't be played! Or sue themselves, because if hacked Switches didn't exist, pirated games couldn't be played!
I really can't just play the pirate game on a software emulator either. It needs an operating system to run on, hardware to run the operating system on, etc.
Of course, it doesn't make sense. But Nintendo has infinite money and infinite lawyers compared to these people. That means they can do whatever they want with the law.
That's when you go to the judge and ask for a summary dismissal on the grounds that it is ridiculous (they should be suing the power companies instead!). Maybe they say yes and you walk away.
I mean, the switch has been hacked to hell and back and is more than capable of playing pirated games without any emulators. It isn't necessarily easy to show stats on pirating users since they obviously work to cloak that behavior from Nintendo.
Sure. Just look up the DeCSS controversy which got the creator of a DVD ripping software arrested and barely avoiding extradition, or the 09 F9 controversy where the MPAA attempted to censor a number from the internet.
This provision in the DMCA has been most often used against developers of unauthorized DVD copying software, Blu-ray copying software, etc; and the force of the legal argument has been well proven previously. It nearly killed RealPlayer when they made unauthorized software for DVD playback.
You can also see this law invoked in Apple v Psystar; when Apple sued Psystar for circumventing protections in macOS to allow running macOS on non-Apple hardware. That lawsuit was dragged all the way to the final appeal to SCOTUS - and Psystar was shredded the whole way. Expect Apple v Psystar to come up in a Nintendo vs Yuzu lawsuit; because running macOS on unapproved hardware sounds awfully similar to running games on unapproved hardware.
If Nintendo were to succeed invoking it here - emulation would be legal. Decrypting games would be illegal. Consoles before, say, the Wii (IIRC) would be free to emulate due to not being encrypted - but newer games, being encrypted, would be off-limits just like DVDs.
That was one of the few times, when I can look back and feel like the user has won. It has been something of a steady decline since.
I would love for some clear indication that we have some digital rights left, but I am not certain the same reaction would not be possible to be replicated today.
I wonder if it would be possible to develop a Switch emulator without the ability to decrypt any games. Users would be expected to bring already-decrypted games, which they could decrypt via an "unrelated" program.
There is some overlap with that case, but also some major differences. Psystar was distributing computers with a modified version of Mac OS X preinstalled, whereas Yuzu is not modifying or distributing any Nintendo-copyrighted materials. However, Psystar was also charged with violating DMCA section 1201(a), the section dealing with creating copyright circumvention devices, and Yuzu could potentially be found in violation of that.
However, Yuzu requires that you bring your own decryption keys obtained from your own Switch device; it cannot circumvent copy protections without that. The only circumvention code included in Yuzu is basically just standard 128-bit XTS-AES decryption code; it seems like a ruling that makes that code illegal to distribute would be a bad idea.
There's actually multiple arguments with zero proof there.
- they didn't prove that Yuzu contributed to piracy (and since the amount of piracy tools on the Switch itself that's far from obvious that Yuzu is a first choice)
- they didn't prove that the leak itself lead to a loss of revenue. And that's also very hard of an argument to make considering that this game was a huge commercial success.
From my podcast law degree, in civil action like this yes. To get standing you must show you were harmed in some way and that the court can remedy that harm. That is just one of many parts of the standing test that a federal court will apply.
> To get standing you must show you were harmed in some way and that the court can remedy that harm. That is just one of many parts of the standing test that a federal court will apply.
Not in copyright cases. You have to show harm for actual damages, but copyright has statutory damages: you only need to demonstrate a violation of the law (the copyright statutes) for damages [1]:
> In all countries where the Berne Convention standards apply, copyright is automatic, and need not be obtained through official registration with any government office. Once an idea has been reduced to tangible form, for example by securing it in a fixed medium (such as a drawing, sheet music, photograph, a videotape, or a computer file), the copyright holder is entitled to enforce their exclusive rights.[35] However, while registration is not needed to exercise copyright, in jurisdictions where the laws provide for registration, it serves as prima facie evidence of a valid copyright and enables the copyright holder to seek statutory damages and attorney's fees.[48] (In the US, registering after an infringement only enables one to receive actual damages and lost profits.)
Statutory damages do not need to correspond to actual damages [2]:
> The charges allow copyright holders, who succeed with claims of infringement, to receive an amount of compensation per work (as opposed to compensation for losses, an account of profits or damages per infringing copy). Statutory damages can in some cases be significantly more than the actual damages suffered by the rightsholder or the profits of the infringer.
Are you aware of any precedent that "enabling" copyright infringement is tantamount to copyright infringement?
Copyright obviously protects against the retransmittal of the copyrighted work. If Yuzu hasn't done that, it isn't guilty of copyright infringement. Instead, Nintendo is arguing that if Yuzu didn't exist, fewer people would have committed copyright infringement. That in itself is not a copyright claim.
> Are you aware of any precedent that "enabling" copyright infringement is tantamount to copyright infringement?
Short answer, I'm not aware of precedent prohibiting emulation on the grounds of "enabling" copyright infringement the way an emulator does. But even in the US with fair use, I don't think emulation is always legal, and regardless Nintendo doesn't really need to demonstrate copyright infringement because simply suing would be enough to burden emulator developers with legal fees. See the UltraHLE emulator situation [5]. (Tangent: In Japan, there is no fair use, so I think the harm of emulation to Nintendo's sales would be enough to violate some kind of copyright law in Japan.)
The rest of this comment (the long answer-but-not-really-an-answer) is mostly spitballing on my part.
> Copyright obviously protects against the retransmittal of the copyrighted work. If Yuzu hasn't done that, it isn't guilty of copyright infringement. Instead, Nintendo is arguing that if Yuzu didn't exist, fewer people would have committed copyright infringement. That in itself is not a copyright claim.
Here is the closest situation I'm aware of. In the US, there were criminal and civil cases against Team Xecutor, who made devices and software capable of circumventing the Nintendo Switch's measures against running unauthorized copies of games [1]:
> In September 2020, Canadian national Gary Bowser and French national Max "MAXiMiLiEN" Louarn were arrested for designing and selling "circumvention devices", specifically products to circumvent Nintendo Switch copy protection, and were named, along with Chinese citizen Yuanning Chen, in a federal indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle, WA on August 20, 2020.[3] Each of the three men named in the indictment faced 11 felony counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to circumvent technological measures and to traffic in circumvention devices, trafficking in circumvention devices, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.[4] Bowser handled public relations for the group, which has been in operation since "at least" 2013.[1][5]
The legal basis of the anti-circumvention criminal cases seemed to have been based on DMCA 1201 [2] (a statute prohibiting circumvention of technical protection measures [3] against access to copyrighted digital data/works/software), even if the purpose of the circumvention is not for actual copyright infringement), but the judge and the US Department of Justice took the estimated financial damages very seriously [4]:
> The public face of a notorious video game piracy group was sentenced today to 40 months in prison for two federal felonies, announced U.S. Attorney Nick Brown. Gary Bowser, 52, a Canadian national of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, pleaded guilty in October 2021 to Conspiracy to Circumvent Technological Measures and to Traffic in Circumvention Devices, and Trafficking in Circumvention Devices. At the sentencing hearing U.S. District Judge Robert S. Lasnik said, “These are serious criminal offenses with real victims and harm to the community.”
> “This piracy scheme is estimated to have caused more than $65 million in losses to video game companies,” said U.S. Attorney Nick Brown. “But the damage goes beyond these businesses, harming video game developers and the small, creative studios whose products and hard work is essentially stolen when games are pirated.”
What if there's no circumvention involved, like in the case of an emulator? Then DMCA 1201 doesn't apply. However, what about the effect of emulation on Nintendo's sales? If you can't mod a Nintendo Switch you bought to play unauthorized copies of Switch games regardless of whether you bought authorized copies, then why should you be able to use an emulator, which might as well be a modded Nintendo Switch in terms of harm to Nintendo's revenue? is something I think Nintendo could convince c...
If a device's only use involves copyright infringement, it's illegal to sell or distribute in the USA. That's how they went after cable descramblers and, less successfully, VCRs in the 80s.
Since getting actual Switch game data necessarily involves violating the DMCA, Nintendo's lawyers will have an easy time showing that the only way yuzu can be useful is if the user violates copyright law, thus making the emulator itself illegal.
The DMCA specifically has language about being entitled to circumvent a technological measure" for "the purpose of enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program". This language has never been tested in court but there is a compelling argument to be made.
The Copyright Office has become increasingly friendly to these types of arguments as well, though they have imposed some limitations on games hardware. The next set of rules/guidance they put out won't be until october (They do it every 3 years).
Yuzu isn't sold* as a product and unless Nintendo can convince the court that the mere act of emulation (or obtaining the console keys required to make Yuzu function in the first place) violate their copyright, then I don't see it personally. You can run code that isn't owned by Nintendo on a Switch. Maybe there is a reasonableness argument that people aren't using Yuzu to play Switch homebrew, but there is a homebrew scene around the Switch.
> Since getting actual Switch game data necessarily involves violating the DMCA,
None of that is related to Yuzu though, Yuzu can only play what you give it.
And no I disagree, the fastest way for me to deplop a switch game is to use an emulator such as Yuzu, it's a much faster feedback loop than a devkit and I'm sure there's a lot of indie games developped or tested this way. So there's also other purposes to this software.
> None of that is related to Yuzu though, Yuzu can only play what you give it.
But if it's only useful when you illegally infringe copyright, its creators could be found civilly liable for such violation.
I did some looking into this case. Nintendo's lawyers appear to be attempting a novel legal argument: they are composing the DMCA with the doctrine of contributory copyright infringement. Under the latter doctrine, purveyors of a device (or software) can be found liable for copyright infringement even if they didn't commit the infringement themselves, if it can be found that the device is only useful for such infringement. Where the DMCA comes in is, Nintendo is arguing that despite not being a copyright circumvention tool in its own right, Yuzu is only useful for playing games whose DRM has been circumvented; therefore distributing it is an offense of trafficking in circumvention technology under the DMCA. It's not really clear whether the courts will accept this interpretation, but if circumvention is "copyright infringement", then the doctrine of contributory infringement could well apply.
It tends not to matter in courts if using an emulator is better than using a devkit (personally I concede that it may well be, especially early in the development cycle). Because the devkit option is available to you provided you pay for a license, and because not paying for such a license is not a legitimate option for Switch development, the courts are not likely to look at Yuzu as legitimate software for non-infringing Switch development. There was that court case involving illegal DVD decryption where the judge, upon hearing the defendant argue that they just wanted to play DVDs on Linux, stated that that was not a legitimate reason for circumventing DVD encryption because they could have played those DVDs on a Windows machine.
It's called contributory copyright infringement. The Supreme Court only ruled that the VCR was legal based on a very narrow use case: if a television broadcast aired once and only once, never to be seen again, and the user could not see it as scheduled, they were legally entitled to use a device to record the broadcast and watch it at a later time -- once, after which they would presumably have to destroy the recording. And there are legal experts who believe even that is a yard too far.
Nintendo's case is a lot more airtight. To play anything on yuzu, you have to defeat the encryption on Switch games, itself a felony DMCA violation (irrespective of how good or bad the encryption is). Therefore, yuzu can only be used to play pirated material, therefore it contributes to copyright infringement.
"But muh homebrew" -- people who want to develop for Switch can get a development license from Nintendo. The fact that this is an option would weaken developing for Switch as a legitimate use for yuzu.
> "But muh homebrew" -- people who want to develop for Switch can get a development license from Nintendo. The fact that this is an option would weaken developing for Switch as a legitimate use for yuzu.
Just because you can get a license from Nintendo doesn't mean the emulator isn't useful for development.
> It's called contributory copyright infringement. The Supreme Court only ruled that the VCR was legal based on a very narrow use case…
That 1984 Supreme Court decision was a 5–4 ruling. Can you imagine the deleterious effect on the home electronics industry if, in 1984, a single justice had voted the other way, and the VCR had been ruled an inherently infringing device?
> people who want to develop for Switch can get a development license from Nintendo
Licensed development only allows publishing Nintendo-approved games through Nintendo-licensed publishers who sell into Nintendo-approved channels, which the vast majority of stuff in the homebrew scene wouldn't qualify for.
It is also fully their fault the game was leaked early. They released the game carts to buyers too early, and their system5 crypto scheme was already broken by the time the game came out. Yuzu didn't break system5, nor do they ship the keys needed to decrypt the dumped game files. They did release patches which specifically fixed issues with Zelda, and that wasn't a good look legally - but it isn't illegal to fix inaccuracies with the software.
I have not heard of anything indicating they themselves released patches fixing issues with ToTK - only that other people made patches for that which the Yuzu team refused to accept until ToTK release. I don't see how random people making patches for an open source project should make the project liable for the existence of the patches.
> Does Nintendo benefit that much from the sales of the Switch hardware?
How many businesses does Sony have for income? Mountains. They could lose PlayStation and it would only be a dent.
How many businesses does Microsoft have for income? Well, they could literally lose Xbox, and it wouldn't even be a dent.
How many businesses does Nintendo have for income? One. And if they lose it, they're done. I think it completely understandable they would be far more defensive considering that gaming is a corporate life and death matter; unlike the competition.
So most console manufacturers take a loss on the console in exchange for controlling the economy of the console and creating a network effect for non cross play games.
Nintendo is actually one of the few companies that make a profit (of a few cents) on their consoles.
Every computer is also NOT the same nowadays.
Modern operating systems abstract a lot of the differences away, but they’re there.
Consoles give game devs a predictable platform to develop against and make guarantees for.
We should ditch the word piracy; unauthorized copying might be illegal and maybe even immoral, but it has nothing to do with stealing a boat by either killing the crew or threatening them into submission. It was a dramatically over the top and silly comparison to have made.
>Does Nintendo benefit that much from the sales of the Switch hardware? It just all seems so wasteful given that every computer is basically the same nowadays.
Yes? They have a closed down system that they market as family friendly and can be quickly docked to a tv or taken on the go. It's a device that didn't really exist at the time; its potential competitors in 2017 were Chinese hardware charging 2-3 times the price. The market and uniqueness is there.
And on top of all of that, selling hardware is also profitable, on top of software. Why wouldn't they benefit in this situation?
> They have a closed down system that they market as family friendly
How can it be family friendly when they sell Night Trap? [1] Night Trap was part of the content that resulted in video game ratings and was given a M rating contemperaneously, I'm not sure if the bar moved, or maybe there's some content change. Of course, in 1992, Nintendo said Night Trap would never be on a Nintendo console, so something has changed.
Marketed as family friendly doesn't mean every single game on the system is rated E/PEGI 7. Disney has the same image and also technically publishes Deadpool, among a variety of R rated media.
But yes, in the beginning they were a lot more strict on that marketing. I'm guessing after 2-3 decades both companies can allow a few indirect exceptions as they expand past universal audiences and into niches.
> I didn’t buy the game - while that would be the right thing to do, it’s like buying an album after you’ve downloaded it...
So, by your own admission you stole the game and you expect Nintendo to be ok with that? I'm sympathetic to you not wanting to have a Switch just to play Nintendo games, but your moral high ground disappeared the instant you decided to not pay for a copy of TOTK.
This is truly awful for the gaming community at large. If this case makes a ruling then it will most likely have an impact on all emulation projects. If Nintendo decides to sue your open source project, how do you mount a legal defense?
Awful for the gaming community at large? Eh, Nintendo products are not as dominating as you think. It is only available in select countries and has a hundred million users at best. Compare that to PC and mobile gaming, it is almost negligible.
Though it would indeed be problematic if American courts manage to establish a precedent criminalizing emulators. That is indeed a real threat; American courts are not known for robustness or integrity.
> Though it would indeed be problematic if American courts manage to establish a precedent criminalizing emulators. That is indeed a real threat; American courts are not known for robustness or integrity.
That's exactly why it's awful for the gaming community and honestly for human culture at large. Video game preservation isn't a thing without emulators. If Nintendo wins this, it means open season on every (major) contributor to an emulator and every emulation project. It means the end of the thriving emulation community and anybody interested in contributing except for a handful who are willing to risk being sued and/or live in a place where the US justice system has no reach.
And it's not like Western Europe is particularly friendly to anything or anybody that circumvents DRM.
Adversarial interoperability is at risk should the circumvention argument be entertained by the court. Don't want a competitor making something compatible even though they are legally allowed? Just protect it with "effective" measures and they aren't allowed to even try to be compatible?
The Switches system1-6 crypto schemes weren't terribly good. system5 even weakend it drammatically and trapdoored them into being permenently weaker. Problem is what constitutes an "effective" anti-circumvention according to the DMCA is not defined.
I hope Nintendo loses because it would be extremely harmful to emulation and software freedom as a whole if they didn't, but at the same time, I hope this knocks the whole "for-profit emulator" practice down a peg for a while. I think this is the same emulator that at one point tried asking people to pay a monthly subscription to play online.
Well in the famous Sony vs Bleem case in which Bleem won, Bleem was a fully commercial company selling their emulators. It's just that they created it in such a way that you still needed to own the ps1 game disk and insert it into your dreamcast.
I for one have exclusively used yuzu to play backups of games I legally purchased on a computer that can render them with higher frame-rates and quality than official switch hardware.
This is my legal right, and Yuzu provided open source code to make this task easier for me.
Nintendo is looking for a scapegoat here for their wasted investment in DRM technology.
Huh, guess I better go make sure the copy on my Steam Deck is up to date. Not that I've actually bothered acquiring a single Switch ROM, there's so damn many neat little mid-sized games on the thing.
If anything this lawsuit makes it difficult to morally justify purchasing Nintendo hardware and supporting them. Having really enjoyed the first Zelda game on an emulator I would otherwise have really considered it.
So you played their game on an emulator, and you "would otherwise have really considered" paying for their products (but you didn't). How are they losing out by alienating you?
Can you really claim to be a future customer of a product when you can get and are getting the value the product provides without having to pay for it?
It's funny to me how every time the topic of piracy comes up, the world suddenly becomes so full of people who totally like giving companies money out of the sheer goodness of their hearts. And then by next week when it's time for another post about how open source maintainers get burnt out from a lack of material support, we all suddenly remember how human nature actually works.
Yep. My last Steam purchases include Cities: Skylines, Graveyard Keeper, Mini Metro, etc. All games I bought after I pirated and played them for a few hours. If I can't pirate a game, then I won't buy the game. Exceptions include games with a proper demo, like The Stanley Parable, or games that're love on first sight, like Lethal Company.
I have 112 paid PC games in my steam library and over the years I've owned 6 consoles as well as building or buying many gaming computers. I'm definitely in the market for games and machines to play them.
They didn't lose out on any of those things – at worst, they lost the potential that someone who recently played their game without paying for the hardware or software would pay next time.
"This game was so great that I would consider paying next time, but I'm definitely not going to pay this time" doesn't seem, to me, like a credulous position.
We're talking about Nintendo. They literally don't sell their older games and consoles. Your only options are the (sometimes severely overpriced) 2nd hand market and piracy.
That might be relevant if we were talking about someone wanting to play the Nintendo DS port of Chrono Trigger. But we're talking about Breath of the Wild & the Switch, which are in stock at every store that sells video games.
I bought prior generations of Nintendo consoles. I had not considered current consoles. I recently reconsidered via discovering current games via emulation and am now put off by present behavior. What did they gain? historically downloading a small file has been a poor predictor of people's willingness to spend $20 let alone $400 for console and game.
Also historically emulation has been teaser because they tend to trail console release by years and only gain good support by the time present generation is passe. Probably the biggest issue here is emulation is unusually good because nintendo released gamecube 1 2 and 3 and their latest effort is weak enough that PC actually plays at a higher res.
Just my take, but they've ensured the Switch and games I bought from them will be the last. I prefer to use my hardware keys and game carts on PC for higher resolution.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Nintendo caught using an open source emulator for the switch, without any sort of credit to the authors after suing? If so, I have no empathy for them.
Nintendo's NES/SNES emulators have always been their own in-house tools. The NES/SNES Classic consoles did run on Linux, and Nintendo published the operating system source code as required by the software licenses, appropriately. The emulators are not part of the source release, and very likely derived from the same ones used on Wii virtual console (possibly older, Animal Crossing had a NES emulator on the GameCube too).
There's a popular myth floating around that Nintendo downloaded Super Mario Bros. off the internet only to sell it back to players via the Wii virtual console, but I'm only comfortable with calling it a myth because it's based on the fact that the embedded iNES file in the VC release is identical to iNES files you can find online. There's only one standalone version of Super Mario Bros. on the NES, and you can trivially recreate an exact file on your very own if you have the cartridge and a ROM dumping utility. It's a pretty good possibility that Nintendo created their virtual ROM in exactly the same fashion. The iNES format itself is very simple, and Nintendo hired the iNES developer to work on their in-house software; he could have easily just brought that same format into their official projects. (EDIT: This last sentence appears to have been another myth I bought into, see the reply to this comment.)
My understanding is that The "Nintendo hired the iNES Developer" story is actually it's own myth!
The person referenced who Nintendo hired is Kawase Tomohiro.
The basis for calling him "The iNES Developer" is that, in a changelog for 0.7 of iNES, Marat Fayzullin - the developer of iNES - wrote: "Sound support completely rewritten, thanks to Kawase Tomohiro"
That is the entirety of the association. That single line in a changelog. Based on similar "thanks" lines it was probably because they reported some emulation issues and not because they personally rewrote the sound support for the emulator, but resulted in Marat doing so. It's actually interesting how these stories seem to change over time. The last time I heard this, the story was that Nintendo had hired somebody who contributed to iNES, which was at least technically true if a bit misleading, but it seems that now the story is that they hired *the* iNES Developer. Which seems particularly silly when we consider the basis is that 8 word changelog line.
Could be buying into the myth, but I read somewhere that there was header or metadata in one of the ROMs that basically betrayed that it had been downloaded from a popular ROM site. Is that not right?
Interestingly, their NES emulator uses the file format of the freeware INES emulator (which became the de facto standard format for all NES emulators, and of course for distributing ROMs online).
At the very least, this indicates that Nintendo definitely relied on resources and documentation from the NES emulation community. But it also raises questions as to why they used the INES format as opposed to some internal format of their own: was it just because they wanted to use a spec they found online instead of writing their own, or did they pirate their own games to test (or even ship)?
I recall something like that when they released those mini consoles like the mini NES (NES Classic). But looking into it now, it seems that only used OSS software (linux, busy box, alsa, etc.).
> Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Nintendo caught using an open source emulator for the switch, without any sort of credit to the authors after suing?
Majesco Entertainment published some switch games made by Mistic Software, which used an open source emulator without credit and in violation of its license (and therefore were infringing copyright). Atari was somehow involved as well. Nintendo had no involvement, unless you consider them responsible for not doing a thorough enough license audit of every company that publishes Switch games or something.
Nintendo was not involved. Mistic Software ported Windows/Mac computer games to Wii using ScummVM, a virtual machine program under the GPL 2.0 or later license at the time (now 3.0 or later), without crediting the ScummVM team [1]:
> In December 2008, the ScummVM team learned that the recently released Wii ports of three Humongous Entertainment Junior Adventure titles, Freddi Fish and the Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds, Pajama Sam: No Need to Hide When It's Dark Outside, and Spy Fox: Dry Cereal, have all used the ScummVM engine without proper attribution. The games were published on request of Atari through Majesco Entertainment, who turned to Mistic Software to port the games. Mistic had used ScummVM for these, but failed to credit the developers. While the ScummVM team contacted gpl-violations.org for legal advice, Atari instead threatened to sue the ScummVM team, as the terms of Nintendo Wii development kit heavily restricted the use of open source software, including the GPL. A settlement was made in 2009, in which ScummVM would drop the investigation of the GPL violation, on the condition that Mistic would sell or destroy all GPL-violating copies of the games, make a donation to the Free Software Foundation, and pay the legal fees. As a result, this legal dispute significantly limited the availability of the Wii ports of these three titles.[1]
Speculating here but it feels like part of Nintendo's beef is the popularity of PC form factors that look like a Nintendo Switch. Most notably the Steam Deck but there are loads of them.
The detachable joycon with accelerometer control are a mechanic in some games (eg. Zelda crossbow aim). I would imagine this would be worse experience on steam deck.
By the by, I recently switched to using a Dualsense as my SD external controller and found that the gyro controls make for an excellent desktop and M+K game controller. Surprised I didn’t think to check earlier.
Better as in much better framerate with no performance drops. At least that's what I've heard.
Pretty much all the games I have played allowed to disable the motion controls. I think it counts towards accessibility. Personally I really dislike the whole motion control aspect so always turn them off. Zelda included.
I'm sure there are other tradeoffs as well. But would love it see what it's like on an emulator. Or maybe not, it might make running games on the original hardware feel terrible :)
That has not been my experience with switch games on the Steam Deck. Anytime shaders are loaded the FPS seems to stutter which in the newer Mario game is like every few seconds at first and it gets better the longer you play.
I still prefer the switch for switch games myself.
Not in my experience. Definitely performance drops on the Deck. And even when it's running well, shader caches or whatever can make it stutter. Still very cool to be able to have all my games on one device though, even if it doesn't run as well.
Note: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.
In the EU, reverse engineering is allowed by law if the reason for doing so is interoperability by the one who owns a license to the product in question.
"The authorisation of the rightholder shall not be required where reproduction of the code and translation of its form within the meaning of points (a) and (b) of Article 4(1) are indispensable to obtain the information necessary to achieve the interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, provided that the following conditions are met:
(a) those acts are performed by the licensee or by another person having a right to use a copy of a program, or on their behalf by a person authorised to do so;
(b) the information necessary to achieve interoperability has not previously been readily available to the persons referred to in point (a); and
(c) those acts are confined to the parts of the original program which are necessary in order to achieve interoperability."
Luckily Nintendo (Shadowrun is still some years away, when Ninsonmicro determines what is legal and what isn't) is not the authority to determine if something is illegal or not. But of course they are entitled to their own opinion.
Here in France, as far as I know I have a right to private copy, which I pay for through a specific tax whenever I buy storage. I can rip my DVDs, Blu-rays, or even Nintendo Switch cartridges or hard drive, perfectly legally, even if it means cracking open the thing and circumvent stuff. It's awfully less convenient than downloading the stuff, but it is legal. Or at least it was 20 years ago, but I'm not aware of any change on that front.
Now there should be some ground rule. When you buy something, it's supposed to be yours, and you should be allowed to do what you want with it, especially studying it and sharing the results of your study. Any rule that allows some big corporation to retain power over something that's supposed to be yours is serious overreach and should be shut down.
Now Nintendo does have a big problem here: without the exclusivity of their form factor (which is arguably difficult to improve upon[1]), all they have left is the exclusivity of their game library.
In Sweden it was like that, but after some prodding and patting by "market forces" on the politicians it's no longer legal, but the tax is still there.
TL;DR: it's more complicated than I thought. First, the law was introduced in 2006, so before it, circumventing DRM and publishing how to do it was not a crime. (Of course, publishing copyrighted works with no proper authorisation was already a crime, regardless of DRM.)
Then for a brief time, circumventing DRM was outlawed. But fear of foreign monopolies (most notably Microsoft) and free software lobbying eventually had those articles amended, effectively exempting research and free software from any sanction. The exact limits of the current law are still fuzzy, but it seems pretty clear that using VLC to make copy of a DVD I own is 100% legal in France.
Are they really rare? I have an older switch that is easily hackable and can’t be blocked due to it being a hardware vulnerability but I have never bothered to hack it as I just don’t know if it is worth it. Not sure if you can continue to play online once hacked and I assume once hacked play pirated games as why else hack it. But I haven’t pirated games in a long time I wonder if it is worth it. What the switch really needs is a messaging app maybe hacked switches can do that idk.
I found it funny that Linus of LMG endorsed this setup not because it is better, but because Yuzu doesn't hold your savegames hostage. If you don't know: you can't backup saves, they get written to NAND, not the SD card. you can however buy cloud backup, but only for games that don't opt out.
Truly a problem of Nintendo's own petty making if even switch owners with a legitimate copy prefer to not run on their hardware.
If you have a hacked console (paperclip with a 1st year console, modchip with later ones), you can back up your saves using a homebrew app (checkpoint) if you remember to do it regularly.
You can also copy the saves off the console (or the emulated NAND you're supposed to create when hacking it) by running a different app (TegraExplorer) right from the bootloader. I had to do this when I messed up an update and my system wouldn't boot, but I hadn't backed up my saves in months.
I do wonder if anyone's attempted to get nintendo to respond to a subject access request in the EU to get their saves from their cloud service.
I didn't want to run CFW, so I have actually written a tool to back up and decrypt all saves in a single click given any vulnerable Switch in RCM Mode. It's been really quite useful.
The savegame situation was part of what made me less interested in my Switch over time - I just didn't want to invest much time in any long-term games where I couldn't actually back up the savegames in any direct way. Now it gets pulled out every now and then when the kids want to play Club House Games or Mario Party.
I played BotW on my friend's Switch, and loved it, but didn't really wanna buy another console.
So I went through the tribulations of setting it up on the Deck (pro tip: use EmuDeck, I didn't know about it back then).
I don't know about better, but for me it felt the same as the Switch! The only slight confusion thing was button labeling, but it's quick to get used to.
I can confirm a PS4 controller tilt sensor works with yuzu, so fundamentally it's possible, not sure a plugin for parsing the steamdeck tilt sensor exists though
Yeah, why pay for something, if you can also simply download/steal it? Something which took a lot of work to make?
Reading comments like this I can almost understand Nintendos stance on emulation. Suing the emulator team is certainly not the right thing to do, but come on.
At least pay for the game if you are not paying for the console.
I mean Valve literally had a trailer with a nintendo emulator as an app installed... Valve doesn't need to do RND for its games because they can just use whatever is on steam that is playable on the deck plus a ton of games from nintendo consoles via emulators as a selling point.
Nintendo could do the exact same thing if they made their platforms open like Steam does. That the switch is limited to only Switch games is entirely a choice they made because their whole existence they've been all about proprietary and locked down.
The lockout ship was there to prevent piracy. By the time the console made its way to North America there were known bypasses. Ironically enough if there's an argument to be made about what saved the industry and how quality control was involved it would be the Nintendo seal of quality and then the strong arming that they did to various retailers saying that if they sold any game that didn't have Nintendo's backing they would be blacklisted. At the time being blacklisted by a company like Nintendo where every kid was requesting their product was an impossibility
That's impossible; the lockout chip debuted with the North American version of the console, so there couldn't have been known bypasses beforehand. The Famicom had no CIC.
The lockout chip is what made the "seal of quality" scheme feasible in the first place. If alternative games were widely available, Nintendo wouldn't have had nearly as much leverage to strongarm with.
The minute the device was released in North America the lockout chip was already defeated by passthrough devices that took a "real" game and used that for the CIC bootup process. There were also multiple variants of voltage spike attacks and revisions of the console to guard against those, so it was certainly happening otherwise Nintendo wouldn't have wasted time changing the design.
Also, look at the timeline and the history behind Tengen which was essentially a company created by Atari specifically with the purpose of publishing their games on Nintendo and used essentially corporate espionage to get the underlying MPU used for the CIC logic that was a corporate secret. The actual lawsuits get filed a few years once Nintendo had enough evidence, but it was going on from the start of the lifespan of the console.
The NES was released in North America in late 1985. By 1987 there were commercially available games (from Tengen) that were playable without the permission of Nintendo. Tengen was not the only one or even the only method being used to break that console at that time.
And then there is Game Genie, which effectively can work around all of these problems. Sure, they included some logic to play nice and let the NES check the CIC again, but you can work around that with a game genie code itself! In the early days Game Genie and GameShark devices were well known for being vectors for piracy and they leaned into that.
*EDIT* This doesn't even get into the VAST array of devices that existed to clone cartridges or adapt floppy drives similar to how the Famicom did. At worst those required a stupid dummy cart to sit in them that never gets removed or the manufacturer did that for you and put a CIC in the device. Some used various attacks mentioned earlier to work around even having to do that.
As an aside to this, are there any documentaries or clips or things to read about "retro" console piracy that necessitated something like the lockout chip? I mean at this point I know about flashcarts but I dont know a thing about back when the NES wouldve been new-ish, let alone before then.
Steam isn't open, Windows OS isn't even open. Windows is "semi-open", in that Microsoft can't stop you for developing and publishing whatever they want on the platform, while still not sharing source code.
Microsoft only has (de facto) control of the Microsoft Store.
Steam =/= steam deck. And even then it's not really playing native Linux games if you argue Linux. Its just emulating (in layman's terms, I know what WINE stands for) where most devs actually make their games for.
Microsoft doesn't seem to care (or it's legally dangerous to care). Nintendo does.
What's happening under the hood (Windows translations layer, etc) doesn't really matter for this comparison of Switch to Steam Deck. It only matters what the user is allowed to do/run on the thing. On Nintendo where it's closed, the user is prevented. On Steam Deck where it's open, the user is not.
you seem to be conflating "open" and "open source"
nintendo doesnt have to make the switch open source to make it open, they just have to allow people to make whatever the hell they want for it, but their business model depends on it being locked down (closed)
A bit, but I don't necessarily mean open source either. My main point is that people call Steam "open" but they in fact do not allow you to make whatever the hell you want. They are infamously vague about what they do or don't allow and devs constantly have trouble contacting them when they have issues, be it getting a game on the store, enabling steam features, keys, abusive users, etc.
Given all that this doesn't feel like a plea to let people publish their games. Just a thinly veiled port begging.
The hardware argument makes even less sense though. People in these circles complain so much about native performance, why would they want to install Linux on a Nintendo Switch like the PS3 days?
Even if they could, it wouldn't let them play switch games better. It doesn't solve the clear problem here that is the super technically minded people wanting to play Mario and Zelda in 4k/60.
I was talking about the Steam Deck. When the original is the Switch, the Steam Deck is the most logical comparison. "Steam" is just an app running on top of the Steam Deck, and that app isn't even privileged on the system. The user could remove it if they wanted to.
"Open" doesn't mean "open source" although in the case of the Steam Deck, it is both (not including the Steam application, but as I mentioned you can use the Steam Deck for whatever you want including removing the Steam application, so it's not a requirement or a blocker. I know someone who installed their own Bazzite flavor that has Steam removed and only uses Lutris to install GOG games).
Also Steam Store's requirements are only for games listed in their store. As has been mentioned, this is not a requirement for running on the Steam Deck. This is in sharp contrast to Nintendo.
It would be amazing if Valve stepped up with legal funds/protection there. They do get money from people buying SteamDecks for emulation and well... free publicity if they take on Nintendo.
That flies in the face of what Valve did TO Dolphin. It was Valve that proactively reached out to Nintendo before putting Dolphin in Steam. Of course Nintendo responded "please don't", so Dolphin got blocked.
Very important (imo) nitpick, Valve didn't block Dolphin, they took it off their store. Blocked sounds like they made it so to dang run it, but you can install whatever you want on a steam deck and valve isn't going to stop you.
This case isn't just about emulation; the Dolphin devs hard-coded the firmware into the emulator, which is why Nintendo had any standing. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5bfpS-WYUA
I don't think this is likely. There is a convincible future where Nintendo publishes more and more games outside of their hardware platforms, so Valve needs to keep good business relations with Nintendo.
This future seems very unlikely. Nintendo has published like 1 phone game? They are very much a fan of their garden.
It course I would love to see this. I think Nintendo makes some very good games but have no interest in having specific physical hardware do end up not playing them.
There current lineup of mobile games are Mario Kart Tour, Animal Crossing Pocket Camp, Fire Emblem Heroes, Super Mario Run, and Pikmin Bloom. These have brought in over $1B in revenue, mostly from Fire Emblem.
Additionally, Nintendo is heavily involved in The Pokémon Company, so they saw the closed doors numbers of Pokemon Go.
I don't think it's crazy to think Nintendo will have a major presence outside of its own hardware in the future. Nintendo as a company always feels about two bad console cycles away from ruin. This feels doubly true with them putting handheld and console gaming into the same basket with Switch.
I also don't think it's crazy for Nintendo to decide that they can sell more games if they sell them on other platforms. In many ways the whole concept of a console exclusive is legacy thinking when the consoles had major architectural differences and porting was a major process.
On other hand after sale of device emulation does not pay... And selling games is where they earn money. Fight for emulation is useless legal fight for them and they are not org build for litigation.
But if tons of people are partly buying a Steam Deck because it is a great way to play loads of retro games from NES to Switch in the same console they are still likely to buy some games from Steam which is sitting right there.
Valve doesn't really benefit that much financially from emulation though. Steam deck profit margins are probably razor thin given the cost of the competition (many of whom are in China on top of it all).
through given how mainstream the switch hardware is you could argue that Yuzu isn't that different to WINE as you don't need to emulate anything but just provide compatible OS interfaces like WINE.
(if running out on ARM, there is still ARM to x86 emulation but that is just generic ARM to x86 emulation which has not that much to do with Yuzo per se)
Wine/Proton is not an emulator, it doesn't emulate a console nor architecture. Yuzu does emulate both an architecture (ARM on x86) and the console. It then requires dumped games and and system firmware to run, which are not freely distributable.
Wine/Proton is a community implementation of the Windows APIs for Linux, it uses no Microsoft code nor needs any. It runs binaries that Valve already has permission to distribute (the games).
yes, but their interest is in emulating software distributed by steam
other games are only as much of interest as it might be games which could end up on steam or games which show some issue with the emulation which could be used to improve proton
there is also the thing that proton or wine just barely count as emulation, they are a bit of emulation but mostly just providing compatible OS interfaces adaption
(through Yuzu might but be that much different given how "mainstream" (but old) the switch hardware is)
You can just as easily run pirated games on real hardware as you can a steamdeck, and vice-versa. You're conflating emulation and piracy. Emulation does not mean piracy as it is perfectly legal (and moral) to dump a game that you own so that you can play it on your preferred hardware.
Running pirated games on real hardware requires tracking down a hackable Switch, which is not completely simple. I've seen torrents floating which contain Switch games alongside pre-setup emulators so you can just download and go.
The majority of HN makes a living from software that by nature can’t be pirated, so they have little sympathy for people who work on software that can be pirated.
Nintendo bring this in themselves with their own policies.
There are so many hardware platforms I can support, and one that hardly ever does sales and refuses to bring their games to other platforms is not that appealing.
I buy games on PC, I buy games on XB, I've even rebought some games between the platforms to play couch co-op with my kid.
Steam and XB have enough sales to make this an option, Nintendo on the other hand is adamant about wringing every last penny from you.
These days I don't have time for Nintendo's nonsense. They want to live in their walled garden, they can have it.
I play my switch games on my PC completely legally. All the games I play are owned by me, and all of them were backed up using my own switch and my own prod.keys.
> As a result, Nintendo ... is demanding that the Yuzu emulator is shut down.
When corporations like Uber violate multiple laws, do they get shut down? When Amazon treats its employees poorly, does it get shut down? When Google forbids manufacturers to pre-install competitor apps, does it get shut down? Well, it seems that as long as copyright is not infringed, everything is ok.
Also it seems to me that Nintendo might themselves violate antitrust laws by using their monopoly power on market of Nintendo-compatible games, and not allowing enough competition there.
Anyone can sue anyone for any reason at any time. Unless the lawsuit is in bad faith and meritless (only a court can make that determination), there is no argument to be had about "lawfare". The only difference here and in other companies is that Nintendo actually follows through with their legal threats instead of just filing complaints they don't intend to take to court.
If we don't like companies abusing their power, we can complain and decide not to buy the products of companies doing that sort of thing, and support their competitors. There's only so far courts takes you, for a consumer company the real trial is most definitely in the public court of opinion.
I can't see their user base (or should I say fans?) caring about some cheap-ass emulator crowd. Nintendo's cash cow is people who buy consoles, games and accessories for thousands bucks, not tinkerers. More general public (i.e. moms looking for kids' presents) wouldn't give to shits about any legal buggery either.
No, there isn’t. Companies choose to put games on Nintendo, many games are available on multiple consoles including Nintendo, and depending on the generation Nintendo is not even always the biggest player. There’s no illegal monopoly.
One is certainly allowed to have a monopoly over their own products, that’s what trademarks and patents are for.
It’s hard to argue a game developer is forced to play ball with Nintendo.
Well, Apple is part of a duopoly. Nintendo is not. It’s kind of silly to call somebody a monopolist when they only have a small percentage of market share. In fact, they aren’t even in the top three video game companies, and their hardware is just a reason to sell software. 85% of the revenue comes from first party games. Their revenue is less than 10% of the entire gaming industry. For some reason, people insist on thinking of them as a hardware company that also makes games, when the reality has been the reverse for decades.
There are a whole lot of ways to distribute a video game. Three major consoles. Computers. Things like the steam deck. Smart phones. You could ignore any one or two of them, and still have a great business. In fact, lots of companies do. A whole lot of people have access to more than one of these platforms. You could ignore anyone or two of these platforms, and still sell your product to most of the people in the market. It is a highly competitive environment. If you don’t like Nintendo’s policies, just sell on Xbox and PlayStation and steam. People do this. If an environment is competitive, then by definition, nobody has a monopoly or an unfair advantage.
The Earth has 8 billion people, most of whom have a smart phone, all of which are using one of two operating systems. Not many people have more than one. If Apple says your app cannot be in their App Store, half of humanity, cannot use your app. It is a much different scenario.
If you don't agree to a bunch of treaties around IP protection, you will find yourself frozen out of many free trade agreements and mostly unable to import or export anything except at crushing cost.
There were tons and TONS of ride sharing apps that got shut down as Uber was becoming popular due to regulatory violations: Sidecar, Juno, Poparide, Heetch, Taxify, and there are probably hundreds that got shut down in local markets.
Plenty of companies get shut down for regulatory violations, or employee mistreatment. Pointing at some extreme outliers is nothing more than a form of selection bias.
And enough usage in the general public to have "politician X will ban uber" be a negative campaign position.
Same reason AirBnB works despite many laws to the contrary. If you get popular enough that the public will vote against people who threaten to enforce the law, out of a desire to keep using the product, you win. It's a race to get too big to be shut down.
There's something hilarious about your framing of "get too big to be shut down".
You actually said "if you get popular enough that the public will vote against people who threaten to enforce the law".
So someone builds a product that the public likes, something they demand that politicians allow, and somehow this is "too big to be shut down". Do you forget that modern democracies pretend that their authority derives from the will of the people?
Modern ( and ancient) democracies are not direct democracies.
There are many reasons why popularity alone of the voting public does not translate into policy. The dangers of tyranny of the majority is well known, will of the people is a necessary but not sufficient reason.
There are also some pre-requisites for a functioning democracy like a well-informed electorate which is questionable today at best.
You are correct, but so is the parent (although I wouldn’t have put it quite like that).
Laws are there to serve society. Some of the ways it serves society is when it restrains society, but people are not stupid and understand when they’re being unreasonably restrained. Unreasonably being the key word, as I’d like to think we’re all generally anti-murder around here, even if we can argue to death about things like AirBnB.
Let me put it like this: the laws of San Francisco (and other cities) protected Taxi drivers from competition, and by the late aughts the local taxi services here were godawful magnets for complaints every weekend that the relevant regulatory authority (the SFMTA) didn’t do a goddamned thing about. If you wanted to go out and enjoy a nice weekend night, the responsible thing was not to drive. But good luck getting home, and if you could get a cab, it would be filthy and the driver would unlawfully insist his card reader was broken (it wasn’t, and it never was, the card reader was probably the most reliable thing in that car given how little wear and tear it would have seen in life).
Uber didn’t walk into a well regulated transportation marketplace. They and Lyft drove headfirst into a marketplace where the existing laws and regulations were suppressing supply and killing the market, and not in service of the passengers (i.e. the voters). They won the battles that mattered which were the political battle by upending a status quo that had favored this shitty little taxi medallion system and the market battle by just being better at a price people were willing to pay than their competition.
Popularity doesn’t always translate to policy in a democracy, but it often does.
While I agree taxi regulation was done badly, effectively removing all regulation I don't think is the answer. There are huge negative externalities to people who are neither drivers nor riders that should be protected by the law as much as the 'customers' wishes are. (just like the airbnb example, imagine someone cycling in a busy commercial area dodging uber drop-offs throwing open doors, double parking, etc)
The environmental hazards to cyclists are far beyond any extra danger Uber and Lyft provide and they lose to more popular constituencies regularly because most people in America even in the cities are not cyclists and often resent cyclists.
We prioritized cars a long time ago, and we’re still paying for it. I’m not happy about that fact either. You can absolutely argue that cyclists are victims to a tyranny by majority much as I can argue that that the presence of Uber and Lyft is a net benefit versus the status quo that existed prior to their coming onto the scene, and I’ll just say both things can be true. People also lose in democracies.
AirBnB's major achilles heel is that it actually isn't popular.
It is popular with tourists, who don't vote in the jurisdictions they visit, and it is popular with some landlords, who are a small minority that generally the renting public have at best indifference and often hatred for. It is very unpopular among renters who now see supply taken off long-term rental market; and it is very unpopular among other homeowners who do not want to live next to hotels.
It is not really a surprise that major tourist destinations are now slapping AirBnB with all kinds of restrictions.
Uber got successfully shot down in my city in Campeche Mexico [1]. Mostly due to corruption between government and taxi owners. But hey, it's possible!.
Read the Uber Files. Uber is on record for lobbying the most powerful governments on Earth. Macron for example was on first name terms with Uber. Also, Uber had systems to prevent the police from seeing incriminating data during police raids.
Basically, Uber had powerful allies and was willing to do illegal things. That's the difference between Uber and the other apps that got shut down for breaking the law
Remember had moonshots to justify their high valuation. The self driving car division was one and the self driving trucks was another one. Those things were veeeeeery expensive to run
Because competition is bad for business (good for customers for sure), but I repeat, BAD for business.
Why would you want 10 companies competing, bet your investment in one, or "spread it" like a loser, when you can pool ALL your money and make sure ALL the profit accumulates into one giant enormous company ?
Uber in this case happens to be the company chosen for big money.
The issue is large corporations tend to go unharmed.This is in part because of the fallout from people loosing there jobs. Imagine all of google or uber getting fired. How many people loose livelihoods.
The definition of capitalism is literally a system of economic relations that prioritizes the right to leverage one's existing capital to accumulate more capital, above everything else and indefinitely.
> Also it seems to me that Nintendo might themselves violate antitrust laws by using their monopoly power on market of Nintendo-compatible games, and not allowing enough competition there.
Nintendo is being a bully here, but what on earth does a monopoly on the market of your own platform even mean?
This is the theory that people (on HN and elsewhere) have used to argue that Apple's App Store represents a monopoly that should be broken up. It makes no more sense here than it does in that context.
- Nintendo Switch hardware only runs Nintendo Switch OS -> Nintendo monopoly on Switch OSes
- Nintendo Switch OS only runs on Nintendo Switch hardware -> Nintendo monopoly on Switch OS hardware
- Nintendo Switch hardware and OS only run officially licensed Nintendo game -> Nintendo monopoly on games for Nintendo Switch and OS games
- Nintendo Switch games only run on Nintendo Switch -> Nintendo monopoly on hardware that runs Switch games
(Apple and iPhone are in the same situation)
Compare to the situation with Windows:
- x86 hardware can run any OS, including Linux and Windows -> mostly no Microsoft monopoly, although Windows and Microsoft keys are often pre-installed
- Windows can run on any x86 hardware (and ARM I think?) -> no Microsoft monopoly, although they don't release source to port to other CPU architectures
- Windows can run any software from anyone at no charge -> mostly no Microsoft monopoly, although they can favor their own software
- Windows software can run on any OS, such as Windows or Linux with Wine -> mostly no Microsoft monopoly, although one can argue that having an OS API without an open-source implementation induces lock-in and creates a partial monopoly
I am genuinely asking, what on earth do y'all think "monopoly" and "anti-trust" mean?
It's baffling to me because some users on HN grandstand so much about how making your own product or platform means that you are morally obligated to support any and every third party under the sun. But then the actual tech industry seems to be the direct opposite - if anything companies make lots of fanfare out of achieving basic interop.
This is not a case of a company that does something massively useful but then does a (relatively to the size of the company) small illegal thing on the side. The whole raison d'etre of Tropic Haze LLC is to, allegedly, break the law.
Meanwhile, fair use is also a thing. I'm not real clear on where that illegality of bypassing DRM schemes fits in with that, and also how it fits in with other laws and exceptions.
So yeah, it'll be interesting to see what the judge says. :)
Monopoly is literally the point of copyright. That's its explicit purpose.
Their entire case rests on the presumption that the DMCA protects Nintendo's monopoly over not only distribution, but playback of its console game software.
I would love to see OSS communities like Internet Archive or founders who are pro open source support them.
Emulators are legal. Defending your hobby project in court is infeasible without patrons.
Nintendo has no leg to stand on legally speaking, and there's a precedent waiting to happen.
As for the emulator itself, I don't see any argument that the Yuzu team used "illegal means" (internal SDKs, whatever their equivalent of a DLL is, etc).
A thought for the Ryujinx emulator devs, who are also making an excellent Switch emulator (sometimes more performant than Yuzu). They must be having a really stressful day.
The last time I tried to use Yuzu or Ryujinx it was still quite difficult. I had to get out my switch and physical game cartridges and manually dump a bunch of decryption keys and game files. It is absurd that Nintendo is trying to claim these emulators are piracy tools or intended for piracy when they don't seem to do anything to make it easy to play a pirated game copy.
Most people just google for a dumped copy and your up and playing in minutes (as long as it takes to download.)
Switch piracy is massive. Almost everyone I know is doing it. I’m not, but I still emulate because switch performance is poo. So I buy the game, and then emulate it in 4K/60, it’s how I finally finished BOTW.
That doesn't make sense. Botw keeps like five autosaves and they're all separate files which are never written to at the same time. You'd have to manually delete them to lose them.
Your yuzu/ryujinx installation could've become messed up and stopped looking in the right folder but your save files were still there and recoverable, I promise.
I went through the old save files and it was dead. I know where they were located. I found the same manuals and the same walkthroughs.
My game files were trashed. Restoring the different saves did nothing.
I promise you, I know how to restore saved files and follow instructions on how to do as such.
The emulators we easy to use. beautiful. responsive. After TOTK, the energy behind them had them getting constantly updated and was a good experience.
Until it wasn't.
Restarted TOTK on my Switch. I had bought it because I support games that are worth it even if I emulate them. I've got a Powkiddy RGB10 where I also emulate games. I've got a plex server where I host my own library.
When I, a random person on the internet you can believe or not believe, say that my emulator died and I lost weeks of progress on my game? I lost weeks of progress on my game. I can't remember which I was using (I switched between them at one point because one was faster/better but I can't remember which one it was)
Did you start from the Yuzu documentation? I installed it and walked through their official quick start guide. I didn't type "mario kart free rom" into google or anything.
That's the "legal" way, dumping your own copy of horizon OS, your console's keys, your carts and their keys. Of course it's quicker and easier to just download someone else's keys and dumps, and you're not protecting yourself from Nintendo by using your own stuff, you just get the peace of mind knowing it's your stuff you're using.
It's also very quick if you're already set up with atmosphere & homebrew. Longest part was just waiting for my console's nand to dump.
They aren't (that would make Nintendo's case pretty clear cut), but you can find them fairly easily through the regular channels if you're familiar with piracy.
You don't sound very knowledgeable about the space.
The Switch has a vibrant modding and homebrew scene. People also like modding their consoles to dump their games.
Lots of power users want to dump their games to play the top games on their PC. Tears of the Kingdom runs in 8k, at 60fps, with lots of QOL improvements on PC.
> Nintendo has no leg to stand on legally speaking, and there's a precedent waiting to happen.
Don't be so sure. From the article:
> Emulator tools aren't inherently illegal, but the way in which Yuzu is being actively used and promoted is what Nintendo appears to be objecting to here.
So it depends on what is actually in the case. At best, Yuzu needs to simply update some of its marketing material. At worst, they need to shut down and open under a new name / LLC, while also updating marketing material.
> Nintendo has no leg to stand on legally speaking, and there's a precedent waiting to happen.
IANAL, but my understanding is that while emulation is unambiguously legal in the US after Bleem vs. Sony, an emulator which decrypts games is maybe not legal under the DMCA circumvention rules, and those have never really been tested in the context of an emulator. The Bleem case happened shortly after the DMCA was enacted, but PS1 games weren't encrypted or otherwise protected from being read by anything besides a PS1 so Bleem didn't have to circumvent anything. That seems to be the angle Nintendo is taking here, that Yuzu is the equivalent of something like DeCSS since it has the ability to circumvent their DRM scheme.
AFAIK, the decryption keys to use the ROMs are not distributed with the emulator, and you need to retrieve these on your own from software licenses you possess.
That's correct, Yuzu doesn't include the keys, but is there any precedent that "bring your own keys" actually works as a loophole around the DMCA circumvention rules? I'm not aware of it ever being tested, so it's unclear whether it would actually hold up in a case where the softwares express purpose is to consume keys for the purpose of circumventing DRM.
Back when the movie industry was going after DVD ripping tools I don't recall anyone trying to dodge legal trouble by making the end-user supply the keys instead, so unfortunately we didn't get a decision either way back then.
To my knowledge the keys are just standard RSA-2048 keys. It's not illegal for a program to support RSA-2048, and it is no concern of the program or its developers where I get my keys from. I could just as easily use these keys in any other program. Even if in some foolish way they made it illegal for Yuzu to support industry standard decryption algorithms in this specific kind of program, then Yuzu would simply require the users to manually decrypt the game beforehand.
So the solution for Nintendo would be to take a risk and make their own encryption scheme?
That way just trying to support that prorietary encryption scheme in the emulator would be enough to run afoul of the DMCA.
But then, as a workaround I could see the proprietary encryption code being supported as an addon (ie: DLL file) that you can just drop in, without distributing it with the emulator itself and letting the users search for it on the digital high seas.
Nah, there's no circumvention here, on Yuzu's part. There may be parties involved in circumvention, but the emulator neither aids nor publishes any aid for that. The emulator REQUIRES a user to first have a legitimate copy. If the user illegally obtained that copy, they didn't obtain it via Yuzu, and they didn't use Yuzu to get around the encryption that is in the file. The emulator is just using the key on the file, the same way any application - including the Switch OS - has to. That's not "circumvention", that's "usage". If the key should not be able to be collected, for use on the file, then it's not the Yuzu emulator that collects the key. It's whatever ROM dumping/packaging solution a bad actor is using.
If it ever made it in front a jury, it can be summarized as a big company trying to sue a little company out of existence because the big company doesn't like that the little company is executing the big company's code. But, unfortunately for the big company, executing someone else's code - even without their permission - is not illegal. Nintendo has the resources to sue torrent hosts and take on individuals involved in sharing networks. They have the resources to find the problem and fix it. But they're not using those resources to solve the problem; they're using those resources to scare lawful citizens into inaction because that's a cheaper target. There should never be a legal reward for that kind of scheme.
But, honestly, this should never make it to trial. There are zero merits for argument, here.
> The current iteration of YUZU-EMU.ORG does not feature a live link to Lockpick—which had been hosted on GitHub—because recent enforcement action by Nintendo alerting GitHub to the illegal nature of the software caused GitHub to takedown and delist Lockpick. However, since that time, in Yuzu’s Discord server and elsewhere, Defendant’s agents have been referring users to a different website (RENA21.GITHUB.IO/YUZU-WIKI/) which does feature a live link to Lockpick.
Note that I am explicitly not weighing in on legality or anything, merely pointing out your wording is at odds with the document/allegations themselves.
Well... I wouldn't be surprised if the "agents" turn out to be regular users of the Discord - an important detail would be if their moderators took any action.
I am familiar with both. I think the fact that Nintendo still went ahead and this will likely have repercussions means that the precedent isn't enough of a deterrent.
Agreed. A sensible enough judge could throw this out on summary judgement, circumventing the opportunity for Nintendo's lawfare. All of Nintendo's points have been tried, so there's really no need to bring this into argument. Even if all of their claims were true, they're not alleging anything illegal. Take it to court, ask for summary, and strengthen the legal defense for this kind of stuff. I really hope they don't roll over, even if nobody can blame them for doing so.
>(A)to “circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure” means avoiding, bypassing, removing, deactivating, or otherwise impairing a technological measure;
If this is what Nintendo alleges yuzu facilitates, does Nintendo have a case?
Reimplementing the security measures seems like a reaffirmation of the security measures, not an impairment.
IANAL and I've never used a switch emulator before, but if you have a feature for supplying keys to play proprietary games then I believe that constitutes as bypassing a technological protection mechanism. However, if that same feature is used to allow supplying self-signed keys to play custom software/homebrew, and there's no other way to do this, then it might be murky.
It feels like a claim against free speech. Yuzu makes an emulator and states it can play Switch games. That is a statement. If others illegally trade binaries, that’s not the emulator’s fault. By attacking them, it feels like the only thing “wrong” was making the emulator available. Caveat - IANAL.
I don't think Nintendo's argument that Yuzu's primary use case is piracy holds any merit. Nintendo is quite literally a part of the reason why people pirate Switch games they already own.
What do you have to do to legally play Switch games on Yuzu? Oh, idk...
* Jailbreak your Switch.
* Dump your decryption keys.
* Dump your games.
* Never update your Switch ever again.
* Pray Nintendo doesn't shove an update down your throat.
* Void your warranty.
* Hope Nintendo won't brick your Switch.
How many people would use Yuzu legally if it weren't for Nintendo's anti-consumer practices? Nintendo can't just argue that Yuzu is made for piracy when Nintendo pushes people to piracy who legally own the Switch and Switch games in my opinion.
I feel like you’re undermining your own argument here. Yes, it’s exceedingly complex to “legally” play your own games on Yuzu. This bolsters the argument that Yuzu is primarily targeting users of pirated content, because essentially no one would bother doing all those steps you listed.
I think MyFedora is suggesting that even if Yuzu's primary usecase is piracy, that's because it's so difficult to use Yuzu in the legit manner (due to Nintendo's DRM on the console/game you own).
I feel like it would be a lot more straightforward if people just came out and said that they think piracy should be legal.
Currently we have this weird mealy-mouthed roundabout discussions where people act ever so outraged at the idea that a tool or site is primarily used for piracy when anyone who's not hopelessly naïve recognizes that that's in fact what they're used for.
At best we get comments like yours that are anti-DRM...but still dance around the fact that being anti-DRM is being pro-piracy.
This isn't even about whether I support piracy. I just think it's oddly disingenuous to both treat piracy as a moral/legal wrong (else why the need to defend/excuse Yuzu's clear involvement?) and be shocked and outraged when an entity whose works have been pirated does something about it.
> I feel like it would be a lot more straightforward if people just came out and said that they think piracy should be legal.
I don't think Yuzu advocates are actually advocating piracy.
I think they think an illegal use of a tool should not mean the tool is banned.
"Emulators don't pirate games, pirates do."
I think our echo chamber will surface views amenable to this viewpoint. Emulation news is quite literally hacker news.
But we deceive ourselves with such a bubble, when the outside world doesn't lean our way. Downplaying piracy usage doesn't do us any favours when trying to build an accurate model.
I think you've phrased my point better than I did. What I meant was that to advocate for software like Yuzu to exist necessarily entails defending piracy, because outside of a tech echo chamber almost nobody is interested in an emulator existing for emulation's sake.
To illustrate what I mean...if credible stats were somehow collected and showed that 99% of Yuzu users were using it to run games they didn't pay for, I think plenty of judiciaries at that point would consider it a de facto pirating tool versus a tool that is incidentally used for piracy. If you think that this still doesn't mean that the project should be shut down or fined, then I think it's a lot more productive to advocate for such software to exist even if it's a pirating tool than to try to sell everyone on the idea that it's totally a minority that are using it as such. And I think that would require going back to the drawing board re: digital IP rights.
>but still dance around the fact that being anti-DRM is being pro-piracy
I think this is disingenuous, there's difference between being pro-piracy and against whatever inane terms publisher wants. There's argument that when you buy a game you can use it in any way you want, including playing it on different devices. Somewhat like first-sale doctrine.
I've clarified what I mean in a different comment[0]. But to speak to being anti-DRM in particular, I think it's either highly disingenuous or very naïve to argue that all or even anything close to a majority of people who are against DRM simply want to use digital media they've actually bought in any way that they want. It makes no sense to downplay the situation that led to the rise of DRM (and still persists today!) as if IP holders just one day decided to screw over their paying audiences for no reason. It's a lot more straightforward in my opinion to say you just don't care that people pirate games et al and/or that you don't consider it a real harm to an IP holder.
It's not as if anyone ever says or suggests anything to them when their works get pirated other than "it happens, sucks to be you" or even "have you tried pandering to the pirates so maybe a tiny percent of them will buy your work?" - so what then exactly is the point of piracy being illegal?
I don't think this is an accurate portrayal of those feelings, certainly not mine. DRM has no benefit to the consumer except in the abstract sense that it is needed to protect the product so a company can make more things in the future. Whatever. At best it is inoffensive and not noticable, but more typically it is an issue.
The vast majority of games on PC at this point do not have any DRM, or I guess I should say any meaningful DRM. Denuvo games being the most notable exception. But most games on Steam have literally nothing other than a paperthin basic license check for Steam which is circumventable in a dozen incredibly trivial and automated/generic ways.
PC seems to be doing pretty great as a platform, better than ever, even. Honestly I think it might be worth reframing/clarifying what you are defining as piracy. If I own a Switch (and I do.) And I own games on that platform that I purchased from the e-shop. (And I do.) and I play those games on my PC with Yuzu/Ryujinx is that piracy? I don't even mean in the legal sense, I just mean what you do you personally think?
The need to defend/excuse Yuzus clear involvement is makes for an incredibly leading question, but the simplest answer is that I don't think people are surprised that Nintendo is doing it, just that it is shitty and not only does it not actually address the issue, it has potentially hugely chilling effects on legitimate software development.
I understand why some people are rubbed a little wrong by very mature and well-developed emulation of a current-gen (technically) platform. 100% it is used in piracy. Does that mean it shouldn't exist though? I sure don't think so. And that opinion isn't because I'm pro-piracy.
For what it is worth, on its merits, Yuzu actually did take steps to prevent casual users from playing TOTK pre-release. But also I don't think it is Yuzu's fault because Nintendo had its game leak.
Companies want money. Nintendo wants money. Nintendo is entitled to think this any anything else is a threat to their bottom line and I'm not surprised by it. Nintendo is also failing to serve the market in a way that meets its needs and that is legitimate driver of switch emulation usage, legally or otherwise. I can't feel bad about that.
I don't know why people would have piled on to the Yuzu Patreon during the TOTK leak, given what they did to prevent its usage for that purpose on a base level. There is no strong reason to give the Yuzu team money on Patreon. Daily builds are cool but hardly critical. It is impressive how much they're making on Patreon but that isn't money that Nintendo is going to get back if Yuzu was struck from the platform either.
Being anti-DRM isn't being pro-piracy and that is a false equivalence that I really hate to see. The least protected platform is now increasingly supported by the two other hardware manufacturers (Neither MS first-party or the Sony published stuff is laden with any non-trivial DRM) and the never-ending doomsaying about the PC as a hotbed for piracy really doesn't seem to have panned out the way many have predicted.
DRM sucks. Can't play netflix above 720p outside of their app/edge on Windows. Capcom added DRM to many games that were several years old breaking mods and proton/steam deck compatibility. In a world where DRM didn't get in the way, fine. We don't live in that world and wanting to not be punished as a consumer because DRM overwhelmingly sucks doesn't seem like a hot take. My steam library is over 1,000 games deep. I pay for shit. I don't want to deal with bullshit.
> I feel like it would be a lot more straightforward if people just came out and said that they think piracy should be legal.
I don't believe piracy should be legal. I believe that copyright and trademarks are important for the creation of many types of interesting new works in society.
Nonetheless, I also think archiving history and having those archives (in their original format, to the closest degree possible, which is what many emulators try to achieve) widely accessible to the public is also important.
Flash memory in game cartridges degrade over time, and discs rot as well. In contrast to some here, I do not think DRM is inherently bad — preventing piracy can be important — but I do believe that DRM should be time limited. After about 10 to 15 years, I think one should be able to have a DRM-free version of whatever piece of media they purchased, be it a game, movie, TV show, etc. At that point, the console (or other device) should allow you to rip it and transfer those DRM-free files to other devices.
I don't think those files should be legally redistributable online (at least not after only one decade), but many users' consoles will break before the 10 year mark, and many consoles are not sold for more than 10 years at a time. I think requiring much more than roughly that amount of time before allowing DRM-free rips will just result in a lot of consumers not being able to play the games they purchased. I think legalizing piracy would destroy the gaming industry, but I think legally prohibiting the consumer from experiencing the media they purchased on future devices encroaches on their consumer rights and results in history being forgotten.
That said, I've never been a fan of Yuzu and Ryujinx releasing as early as they did. Approximately no new game sales have been lost due to RPCS3: by the time it became a useable enough emulator, no new PS3 games were being sold and a huge number of PS3 consoles had already stopped working. The same is true Xenia and the Xbox 360, PCSX2 and the PS2, and many other emulators. That's clearly not the case for Yuzu and Ryujinx though.
Still, while my feelings on Yuzu are somewhat negative due to when they released it, I do hope they ultimately win this lawsuit — if Yuzu isn't legal, it's very well possible that no home console emulator after the PS2 and GameCube era is legal, as they all arguably bypass DRM. Clearly, the existence of Yuzu has not harmed Nintendo all that much — they're currently the richest (though obviously not most valuable) company in Japan, with $11.44 billion in cash. The Switch has sold 139 million units and Tears of the Kingdom has sold over 20 million units. Yuzu clearly does not constitute a legitimate threat to the continuance of Nintendo making games, but Yuzu being shut down would pose a legitimate threat to the preservation of any video game released on consoles after around 2006.
Of course nobody dumps their own games, but it's really common for people who already own the games to download a pirated copy to play on emulator. That's how I use Yuzu and Citra (which is especially great, so I don't have to squint at the crappy 3DS screens).
Technically illegal, technically "piracy"? Probably! But morally, who cares.
Hammers are used for theft, as well. Even if Nintendo's business would benefit from emulators not existing[1], it doesn't mean we should ban emulators (or create laws which allow multinationals to sue open source emulator projects out of existence).
Seriously it's just bizarre how obtuse HN can be when it comes to piracy.
Nobody is dumping their own games. Very few buy the switch games they emulate.
The following usual claim is "it's Nintendo's own fault for not releasing their games on PC and Android". What kind of asinine argument is that?
Then there's the "emulation isn't illegal", which is probably the only sound argument.
But that isn't the issue here. The issue is the authors are now making over 500k/yr from their emulator, whose only purpose is to pirate games that are still commercially available.
> "it's Nintendo's own fault for not releasing their games on PC and Android"
I understand if you disagree with this argument (I don't know if I'd endorse it wholeheartedly), but I don't see how it is asinine. The wider context here is that there are people who believe in "general computing", i.e. the idea that users should retain full control over computing devices and software they buy.
The philosophy of companies of companies like Nintendo is that when you buy a game from them, you are buying the right to play the game in exactly the way they want. If they could make modding illegal, they would (it is in Japan, to my understanding). This runs counter to the idea of general computing, where you should be to play a game you buy in any way you want, including modding, or playing on a different device, etc.
So to return to the point, the argument is that by refusing to sell their games to users of other platforms (as well as their other actions), Nintendo is working against the goal of general computing, and therefore it's not worth feeling sorry for them when people pirate the game. Phrased differently, people who don't own a Switch have no way to play the game besides pirating, and people should be able to buy games separately from devices.
Another fundamental argument here is that hardware/software walled gardens which are enforced by anti-circumvention and copyright laws are basically anti-competitive monopolies.
Nintendo can’t be completely incompetent here; if they get Yuzu shut down someone will inevitably fork it, and they have to know this.
Presumably this is a play to try and establish precedent. They know that this lawsuit means nothing in itself, even if they win, but it can then be used to go after Retroarch or Higan or Mupen64 or Dolphin. This is bad.
IANAL, but if there's a risk of being sued by a big corporation because you're making a product that they believe is stealing from them, wouldn't it make sense to shield yourself personally from being sued?
Like, if I write a piece of software that does something innocuous, such as indexing files or something, then I probably wouldn't bother getting any kind of LLC, but I'm very unlikely to get sued over that. Nintendo, however, is famously litigious, has made their stance on emulation very clear, and has no problem going after individuals who dare to defy them. I think doing all the development through an LLC can limit Nintendo going after the individuals.
Open Source doesn't necessarily mean free of charge, but even when it does (most of the time), plenty of people still choose to pay for open source products today (eg. Red Hat). A product being open source doesn't mean the people working on it shouldn't be paid somehow; in particular, Yuzu do early releases and other closed-source-ish things (which is one of the reasons Nintendo is able to bring something to court here).
By ensuring there's no funding of the project, they can cripple it and ensure it will always be far behind the mainline product. It will also scare a lot of people off who don't want to risk getting wrapped up in a lawsuit for their weekend hobby
> Presumably this is a play to try and establish precedent.
Of course it's to establish precedent. They can't file a case against "Yuzu and any future Switch emulators that don't exist yet". But that doesn't mean that it means nothing in itself. A victory against an emulator would be somewhat of a deterrent and would likely reduce piracy somewhat, at least for a little while.
It's worse than bad, Nintendo's argument seems to boil down to "decryption = circumvention", even if you have a legit keys.prod file from your own system. The full text goes into detail about how Nintendo thinks that using a decrypted keys.prod file is circumventing their DRM.
There's so many second and third order consequences from a legal precedent for that it boggles the mind, and I'd hope that any judge that understood that should dismiss this lawsuit with prejudice. My fear is that it goes the other way and an injunction is successfully put in place against Yuzu.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 351 ms ] threadI hope this doesn't spell the end of Yuzu, because I use it to play switch games that I own on my steam deck.
But they can be legally blamed for not taking any steps to prevent it.
Which means there are two avenues for Nintendo to attack this situation.
Similar to the approach that have been used in various jurisdictions against torrent sites.
Jennifer Crumbley was found guilty of manslaughter for doing nothing to prevent her son from shooting up his school.
That was criminal court with a much higher standard than a civil case.
Nintendo has consistently been one of the strongest protectors of their IP, and a defense that says “We tell users not to commit piracy” is about as effective as a sex workers disclaimer that “money is exchanged for time.”
Software developers should not be held liable for what their users do with the software unless the software itself does something illegal (such as malware that gains unauthorized access to secure systems). If developers were responsible for their users then you would have all kinds of bizarre lawsuits. You would be able to sue Microsoft for things written by users in Word. It wouldn't be a stretch to sue Linux contributers because someone used the OS to perform a DOS attack or to host a scam site.
I think Nintendo would be banking that the Yuzu team likely had lax (if at anything) policies and processes for compliance to their public stance on piracy.
The whole point of emulation is that you want to play content for which the original hardware no longer exists. And so there is no harm being done to anyone.
This situation is obviously quite different because Nintendo is being harmed.
It's not piracy to play a game that you've backed up on different hardware than the original developers intended.
But there is also the DMCA, and the anti-circumvention provision, which can be attributed a lot more to the user backing up their game than it can be to the developers of the emulator. But that wouldn't be the same thing as copyright infringement.
That said, if the"interoperability exception" applies to anything at all, I feel like it should apply here. You are circumventing copy protection mechanisms for the explicit purpose of interoperability with other software.
On moral grounds, I also have absolutely no qualms whatsoever with someone circumventing copy protection mechanisms to make a copy of a thing they bought to use for personal use. The fact that that could be potentially illegal at all is disgusting.
If only we had a universal way to easily distribute data, without need to heavily license it, instead opting for easily accessible licenses from reputable sources at market prices...
(we do, but torrents got a bad name)
Netflix was a success not because it was a streaming service with a license fee, but because it provided unfettered access to data for a small fee.
Of course, now there are AIs which can or will shortly be able to trivially reproduce most data formats, so that's a separate issue as far as that goes (and that's bad too, if AI spells the complete death of DMCA), but it really didn't need to be this complicated.
Make your brand well recognized, make your products easy to obtain, go after the pirates not the users. I own a switch and TBH a lot of my enthusiasm is pretty chilled by Nintendo's dickery - I'm less likely to purchase their products (and I'll elsewhere with non-Nintendo stuff - and Nintendo's stuff is honestly becoming a lot of locked down crap these days).
https://wiki.videolan.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions/#Is_lib...
And the weak chipset on the switch is a big reason to want to use emulators without piracy.
And there's modding too.
Your "whole point" is very far from whole.
Your OS emulates. The companies that made the chips you run them on emulate their own hardware. The company in the headline emulate their own video game hardware and sell it to their customers.
I would've paid full price to play the game on my deck natively, but Nintendo doesn't consider the PC market worth entering it seems
https://youtu.be/g2a5PmIhryA?si=OZJMc2IRCCgLMVBY&t=82
Seems like it’d be more productive to reduce attrition of this sort by releasing a Switch with less-anemic hardware. There’s clearly a market for a “Switch Pro” or similar that can run TotK, etc at 60FPS without frame drops.
Truly, but you are preaching to the choir. I am a big fan of SMTV series, and since it was a Switch exclusive, I bought it on the release day. I wasn't happy about 30fps (which I knew about beforehand), but it wouldn't be a barrier for me to enjoy a great game, so I went into it despite knowing that.
Long story short, I dropped the game just a few hours into it, and decided to wait until it gets a release on absolutely any other platform (and luckily enough, it was announced just last week). Turns out, 30fps was an aspirational goal, as literally in the first non-tutorial area of the game (the desert, I forgot the name), 30fps would rarely even hit, and the game would hover between 15-25fps the entire time. I just couldn't do it, no matter how good the game is.
Nintendo straight up ruined a game for me that I was already liking, all due to the Switch hardware. I am not even asking for much, even 30fps would be fine. But I cannot stomach FPS oscillating between 15-25fps in multiple major areas where you spend a lot of time in a game.
That is difficult for Nintendo, the GPU architecture used on the switch is long dead, so Nintendo has no easy way of releasing a better switch. Because of that they will probably wait as much as possible and then release a completely new console with only limited backwards compatibility.
>> I played it on Yuzu (on PC) because it was a much better experience than on the switch.
I blame you, actually, (somewhat jokingly) because I own TotK for Switch, and ended up putting it away really quickly because the resolution in handheld mode looked awful. I actually couldn't stand playing the game in handheld mode while my wife took over the TV for her shows.
It's Nintendo. They sue everybody.
Also, there are other git hosting providers out there.
Easy.
Just like it was for Ross Ulbricht!
THAT was the point but thanks for being the thread police and a conversation killer. Next time if I want to digress a little I'll run it past you first.
For other tools/plugins that you can't be certain about you would have to run things in a VM that prevents non-Tor connections - e.g. this is how Qubes/Whonix does things.
Replace Tor with VPN as desired.
Whether the use is for-profit is not a factor either. It's part of a factor. The first factor of the fair use test [1] is:
> the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
"including" is not "limited to", so something as simple as whether the use brings in any revenue, whether through donations or sales, could be one consideration within the first factor. Whether the use is for-profit is another consideration.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#U.S._fair_use_factors
>yuzu is a Nintendo Switch emulator capable of running many games! With yuzu, you can play such games as Pokémon Sword & Shield, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Super Mario Odyssey, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Pokémon Legends: Arceus, Fire Emblem:Three Houses, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate — on your PC.
Regardless of the legal status of an emulator, I wouldn't list game titles if I were writing that copy.
Zelda BoTW being released 7 days BEFORE being on Switch, and 60FPS, and better gameplay on a real computer is what caught Nintendo's attention.
And with Yuzu and joycons, you can have EVERY game, including their online only stuff. And if you pay for those online only, piracy is the only way to guarantee that you'll keep them.
They've destroyed the: NDS, Gamecube, Wii, WiiU stores/online content. They never needed to. They *chose* to.
It's illegal to pirate games. Being able to emulate things you purchased is a convenient scapegoat for people to pirate games.
Why should I not be able to emulate them?
Well, there's a bunch of places where that's not true. Then it's a question of morality, although that usually gets unfairly asked of the individual but never asked of giant mega corporations.
/s
Thinking further on it I wouldn't write "Nintendo" either: "yuzu is a Switch emulator that runs your games on PC/Mac/Android - often with better resolution, framerates, ..." is fine - people already know about the games they want to play.
titles are mainly protected by trade markes so you can freely mention and speak about them anywhere as long as you are not creating a situation where s judge might find that Nintendo customers might thing Yuzo made by Nintendo or any of the listed games are made by Yuzu or shipped by Yuzo or similar
Justice costs money.
Are there any cases of emulators being sued successfully?
A user being able to provide keys and a rom from which they could own or be homebrew doesn't seem to violate copyright to me.
edit: seems the consensus is once via legal fund attrition, but the case went to the emulator authors in the end.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenz_v._Universal_Music_Corp.#...
Bleem was a big deal, too. It let you just pop a Playstation game into a PC's CD-ROM drive and play it. When Sony finally nailed the coffin on them, they were working on a followup called "bleemcast" that would've let Playstation games be played on the Sega Dreamcast.
I seem to recall a bunch of ROM sites disappearing as well, but not sure if that's because they got sued or for other reasons. Some must have been sued and consequently shut down, so maybe not a bad idea (for the companies) to at least try?
Emulators are usually not stolen and are just reverse engineered.
The only 'emulator' cases I've seen be successful are due to the same, they didn't get in trouble for the emulator, they got in trouble for distributing ROMs. I wonder if there's some firmware code being distributed here? that's a common annoyance when it comes to using an emulator.
its just yuzus docs thats written in such a way, most likely to avoid nintendo suing them…
By affiliation I mean something like hosted on the same server but officially unlinked, not obvious affiliations. If a core maintainer redistributing them on their personal website.
Complete ROM collections were, and probably still are, available for most old systems as torrents and on usenet.
Oh, and they're available on Archive.org :)
https://archive.org/search?query=Sony+PlayStation+-+%28NTSC-...
It's just work, like anything else.
But most of the time you would just get Tony Hawk 2/3, the Zelda's, Mario 64, Jet Force Gemini, FIFA's, Wave Race and a few more in less than a week and the fun lasted months if not years.
This move by Nintendo is typical and there is no intent for it to ever actually go to court. It is legal bullying/posturing. The ironic/hopeful part is that team behind Yuzu does have some financial backing and this is going to create goodwill for them and they might actually be able to put up a defense (perhaps with the EFF getting involved maybe?)
It can be used to win cases against other emulators and even shut them down with limited legal action.
If Nintendo loses, the next defendant would have even more precedence.
If Nintendo wins, it's easier to go after future emulator projects.
You would have to somehow set a limit of legal expenses, which seems... difficult.
You would have to win to get the common fund, you may not get that far if you have to pay into the fund and amount a defense.
The litigants and defendants would not be compelled to contribute equal amounts. Just the disbursement would be equal.
If nothing compels them to, they won't, so effectively the status quo.
And Yuzu spends $25,000 and maybe wins the first case but runs out of money during the appeal and defaults judgment.
Nintendo gets the pot because they won right?
As I pointed out to another user, this reverses the damage if they win, but does not solve the problem of preventing them from being able to win.
Now if you make it where if you want to spend $5 on lawyer fees, you have to loan $5 to the other side and if the other side wins they don't have to pay it back, that may work.
That's essentially what I was suggesting with having to loan the opposing team the same amount of money you spend.
But all of that money goes into a prize pot, which gets distributed based on who wins the case.
This would ensure either Nintendo doesn't try to financially grind out a poor small company because the loss would not be worth it to them.
The problem is not the end payout, it's the base cost can't be afforded along the way.
One side can keep appealing and escalating, the other can't pay for the cases themselves.
They may not get far enough to win the pool.
You would have to have the lawyers work pro bono or some common legal fund pay for it until the case is won to get the pool.
As I pitched to another user, how about:
> for lawsuits, if you want to spend $5 on lawyer fees, you have to loan $5 to the other side.
> if the other side wins they don't have to pay back the loan.
Which is great news... for Nintendo.
The problem that Nintendo is citing in their lawsuit is the fact that Yuzu ships Switch common keys. For the purpose of DMCA 1201, this is a smoking gun[0]. There isn't really a good legal argument for why emulators should be allowed to ship decryption keys, or at least, the EFF refused to come up with one when Dolphin asked for legal advice on this point a while ago. So if you go to court and provide a completely legally baseless argument, Nintendo wins, and then they move for fee shifting, which means they get to prosecute the case for free[1].
[0] While it is true that the scope of DMCA 1201 is far wider than just encryption keys, in this case, Nintendo has only cited the keys being in the emulator and the fact that Yuzu is really useful for running pirated software, which is "good enough".
[1] In practice, it's more "for cheap" than "for free", because there's specific rules about how much you're allowed to fee shift, a whole bunch of stuff about 'lodestar amounts', etc.
That being said, I don't think two layers of indirection help Yuzu. It's one thing to say "this requires decryption keys and you have to rip your own games", and another to say "and here's where and how you get those things".
Put it this way: You know how emulator developers are very strict about not providing ROMs for obvious reasons? The decryption keys work the same way. If Yuzu had, say, linked to a ROM site and said "here's where you can get games for our emulator, wink wink nudge nudge", that'd be an open-and-shut case[0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_Studios,_Inc._v._Grokster,....
DMCA 1201 comes in two parts: a law that prohibits breaking DRM, and a law that prohibits telling people how to break DRM. If someone just had a Switch and somehow managed to figure out how to get the keys and games out of it, then ran them on an emulator, it'd probably be legal[0]. This is because the part of 1201 that makes it illegal to break DRM has shittons of escape valves that are designed to ensure that previously legal behavior doesn't suddenly become illegal just because you put a digital lock on it.
However, the part that prohibits trafficking in circumvention devices lacks any of these escape valves. I believe this to be by design. Congress wasn't willing to, say, reverse the Sony Betamax decision[1] and criminalize home video recording, but they were willing to allow Hollywood to slowly shut it down. A escape valve for circumvention would render the whole law ineffective: so long as someone has a legal right to break the DRM, you can sell it to anyone, not just people who can demonstrate they need it.
The legal standard for what constitutes a circumvention device is very broad. Specifically, something is a circumvention device if either:
- It's only function is to break DRM, or
- It's only commercially significant function is to break DRM (read: courts, ignore Betamax), or
- It's advertised to break DRM
That last one is the tricky bit. Let's say I took an ordinary HDMI-to-composite video adapter and put a sticker on it that said "Copy Netflix Originals Quick And Easy"[2]. Streaming boxes and Blu-Ray players support unencrypted output at legacy resolutions, so the video adapter breaks no DRM, it's just a DAC. But because I've advertised it as a way to strip DRM, I've broken the law by selling it.
So let's go back to our key dumping tool. Even if it's literally just a shell script for whatever the Switch equivalent of GodMode9 is, because it's being advertised as a way to copy games, it's just as illegal as putting the production Switch keys directly into Yuzu's source code. As an emulator developer, the only way to avoid liability under DMCA 1201 is to provide zero assistance to people who want to rip their games.
[0] This isn't court-tested, and probably never will, but prior attempts to argue against format-shifting in US courts haven't fared well.
[1] SCOTUS would do that later on with MGM v. Grokster. Remember: the reason why Sony was in hot water was specifically because they advertised Betamax as being good for pirating movies, not just that you could do so.
[2] In the world where Congress did include safety valves for 1201(a)(2), this sticker would probably say "Make Fair Use Commentaries On Netflix Originals Quick And Easy".
They could open source and distribute the code in a decentralized manner. People could download, use and work on the software freely. The Pirate Bay is still going, based on these principles.
But if you're going to run a commercial enterprise based on what can at least be construed as enabling piracy, you're playing with fire and companies have the right to protect their IP in court.
They're already making $30k/month on patreon and you can easily foresee that this legal action will cause a call to arms for even greater funding, if that was indeed their goal they could have targeted the much smaller ryujinx and set a precedent.
Sony lost all their cases in the past. They claimed they infringed copyright when copying PS1 BIOS for reverse engineering purposes, court ruled that was fair use as it was necessary to gain access to the unprotected elements of the console. The other case was some bullshit about advertising, they had the audacity to claim screenshots violated their copyrights. They lost in court but won in the market by bankrupting their competitors.
Who knows what's gonna happen in 2024 though? Felony contempt of business model seems quite well entrenched at this point. Company puts "IP" into their product and suddenly they get to control what you do with it and it's illegal for you to resist in any way.
Common sense says emulators are alternative compatible implementations of the original hardware which increases consumer choice. People should have every right to make an emulator, doesn't matter if it's an old console or one that's just been released. Emulators are competitors to Nintendo. If they don't like it then they should drop their "exclusives" nonsense and start releasing games on PC where they belong with better graphics and performance and all the bells and whistles that emulators provide.
Who knows what these courts are gonna decide though. The copyright industry basically buys these laws anyway, there's no reason to believe they will rule favorably to the consumer.
The two major notions are that Yuzu violates Nintendo's copyright [1] by allowing people to play unauthorized copies [2]. In order to do so it allows for bypassing Nintendo's encryption (by taking in the keys, it does not embed the keys in the software) it falls under a violation of the DMCA [3]. Essentially, trying to argue that the keys are copyrighted. Additionally, they claim that every user that has either dumped Nintendo games they lawfully owned and play in Yuzu, or have pirated the roms and played in Yuzu have violated copyright and thus Yuzu should pay up [4].
[1] "In effect, Yuzu turns general computing devices into tools for massive intellectual property infringement of Nintendo and others’ copyrighted work"
[2] "In other words, without Yuzu’s decryption of Nintendo’s encryption, unauthorized copies of games could not be played on PCs or Android devices. "
[3] "Recognizing the threats faced by copyright owners like Nintendo in the age of digital piracy, Congress enacted the Anti-Circumvention and Anti-Trafficking provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”), making it illegal to circumvent or traffic in devices that circumvent technological measures put into place by copyright owners to protect against unlawful access to and copying of copyrighted works."
[4] "On information and belief, Yuzu users have (1) dumped Nintendo games they have lawfully purchased and copied the game ROMs into Yuzu; and (2) obtained Nintendo games online from pirate websites and copied those game ROMs into Yuzu. Each such reproduction constitutes a violation of 17 U.S.C. § 501(a) for which Plaintiff is entitled to damages under 17 U.S.C. § 504 and injunctive relief under § 502"
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201
But regardless, if they "distribute" (ie, can be freely read off the device without special tools) the keys in the clear, it isn't used to protect anything.
A browser does not have the code to decrypt a switch ROM.
At the end of the day it's what can be proven to a jury.
In this case for instance, I don't think there's a decent legal strategy for Yuzu wrt "we didn't know the encryption on switch ROMs was a 1201 protected device".
I didn't know that, and I'm a software engineer. Good luck convincing a jury :)
So with Yuzu's patreon funds, it's very grey at the moment, which is probably why Nintendo decided to take aim.
The law doesn't say 'it's illegal to break a lock until it's been broken'.
But picking a crappy lock on a door you're not supposed to open is still a crime, regardless of how crappy the lock is.
> Further, you can buy a switch and never agree to any EULA or other contracts.
1201 doesn't require you to sign any conracts or agree to any EULAs. It's treated more like trespass.
>>...technological measure "effectively controls access to a work" if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
What DRM is a browser bypassing? As if you control some that is being bypassed by a browser, you're free to sue.
Every browser pretends to be all the browsers before it to get around restrictions on who can see/render content.
It's not copy protection. It may change the structure and content of the page that is sent but that is not copy protection.
It is though!
Often news websites use the user agent to detect e.g. the google crawler, and allow google to index the contents of news articles; but then throw up a paywall when anyone with a normal browser shows up.
I recall some news websites tried to threaten people making browser extensions with the DMCA/CFAA as they considered it working around their copy protection to illegally gain access to their content.
Source? I spent two minutes looking and failed to find anything like that, hardly an exhaustive search though.
Hard to argue a user agent could be DRM though, considering it's a string I the user send to the website.
How on earth can they claim that the developers of Yuzu are responsible for copying done by their users?
That's the whole point of court.
More significant is that the Betamax case is from the 80s and precedes the DMCA. The DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions are broad and have been interpreted broadly. The result is that the decryption is a problem all on its own, regardless of things like fair use that were a major factor in Sony's victory.
It's worth noting that Nintendo's first three claims are DMCA section 1201 anti-circumvention claims, with the other claims of personal infringement by the developers and contributory infringement (where the part you quoted is from) being kind of tacked on at the end.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps...
Quite the leap from existing as an emulator to inexplicably being held liable for some independent leak.
There's also the issue that, unlike prior emulators, Yuzu risks running afoul of DMCA anti-trafficking provisions for circumvention devices and software that uses circumvention devices. So, while per se emulating the Switch might be legal, decrypting the games may be illegal (as would software that is useless if it is unable to do that decryption).
Edit: Strongly recommend reading my follow up comment explaining historical precedent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39530558
Well, no. Pirated Switch games can be played on a hacked Switch or a flashcart with no emulation necessary. Common sense suggests emulation would be significantly more common, but can Nintendo prove that in court, or prove that the leak wouldn’t have happened without Yuzu’s existence?
And maybe for developing homebrew games?
I don't know of any similar cases where an emulator or say, a video player (for example Kodi) was held liable for increasing demand?
Nintendo is making that argument on the basis that Yuzu's Patreon income skyrocketed when TOTK leaked online.
https://graphtreon.com/creator/yuzuteam
It checks out, TOTK leaked on May 1st 2023 and Yuzus monthly income rose from $19k to $45k throughout May, having never broken $25k previously.
Prescient comment marked as off-topic: https://github.com/yuzu-emu/yuzu/pull/10234#issuecomment-154...
We'll see. I'm not really sure there's anything they could have done better in that case as a positive defense if they had this in mind, though - like, releasing it not behind a timegate paywall could be an argument for actively destroy game sales even more, by that logic, and actively waiting until post-launch to release it could be argued to be around trying to extract more money from people to focus on it more.
I don't know if there were any other issues, but at least on that one, it doesn't seem like they needed deep knowledge of the game to try reworking it.
I mean, yes, they presumably turned a larger profit correlated to people going and buying it for something illegal, but it's not solely or even primarily used for that, people would be doing this without it, and they didn't have any involvement or encouragement that people do anything criminal with it.
Downloading yuzu and watching a YouTube video to get roms going is easier than obtaining a modded switch, that one is certain.
That. Literally doesn't make any logical sense. That's like arguing that if computers didn't exist, the leak would be fairly inconsequential ... or if electricity didn't exist, the leak would be fairly inconsequential.
This is interesting, it'd be great to have a link to explain this matter more deeply.
This provision in the DMCA has been most often used against developers of unauthorized DVD copying software, Blu-ray copying software, etc; and the force of the legal argument has been well proven previously. It nearly killed RealPlayer when they made unauthorized software for DVD playback.
You can also see this law invoked in Apple v Psystar; when Apple sued Psystar for circumventing protections in macOS to allow running macOS on non-Apple hardware. That lawsuit was dragged all the way to the final appeal to SCOTUS - and Psystar was shredded the whole way. Expect Apple v Psystar to come up in a Nintendo vs Yuzu lawsuit; because running macOS on unapproved hardware sounds awfully similar to running games on unapproved hardware.
If Nintendo were to succeed invoking it here - emulation would be legal. Decrypting games would be illegal. Consoles before, say, the Wii (IIRC) would be free to emulate due to not being encrypted - but newer games, being encrypted, would be off-limits just like DVDs.
I would love for some clear indication that we have some digital rights left, but I am not certain the same reaction would not be possible to be replicated today.
However, Yuzu requires that you bring your own decryption keys obtained from your own Switch device; it cannot circumvent copy protections without that. The only circumvention code included in Yuzu is basically just standard 128-bit XTS-AES decryption code; it seems like a ruling that makes that code illegal to distribute would be a bad idea.
Psystar order granting permanent injunction: http://www.groklaw.net/pdf2/Psystar-242.pdf
DMCA 1201(a): https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201
Yuzu's crypto code: https://github.com/yuzu-emu/yuzu/tree/master/src/core/crypto
- they didn't prove that Yuzu contributed to piracy (and since the amount of piracy tools on the Switch itself that's far from obvious that Yuzu is a first choice)
- they didn't prove that the leak itself lead to a loss of revenue. And that's also very hard of an argument to make considering that this game was a huge commercial success.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_(law)
Not in copyright cases. You have to show harm for actual damages, but copyright has statutory damages: you only need to demonstrate a violation of the law (the copyright statutes) for damages [1]:
> In all countries where the Berne Convention standards apply, copyright is automatic, and need not be obtained through official registration with any government office. Once an idea has been reduced to tangible form, for example by securing it in a fixed medium (such as a drawing, sheet music, photograph, a videotape, or a computer file), the copyright holder is entitled to enforce their exclusive rights.[35] However, while registration is not needed to exercise copyright, in jurisdictions where the laws provide for registration, it serves as prima facie evidence of a valid copyright and enables the copyright holder to seek statutory damages and attorney's fees.[48] (In the US, registering after an infringement only enables one to receive actual damages and lost profits.)
Statutory damages do not need to correspond to actual damages [2]:
> The charges allow copyright holders, who succeed with claims of infringement, to receive an amount of compensation per work (as opposed to compensation for losses, an account of profits or damages per infringing copy). Statutory damages can in some cases be significantly more than the actual damages suffered by the rightsholder or the profits of the infringer.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Registration
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_damages_for_copyrigh...
Copyright obviously protects against the retransmittal of the copyrighted work. If Yuzu hasn't done that, it isn't guilty of copyright infringement. Instead, Nintendo is arguing that if Yuzu didn't exist, fewer people would have committed copyright infringement. That in itself is not a copyright claim.
Short answer, I'm not aware of precedent prohibiting emulation on the grounds of "enabling" copyright infringement the way an emulator does. But even in the US with fair use, I don't think emulation is always legal, and regardless Nintendo doesn't really need to demonstrate copyright infringement because simply suing would be enough to burden emulator developers with legal fees. See the UltraHLE emulator situation [5]. (Tangent: In Japan, there is no fair use, so I think the harm of emulation to Nintendo's sales would be enough to violate some kind of copyright law in Japan.)
The rest of this comment (the long answer-but-not-really-an-answer) is mostly spitballing on my part.
> Copyright obviously protects against the retransmittal of the copyrighted work. If Yuzu hasn't done that, it isn't guilty of copyright infringement. Instead, Nintendo is arguing that if Yuzu didn't exist, fewer people would have committed copyright infringement. That in itself is not a copyright claim.
Here is the closest situation I'm aware of. In the US, there were criminal and civil cases against Team Xecutor, who made devices and software capable of circumventing the Nintendo Switch's measures against running unauthorized copies of games [1]:
> In September 2020, Canadian national Gary Bowser and French national Max "MAXiMiLiEN" Louarn were arrested for designing and selling "circumvention devices", specifically products to circumvent Nintendo Switch copy protection, and were named, along with Chinese citizen Yuanning Chen, in a federal indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle, WA on August 20, 2020.[3] Each of the three men named in the indictment faced 11 felony counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to circumvent technological measures and to traffic in circumvention devices, trafficking in circumvention devices, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.[4] Bowser handled public relations for the group, which has been in operation since "at least" 2013.[1][5]
The legal basis of the anti-circumvention criminal cases seemed to have been based on DMCA 1201 [2] (a statute prohibiting circumvention of technical protection measures [3] against access to copyrighted digital data/works/software), even if the purpose of the circumvention is not for actual copyright infringement), but the judge and the US Department of Justice took the estimated financial damages very seriously [4]:
> The public face of a notorious video game piracy group was sentenced today to 40 months in prison for two federal felonies, announced U.S. Attorney Nick Brown. Gary Bowser, 52, a Canadian national of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, pleaded guilty in October 2021 to Conspiracy to Circumvent Technological Measures and to Traffic in Circumvention Devices, and Trafficking in Circumvention Devices. At the sentencing hearing U.S. District Judge Robert S. Lasnik said, “These are serious criminal offenses with real victims and harm to the community.”
> “This piracy scheme is estimated to have caused more than $65 million in losses to video game companies,” said U.S. Attorney Nick Brown. “But the damage goes beyond these businesses, harming video game developers and the small, creative studios whose products and hard work is essentially stolen when games are pirated.”
What if there's no circumvention involved, like in the case of an emulator? Then DMCA 1201 doesn't apply. However, what about the effect of emulation on Nintendo's sales? If you can't mod a Nintendo Switch you bought to play unauthorized copies of Switch games regardless of whether you bought authorized copies, then why should you be able to use an emulator, which might as well be a modded Nintendo Switch in terms of harm to Nintendo's revenue? is something I think Nintendo could convince c...
Since getting actual Switch game data necessarily involves violating the DMCA, Nintendo's lawyers will have an easy time showing that the only way yuzu can be useful is if the user violates copyright law, thus making the emulator itself illegal.
That is if this even makes it to court.
The Copyright Office has become increasingly friendly to these types of arguments as well, though they have imposed some limitations on games hardware. The next set of rules/guidance they put out won't be until october (They do it every 3 years).
Yuzu isn't sold* as a product and unless Nintendo can convince the court that the mere act of emulation (or obtaining the console keys required to make Yuzu function in the first place) violate their copyright, then I don't see it personally. You can run code that isn't owned by Nintendo on a Switch. Maybe there is a reasonableness argument that people aren't using Yuzu to play Switch homebrew, but there is a homebrew scene around the Switch.
None of that is related to Yuzu though, Yuzu can only play what you give it.
And no I disagree, the fastest way for me to deplop a switch game is to use an emulator such as Yuzu, it's a much faster feedback loop than a devkit and I'm sure there's a lot of indie games developped or tested this way. So there's also other purposes to this software.
But if it's only useful when you illegally infringe copyright, its creators could be found civilly liable for such violation.
I did some looking into this case. Nintendo's lawyers appear to be attempting a novel legal argument: they are composing the DMCA with the doctrine of contributory copyright infringement. Under the latter doctrine, purveyors of a device (or software) can be found liable for copyright infringement even if they didn't commit the infringement themselves, if it can be found that the device is only useful for such infringement. Where the DMCA comes in is, Nintendo is arguing that despite not being a copyright circumvention tool in its own right, Yuzu is only useful for playing games whose DRM has been circumvented; therefore distributing it is an offense of trafficking in circumvention technology under the DMCA. It's not really clear whether the courts will accept this interpretation, but if circumvention is "copyright infringement", then the doctrine of contributory infringement could well apply.
It tends not to matter in courts if using an emulator is better than using a devkit (personally I concede that it may well be, especially early in the development cycle). Because the devkit option is available to you provided you pay for a license, and because not paying for such a license is not a legitimate option for Switch development, the courts are not likely to look at Yuzu as legitimate software for non-infringing Switch development. There was that court case involving illegal DVD decryption where the judge, upon hearing the defendant argue that they just wanted to play DVDs on Linux, stated that that was not a legitimate reason for circumventing DVD encryption because they could have played those DVDs on a Windows machine.
Nintendo's case is a lot more airtight. To play anything on yuzu, you have to defeat the encryption on Switch games, itself a felony DMCA violation (irrespective of how good or bad the encryption is). Therefore, yuzu can only be used to play pirated material, therefore it contributes to copyright infringement.
"But muh homebrew" -- people who want to develop for Switch can get a development license from Nintendo. The fact that this is an option would weaken developing for Switch as a legitimate use for yuzu.
Just because you can get a license from Nintendo doesn't mean the emulator isn't useful for development.
That 1984 Supreme Court decision was a 5–4 ruling. Can you imagine the deleterious effect on the home electronics industry if, in 1984, a single justice had voted the other way, and the VCR had been ruled an inherently infringing device?
Licensed development only allows publishing Nintendo-approved games through Nintendo-licensed publishers who sell into Nintendo-approved channels, which the vast majority of stuff in the homebrew scene wouldn't qualify for.
How many businesses does Sony have for income? Mountains. They could lose PlayStation and it would only be a dent.
How many businesses does Microsoft have for income? Well, they could literally lose Xbox, and it wouldn't even be a dent.
How many businesses does Nintendo have for income? One. And if they lose it, they're done. I think it completely understandable they would be far more defensive considering that gaming is a corporate life and death matter; unlike the competition.
Nintendo is actually one of the few companies that make a profit (of a few cents) on their consoles.
Every computer is also NOT the same nowadays. Modern operating systems abstract a lot of the differences away, but they’re there.
Consoles give game devs a predictable platform to develop against and make guarantees for.
"I don't wanna buy the hardware" is not a sufficient excuse to steal a game.
Yes? They have a closed down system that they market as family friendly and can be quickly docked to a tv or taken on the go. It's a device that didn't really exist at the time; its potential competitors in 2017 were Chinese hardware charging 2-3 times the price. The market and uniqueness is there.
And on top of all of that, selling hardware is also profitable, on top of software. Why wouldn't they benefit in this situation?
How can it be family friendly when they sell Night Trap? [1] Night Trap was part of the content that resulted in video game ratings and was given a M rating contemperaneously, I'm not sure if the bar moved, or maybe there's some content change. Of course, in 1992, Nintendo said Night Trap would never be on a Nintendo console, so something has changed.
[1] https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/night-trap-25th-a...
But yes, in the beginning they were a lot more strict on that marketing. I'm guessing after 2-3 decades both companies can allow a few indirect exceptions as they expand past universal audiences and into niches.
So, by your own admission you stole the game and you expect Nintendo to be ok with that? I'm sympathetic to you not wanting to have a Switch just to play Nintendo games, but your moral high ground disappeared the instant you decided to not pay for a copy of TOTK.
https://youtu.be/wROQUZDCIMI
“Why Are Emulators Legal? Dolphin vs. Nintendo, and the Fate of Dolphin Emulator”
Awful for the gaming community at large? Eh, Nintendo products are not as dominating as you think. It is only available in select countries and has a hundred million users at best. Compare that to PC and mobile gaming, it is almost negligible.
Though it would indeed be problematic if American courts manage to establish a precedent criminalizing emulators. That is indeed a real threat; American courts are not known for robustness or integrity.
That's exactly why it's awful for the gaming community and honestly for human culture at large. Video game preservation isn't a thing without emulators. If Nintendo wins this, it means open season on every (major) contributor to an emulator and every emulation project. It means the end of the thriving emulation community and anybody interested in contributing except for a handful who are willing to risk being sued and/or live in a place where the US justice system has no reach.
And it's not like Western Europe is particularly friendly to anything or anybody that circumvents DRM.
The Switches system1-6 crypto schemes weren't terribly good. system5 even weakend it drammatically and trapdoored them into being permenently weaker. Problem is what constitutes an "effective" anti-circumvention according to the DMCA is not defined.
This is my legal right, and Yuzu provided open source code to make this task easier for me.
Nintendo is looking for a scapegoat here for their wasted investment in DRM technology.
It's funny to me how every time the topic of piracy comes up, the world suddenly becomes so full of people who totally like giving companies money out of the sheer goodness of their hearts. And then by next week when it's time for another post about how open source maintainers get burnt out from a lack of material support, we all suddenly remember how human nature actually works.
"This game was so great that I would consider paying next time, but I'm definitely not going to pay this time" doesn't seem, to me, like a credulous position.
Also historically emulation has been teaser because they tend to trail console release by years and only gain good support by the time present generation is passe. Probably the biggest issue here is emulation is unusually good because nintendo released gamecube 1 2 and 3 and their latest effort is weak enough that PC actually plays at a higher res.
I think it has some similar bugs to ZSNES, but that's just because they're both crappy low-accuracy emulators.
See: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/11/sony-using-open-sourc...
There's a popular myth floating around that Nintendo downloaded Super Mario Bros. off the internet only to sell it back to players via the Wii virtual console, but I'm only comfortable with calling it a myth because it's based on the fact that the embedded iNES file in the VC release is identical to iNES files you can find online. There's only one standalone version of Super Mario Bros. on the NES, and you can trivially recreate an exact file on your very own if you have the cartridge and a ROM dumping utility. It's a pretty good possibility that Nintendo created their virtual ROM in exactly the same fashion. The iNES format itself is very simple, and Nintendo hired the iNES developer to work on their in-house software; he could have easily just brought that same format into their official projects. (EDIT: This last sentence appears to have been another myth I bought into, see the reply to this comment.)
The person referenced who Nintendo hired is Kawase Tomohiro.
The basis for calling him "The iNES Developer" is that, in a changelog for 0.7 of iNES, Marat Fayzullin - the developer of iNES - wrote: "Sound support completely rewritten, thanks to Kawase Tomohiro"
That is the entirety of the association. That single line in a changelog. Based on similar "thanks" lines it was probably because they reported some emulation issues and not because they personally rewrote the sound support for the emulator, but resulted in Marat doing so. It's actually interesting how these stories seem to change over time. The last time I heard this, the story was that Nintendo had hired somebody who contributed to iNES, which was at least technically true if a bit misleading, but it seems that now the story is that they hired *the* iNES Developer. Which seems particularly silly when we consider the basis is that 8 word changelog line.
At the very least, this indicates that Nintendo definitely relied on resources and documentation from the NES emulation community. But it also raises questions as to why they used the INES format as opposed to some internal format of their own: was it just because they wanted to use a spec they found online instead of writing their own, or did they pirate their own games to test (or even ship)?
The answer to that that I've seen is simply they hired a man who previously worked on INES: https://web.archive.org/web/20061228071701/http://www.n-side... . This man is then top credited in Animal Crossing for "NES Emulator Program".
Majesco Entertainment published some switch games made by Mistic Software, which used an open source emulator without credit and in violation of its license (and therefore were infringing copyright). Atari was somehow involved as well. Nintendo had no involvement, unless you consider them responsible for not doing a thorough enough license audit of every company that publishes Switch games or something.
That's the thing with closed platform, you can't have your cake and it too.
> In December 2008, the ScummVM team learned that the recently released Wii ports of three Humongous Entertainment Junior Adventure titles, Freddi Fish and the Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds, Pajama Sam: No Need to Hide When It's Dark Outside, and Spy Fox: Dry Cereal, have all used the ScummVM engine without proper attribution. The games were published on request of Atari through Majesco Entertainment, who turned to Mistic Software to port the games. Mistic had used ScummVM for these, but failed to credit the developers. While the ScummVM team contacted gpl-violations.org for legal advice, Atari instead threatened to sue the ScummVM team, as the terms of Nintendo Wii development kit heavily restricted the use of open source software, including the GPL. A settlement was made in 2009, in which ScummVM would drop the investigation of the GPL violation, on the condition that Mistic would sell or destroy all GPL-violating copies of the games, make a donation to the Free Software Foundation, and pay the legal fees. As a result, this legal dispute significantly limited the availability of the Wii ports of these three titles.[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScummVM#Mistic's_GPL_violation...
https://www.eurogamer.net/did-nintendo-download-a-mario-rom-...
In 2022 Nintendo starting taking down Youtube videos showing Steam Decks running Switch games: https://www.resetera.com/threads/nintendo-started-blocking-v...
And last year went after Dolphin (GCN/Wii emulator) as soon as they announced plans to be listed on Steam: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36090755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36100732
It was quickly taken down and re-posted without any references to Yuzu, probably after a panicked email from legal.
https://www.pcgamer.com/valve-edits-steam-deck-trailer-to-re...
(now I'm awaiting legal action from Nintendo)
The detachable joycon with accelerometer control are a mechanic in some games (eg. Zelda crossbow aim). I would imagine this would be worse experience on steam deck.
Pretty much all the games I have played allowed to disable the motion controls. I think it counts towards accessibility. Personally I really dislike the whole motion control aspect so always turn them off. Zelda included.
I'm sure there are other tradeoffs as well. But would love it see what it's like on an emulator. Or maybe not, it might make running games on the original hardware feel terrible :)
I think motion control is the only option for Pokemon Let's Go.
I still prefer the switch for switch games myself.
Edit: Awesome - great to know!
I think I still have most of the key memorized from back then.
In the EU, reverse engineering is allowed by law if the reason for doing so is interoperability by the one who owns a license to the product in question.
"The authorisation of the rightholder shall not be required where reproduction of the code and translation of its form within the meaning of points (a) and (b) of Article 4(1) are indispensable to obtain the information necessary to achieve the interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, provided that the following conditions are met:
(a) those acts are performed by the licensee or by another person having a right to use a copy of a program, or on their behalf by a person authorised to do so;
(b) the information necessary to achieve interoperability has not previously been readily available to the persons referred to in point (a); and
(c) those acts are confined to the parts of the original program which are necessary in order to achieve interoperability."
More information: https://www.vidstromlabs.com/blog/the-legal-boundaries-of-re...
Same with ripping DVDs/Blu-rays, it's illegal to rip them anyway, so might as well just download them.
Especially now that they're suing emulator developers, it's almost unethical to buy Switch games anymore.
Now there should be some ground rule. When you buy something, it's supposed to be yours, and you should be allowed to do what you want with it, especially studying it and sharing the results of your study. Any rule that allows some big corporation to retain power over something that's supposed to be yours is serious overreach and should be shut down.
Now Nintendo does have a big problem here: without the exclusivity of their form factor (which is arguably difficult to improve upon[1]), all they have left is the exclusivity of their game library.
[1]: https://loup-vaillant.fr/articles/ideal-computer
Wrong :)
You have a right to a private copy, but you don't have a right to circumvent copy protections to get that private copy.
So ripping a DVD is still illegal, despite the tax.
We're getting screwed :)
Since when? Do you remember which law? I don't recall anything like the DMCA being ported to French law.
> So ripping a DVD is still illegal, despite the tax.
I'm pretty sure it used to be legal.
Only if it doesn't have the CSS thing, which most commercial ones have.
Even though it's a silly protection, it still counts as a "protection" legally.
It's like that in Italy so I suppose it's the same in france https://www.gianluigibonanomi.com/diritto-copiare/
TL;DR: it's more complicated than I thought. First, the law was introduced in 2006, so before it, circumventing DRM and publishing how to do it was not a crime. (Of course, publishing copyrighted works with no proper authorisation was already a crime, regardless of DRM.)
Then for a brief time, circumventing DRM was outlawed. But fear of foreign monopolies (most notably Microsoft) and free software lobbying eventually had those articles amended, effectively exempting research and free software from any sanction. The exact limits of the current law are still fuzzy, but it seems pretty clear that using VLC to make copy of a DVD I own is 100% legal in France.
So you can dump the cartridges and digital games you own, and the keys to run them.
Cause we all like Github.
Truly a problem of Nintendo's own petty making if even switch owners with a legitimate copy prefer to not run on their hardware.
You can also copy the saves off the console (or the emulated NAND you're supposed to create when hacking it) by running a different app (TegraExplorer) right from the bootloader. I had to do this when I messed up an update and my system wouldn't boot, but I hadn't backed up my saves in months.
I do wonder if anyone's attempted to get nintendo to respond to a subject access request in the EU to get their saves from their cloud service.
Not all games are stable/playable/without glitches.
Mario Galaxy Wii + HD texture packs look like its from 2025 compared to the re-release on the Switch.
That simply isn’t true.
Downvotes don't make the statement magically more true.
So I went through the tribulations of setting it up on the Deck (pro tip: use EmuDeck, I didn't know about it back then).
I don't know about better, but for me it felt the same as the Switch! The only slight confusion thing was button labeling, but it's quick to get used to.
I'd also say the slightly bigger screen is nicer.
But yes, you can (and should!) run the popular titles such as Mario Odyssey and BotW/TotK.
But I'm not sure why this is so surprising, the steam deck is a Linux PC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW4y8juFkOI
Of course not as easy as just buying the game outright and putting in the cartridge.
Reading comments like this I can almost understand Nintendos stance on emulation. Suing the emulator team is certainly not the right thing to do, but come on.
At least pay for the game if you are not paying for the console.
Obviously a lot has changed since then. Now they do it to protect their own IP and investments.
The lockout chip is what made the "seal of quality" scheme feasible in the first place. If alternative games were widely available, Nintendo wouldn't have had nearly as much leverage to strongarm with.
Also, look at the timeline and the history behind Tengen which was essentially a company created by Atari specifically with the purpose of publishing their games on Nintendo and used essentially corporate espionage to get the underlying MPU used for the CIC logic that was a corporate secret. The actual lawsuits get filed a few years once Nintendo had enough evidence, but it was going on from the start of the lifespan of the console.
The NES was released in North America in late 1985. By 1987 there were commercially available games (from Tengen) that were playable without the permission of Nintendo. Tengen was not the only one or even the only method being used to break that console at that time.
And then there is Game Genie, which effectively can work around all of these problems. Sure, they included some logic to play nice and let the NES check the CIC again, but you can work around that with a game genie code itself! In the early days Game Genie and GameShark devices were well known for being vectors for piracy and they leaned into that.
*EDIT* This doesn't even get into the VAST array of devices that existed to clone cartridges or adapt floppy drives similar to how the Famicom did. At worst those required a stupid dummy cart to sit in them that never gets removed or the manufacturer did that for you and put a CIC in the device. Some used various attacks mentioned earlier to work around even having to do that.
Microsoft only has (de facto) control of the Microsoft Store.
Microsoft doesn't seem to care (or it's legally dangerous to care). Nintendo does.
nintendo doesnt have to make the switch open source to make it open, they just have to allow people to make whatever the hell they want for it, but their business model depends on it being locked down (closed)
Given all that this doesn't feel like a plea to let people publish their games. Just a thinly veiled port begging.
Even if they could, it wouldn't let them play switch games better. It doesn't solve the clear problem here that is the super technically minded people wanting to play Mario and Zelda in 4k/60.
"Open" doesn't mean "open source" although in the case of the Steam Deck, it is both (not including the Steam application, but as I mentioned you can use the Steam Deck for whatever you want including removing the Steam application, so it's not a requirement or a blocker. I know someone who installed their own Bazzite flavor that has Steam removed and only uses Lutris to install GOG games).
Also Steam Store's requirements are only for games listed in their store. As has been mentioned, this is not a requirement for running on the Steam Deck. This is in sharp contrast to Nintendo.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36091273
It course I would love to see this. I think Nintendo makes some very good games but have no interest in having specific physical hardware do end up not playing them.
There current lineup of mobile games are Mario Kart Tour, Animal Crossing Pocket Camp, Fire Emblem Heroes, Super Mario Run, and Pikmin Bloom. These have brought in over $1B in revenue, mostly from Fire Emblem.
Additionally, Nintendo is heavily involved in The Pokémon Company, so they saw the closed doors numbers of Pokemon Go.
I don't think it's crazy to think Nintendo will have a major presence outside of its own hardware in the future. Nintendo as a company always feels about two bad console cycles away from ruin. This feels doubly true with them putting handheld and console gaming into the same basket with Switch.
I also don't think it's crazy for Nintendo to decide that they can sell more games if they sell them on other platforms. In many ways the whole concept of a console exclusive is legacy thinking when the consoles had major architectural differences and porting was a major process.
Wine is not an emulator, and has nothing to do with projects as Yuzu, Dolphin, PCSX2 and others.
(if running out on ARM, there is still ARM to x86 emulation but that is just generic ARM to x86 emulation which has not that much to do with Yuzo per se)
Wine/Proton is a community implementation of the Windows APIs for Linux, it uses no Microsoft code nor needs any. It runs binaries that Valve already has permission to distribute (the games).
Lolol
other games are only as much of interest as it might be games which could end up on steam or games which show some issue with the emulation which could be used to improve proton
there is also the thing that proton or wine just barely count as emulation, they are a bit of emulation but mostly just providing compatible OS interfaces adaption (through Yuzu might but be that much different given how "mainstream" (but old) the switch hardware is)
What are they supposed to do? Leave videos about piracy of their own IP untouched?
It baffles me how people believe they have a fundamental right to pirate Nintendo software without consequences.
Nintendo bring this in themselves with their own policies.
There are so many hardware platforms I can support, and one that hardly ever does sales and refuses to bring their games to other platforms is not that appealing.
I buy games on PC, I buy games on XB, I've even rebought some games between the platforms to play couch co-op with my kid.
Steam and XB have enough sales to make this an option, Nintendo on the other hand is adamant about wringing every last penny from you.
These days I don't have time for Nintendo's nonsense. They want to live in their walled garden, they can have it.
But you have time to play their games, apparently?
Is that piracy?
When corporations like Uber violate multiple laws, do they get shut down? When Amazon treats its employees poorly, does it get shut down? When Google forbids manufacturers to pre-install competitor apps, does it get shut down? Well, it seems that as long as copyright is not infringed, everything is ok.
Also it seems to me that Nintendo might themselves violate antitrust laws by using their monopoly power on market of Nintendo-compatible games, and not allowing enough competition there.
Your monopoly point is an interesting one. Wonder if there's an actual legal case there, as Nintendo have done a lot of this bullying over the years.
One is certainly allowed to have a monopoly over their own products, that’s what trademarks and patents are for.
It’s hard to argue a game developer is forced to play ball with Nintendo.
There are a whole lot of ways to distribute a video game. Three major consoles. Computers. Things like the steam deck. Smart phones. You could ignore any one or two of them, and still have a great business. In fact, lots of companies do. A whole lot of people have access to more than one of these platforms. You could ignore anyone or two of these platforms, and still sell your product to most of the people in the market. It is a highly competitive environment. If you don’t like Nintendo’s policies, just sell on Xbox and PlayStation and steam. People do this. If an environment is competitive, then by definition, nobody has a monopoly or an unfair advantage.
The Earth has 8 billion people, most of whom have a smart phone, all of which are using one of two operating systems. Not many people have more than one. If Apple says your app cannot be in their App Store, half of humanity, cannot use your app. It is a much different scenario.
Plenty of companies get shut down for regulatory violations, or employee mistreatment. Pointing at some extreme outliers is nothing more than a form of selection bias.
Same reason AirBnB works despite many laws to the contrary. If you get popular enough that the public will vote against people who threaten to enforce the law, out of a desire to keep using the product, you win. It's a race to get too big to be shut down.
You actually said "if you get popular enough that the public will vote against people who threaten to enforce the law".
So someone builds a product that the public likes, something they demand that politicians allow, and somehow this is "too big to be shut down". Do you forget that modern democracies pretend that their authority derives from the will of the people?
The law is not sacred. Get off your high horse.
There are many reasons why popularity alone of the voting public does not translate into policy. The dangers of tyranny of the majority is well known, will of the people is a necessary but not sufficient reason.
There are also some pre-requisites for a functioning democracy like a well-informed electorate which is questionable today at best.
Laws are there to serve society. Some of the ways it serves society is when it restrains society, but people are not stupid and understand when they’re being unreasonably restrained. Unreasonably being the key word, as I’d like to think we’re all generally anti-murder around here, even if we can argue to death about things like AirBnB.
Let me put it like this: the laws of San Francisco (and other cities) protected Taxi drivers from competition, and by the late aughts the local taxi services here were godawful magnets for complaints every weekend that the relevant regulatory authority (the SFMTA) didn’t do a goddamned thing about. If you wanted to go out and enjoy a nice weekend night, the responsible thing was not to drive. But good luck getting home, and if you could get a cab, it would be filthy and the driver would unlawfully insist his card reader was broken (it wasn’t, and it never was, the card reader was probably the most reliable thing in that car given how little wear and tear it would have seen in life).
Uber didn’t walk into a well regulated transportation marketplace. They and Lyft drove headfirst into a marketplace where the existing laws and regulations were suppressing supply and killing the market, and not in service of the passengers (i.e. the voters). They won the battles that mattered which were the political battle by upending a status quo that had favored this shitty little taxi medallion system and the market battle by just being better at a price people were willing to pay than their competition.
Popularity doesn’t always translate to policy in a democracy, but it often does.
We prioritized cars a long time ago, and we’re still paying for it. I’m not happy about that fact either. You can absolutely argue that cyclists are victims to a tyranny by majority much as I can argue that that the presence of Uber and Lyft is a net benefit versus the status quo that existed prior to their coming onto the scene, and I’ll just say both things can be true. People also lose in democracies.
OK, let's take a vote to take your stuff and share it around.
It is popular with tourists, who don't vote in the jurisdictions they visit, and it is popular with some landlords, who are a small minority that generally the renting public have at best indifference and often hatred for. It is very unpopular among renters who now see supply taken off long-term rental market; and it is very unpopular among other homeowners who do not want to live next to hotels.
It is not really a surprise that major tourist destinations are now slapping AirBnB with all kinds of restrictions.
[1] https://www.theyucatantimes.com/2022/01/uber-could-be-return...
Basically, Uber had powerful allies and was willing to do illegal things. That's the difference between Uber and the other apps that got shut down for breaking the law
Why would you want 10 companies competing, bet your investment in one, or "spread it" like a loser, when you can pool ALL your money and make sure ALL the profit accumulates into one giant enormous company ?
Uber in this case happens to be the company chosen for big money.
Nintendo is being a bully here, but what on earth does a monopoly on the market of your own platform even mean?
The landscape has obviously changed since, but not for any good reason in my opinion.
- Nintendo Switch OS only runs on Nintendo Switch hardware -> Nintendo monopoly on Switch OS hardware
- Nintendo Switch hardware and OS only run officially licensed Nintendo game -> Nintendo monopoly on games for Nintendo Switch and OS games
- Nintendo Switch games only run on Nintendo Switch -> Nintendo monopoly on hardware that runs Switch games
(Apple and iPhone are in the same situation)
Compare to the situation with Windows:
- x86 hardware can run any OS, including Linux and Windows -> mostly no Microsoft monopoly, although Windows and Microsoft keys are often pre-installed
- Windows can run on any x86 hardware (and ARM I think?) -> no Microsoft monopoly, although they don't release source to port to other CPU architectures
- Windows can run any software from anyone at no charge -> mostly no Microsoft monopoly, although they can favor their own software
- Windows software can run on any OS, such as Windows or Linux with Wine -> mostly no Microsoft monopoly, although one can argue that having an OS API without an open-source implementation induces lock-in and creates a partial monopoly
It's baffling to me because some users on HN grandstand so much about how making your own product or platform means that you are morally obligated to support any and every third party under the sun. But then the actual tech industry seems to be the direct opposite - if anything companies make lots of fanfare out of achieving basic interop.
But, we'll see what the judge says.
So yeah, it'll be interesting to see what the judge says. :)
Their entire case rests on the presumption that the DMCA protects Nintendo's monopoly over not only distribution, but playback of its console game software.
Emulators are legal. Defending your hobby project in court is infeasible without patrons.
Nintendo has no leg to stand on legally speaking, and there's a precedent waiting to happen.
As for the emulator itself, I don't see any argument that the Yuzu team used "illegal means" (internal SDKs, whatever their equivalent of a DLL is, etc).
A thought for the Ryujinx emulator devs, who are also making an excellent Switch emulator (sometimes more performant than Yuzu). They must be having a really stressful day.
Switch piracy is massive. Almost everyone I know is doing it. I’m not, but I still emulate because switch performance is poo. So I buy the game, and then emulate it in 4K/60, it’s how I finally finished BOTW.
Emulation was awesome. Until...
I don't have the PC anymore but I know what I had happen.
My game files were trashed. Restoring the different saves did nothing.
I promise you, I know how to restore saved files and follow instructions on how to do as such.
The emulators we easy to use. beautiful. responsive. After TOTK, the energy behind them had them getting constantly updated and was a good experience.
Until it wasn't.
Restarted TOTK on my Switch. I had bought it because I support games that are worth it even if I emulate them. I've got a Powkiddy RGB10 where I also emulate games. I've got a plex server where I host my own library.
When I, a random person on the internet you can believe or not believe, say that my emulator died and I lost weeks of progress on my game? I lost weeks of progress on my game. I can't remember which I was using (I switched between them at one point because one was faster/better but I can't remember which one it was)
It's also very quick if you're already set up with atmosphere & homebrew. Longest part was just waiting for my console's nand to dump.
The Switch has a vibrant modding and homebrew scene. People also like modding their consoles to dump their games.
Lots of power users want to dump their games to play the top games on their PC. Tears of the Kingdom runs in 8k, at 60fps, with lots of QOL improvements on PC.
Don't be so sure. From the article:
> Emulator tools aren't inherently illegal, but the way in which Yuzu is being actively used and promoted is what Nintendo appears to be objecting to here.
So it depends on what is actually in the case. At best, Yuzu needs to simply update some of its marketing material. At worst, they need to shut down and open under a new name / LLC, while also updating marketing material.
IANAL, but my understanding is that while emulation is unambiguously legal in the US after Bleem vs. Sony, an emulator which decrypts games is maybe not legal under the DMCA circumvention rules, and those have never really been tested in the context of an emulator. The Bleem case happened shortly after the DMCA was enacted, but PS1 games weren't encrypted or otherwise protected from being read by anything besides a PS1 so Bleem didn't have to circumvent anything. That seems to be the angle Nintendo is taking here, that Yuzu is the equivalent of something like DeCSS since it has the ability to circumvent their DRM scheme.
Back when the movie industry was going after DVD ripping tools I don't recall anyone trying to dodge legal trouble by making the end-user supply the keys instead, so unfortunately we didn't get a decision either way back then.
That way just trying to support that prorietary encryption scheme in the emulator would be enough to run afoul of the DMCA.
But then, as a workaround I could see the proprietary encryption code being supported as an addon (ie: DLL file) that you can just drop in, without distributing it with the emulator itself and letting the users search for it on the digital high seas.
If it ever made it in front a jury, it can be summarized as a big company trying to sue a little company out of existence because the big company doesn't like that the little company is executing the big company's code. But, unfortunately for the big company, executing someone else's code - even without their permission - is not illegal. Nintendo has the resources to sue torrent hosts and take on individuals involved in sharing networks. They have the resources to find the problem and fix it. But they're not using those resources to solve the problem; they're using those resources to scare lawful citizens into inaction because that's a cheaper target. There should never be a legal reward for that kind of scheme.
But, honestly, this should never make it to trial. There are zero merits for argument, here.
Page 17 of the actual court document indicates otherwise: https://www.scribd.com/document/709016504/Nintendo-of-Americ...
> The current iteration of YUZU-EMU.ORG does not feature a live link to Lockpick—which had been hosted on GitHub—because recent enforcement action by Nintendo alerting GitHub to the illegal nature of the software caused GitHub to takedown and delist Lockpick. However, since that time, in Yuzu’s Discord server and elsewhere, Defendant’s agents have been referring users to a different website (RENA21.GITHUB.IO/YUZU-WIKI/) which does feature a live link to Lockpick.
Note that I am explicitly not weighing in on legality or anything, merely pointing out your wording is at odds with the document/allegations themselves.
Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20231128132815/https://rena21.gi...
Lockpick download link is now 404.
no need, Sony already got us one. Bleem and VGS were a big business, Steve Jobs himself advertised VGS during Macworld 1999 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUfu-xOGr1U&t=9m0s
Sony sued Bleem and lost in court
Sony Computer Entertainment America v. Bleem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleem!#Sony_lawsuit
Sadly court case legal fees bankrupted Bleem, Sony later bought VGS from Connectix, and hired Bleem programmers.
If this is what Nintendo alleges yuzu facilitates, does Nintendo have a case?
Reimplementing the security measures seems like a reaffirmation of the security measures, not an impairment.
This might HN readers a skewed perspective on how much Yuzu is used for piracy.
I have many acquaintances/friends in different circles, with the means to pay, who use Yuzu for piracy.
There are dedicated forums of people who coordinate on how to do this.
Emulation is great as a means to study or play backups, but its also fair that Nintendo has legitimate business interest in curtailing this.
IANAL, and have no idea how their case against Yuzu developers will go.
What do you have to do to legally play Switch games on Yuzu? Oh, idk...
* Jailbreak your Switch.
* Dump your decryption keys.
* Dump your games.
* Never update your Switch ever again.
* Pray Nintendo doesn't shove an update down your throat.
* Void your warranty.
* Hope Nintendo won't brick your Switch.
How many people would use Yuzu legally if it weren't for Nintendo's anti-consumer practices? Nintendo can't just argue that Yuzu is made for piracy when Nintendo pushes people to piracy who legally own the Switch and Switch games in my opinion.
Currently we have this weird mealy-mouthed roundabout discussions where people act ever so outraged at the idea that a tool or site is primarily used for piracy when anyone who's not hopelessly naïve recognizes that that's in fact what they're used for.
At best we get comments like yours that are anti-DRM...but still dance around the fact that being anti-DRM is being pro-piracy.
This isn't even about whether I support piracy. I just think it's oddly disingenuous to both treat piracy as a moral/legal wrong (else why the need to defend/excuse Yuzu's clear involvement?) and be shocked and outraged when an entity whose works have been pirated does something about it.
I don't think Yuzu advocates are actually advocating piracy.
I think they think an illegal use of a tool should not mean the tool is banned.
"Emulators don't pirate games, pirates do."
I think our echo chamber will surface views amenable to this viewpoint. Emulation news is quite literally hacker news.
But we deceive ourselves with such a bubble, when the outside world doesn't lean our way. Downplaying piracy usage doesn't do us any favours when trying to build an accurate model.
To illustrate what I mean...if credible stats were somehow collected and showed that 99% of Yuzu users were using it to run games they didn't pay for, I think plenty of judiciaries at that point would consider it a de facto pirating tool versus a tool that is incidentally used for piracy. If you think that this still doesn't mean that the project should be shut down or fined, then I think it's a lot more productive to advocate for such software to exist even if it's a pirating tool than to try to sell everyone on the idea that it's totally a minority that are using it as such. And I think that would require going back to the drawing board re: digital IP rights.
I think this is disingenuous, there's difference between being pro-piracy and against whatever inane terms publisher wants. There's argument that when you buy a game you can use it in any way you want, including playing it on different devices. Somewhat like first-sale doctrine.
It's not as if anyone ever says or suggests anything to them when their works get pirated other than "it happens, sucks to be you" or even "have you tried pandering to the pirates so maybe a tiny percent of them will buy your work?" - so what then exactly is the point of piracy being illegal?
0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39533551
The vast majority of games on PC at this point do not have any DRM, or I guess I should say any meaningful DRM. Denuvo games being the most notable exception. But most games on Steam have literally nothing other than a paperthin basic license check for Steam which is circumventable in a dozen incredibly trivial and automated/generic ways.
PC seems to be doing pretty great as a platform, better than ever, even. Honestly I think it might be worth reframing/clarifying what you are defining as piracy. If I own a Switch (and I do.) And I own games on that platform that I purchased from the e-shop. (And I do.) and I play those games on my PC with Yuzu/Ryujinx is that piracy? I don't even mean in the legal sense, I just mean what you do you personally think?
The need to defend/excuse Yuzus clear involvement is makes for an incredibly leading question, but the simplest answer is that I don't think people are surprised that Nintendo is doing it, just that it is shitty and not only does it not actually address the issue, it has potentially hugely chilling effects on legitimate software development.
I understand why some people are rubbed a little wrong by very mature and well-developed emulation of a current-gen (technically) platform. 100% it is used in piracy. Does that mean it shouldn't exist though? I sure don't think so. And that opinion isn't because I'm pro-piracy.
For what it is worth, on its merits, Yuzu actually did take steps to prevent casual users from playing TOTK pre-release. But also I don't think it is Yuzu's fault because Nintendo had its game leak.
Companies want money. Nintendo wants money. Nintendo is entitled to think this any anything else is a threat to their bottom line and I'm not surprised by it. Nintendo is also failing to serve the market in a way that meets its needs and that is legitimate driver of switch emulation usage, legally or otherwise. I can't feel bad about that.
I don't know why people would have piled on to the Yuzu Patreon during the TOTK leak, given what they did to prevent its usage for that purpose on a base level. There is no strong reason to give the Yuzu team money on Patreon. Daily builds are cool but hardly critical. It is impressive how much they're making on Patreon but that isn't money that Nintendo is going to get back if Yuzu was struck from the platform either.
Being anti-DRM isn't being pro-piracy and that is a false equivalence that I really hate to see. The least protected platform is now increasingly supported by the two other hardware manufacturers (Neither MS first-party or the Sony published stuff is laden with any non-trivial DRM) and the never-ending doomsaying about the PC as a hotbed for piracy really doesn't seem to have panned out the way many have predicted.
DRM sucks. Can't play netflix above 720p outside of their app/edge on Windows. Capcom added DRM to many games that were several years old breaking mods and proton/steam deck compatibility. In a world where DRM didn't get in the way, fine. We don't live in that world and wanting to not be punished as a consumer because DRM overwhelmingly sucks doesn't seem like a hot take. My steam library is over 1,000 games deep. I pay for shit. I don't want to deal with bullshit.
I don't believe piracy should be legal. I believe that copyright and trademarks are important for the creation of many types of interesting new works in society.
Nonetheless, I also think archiving history and having those archives (in their original format, to the closest degree possible, which is what many emulators try to achieve) widely accessible to the public is also important.
Flash memory in game cartridges degrade over time, and discs rot as well. In contrast to some here, I do not think DRM is inherently bad — preventing piracy can be important — but I do believe that DRM should be time limited. After about 10 to 15 years, I think one should be able to have a DRM-free version of whatever piece of media they purchased, be it a game, movie, TV show, etc. At that point, the console (or other device) should allow you to rip it and transfer those DRM-free files to other devices.
I don't think those files should be legally redistributable online (at least not after only one decade), but many users' consoles will break before the 10 year mark, and many consoles are not sold for more than 10 years at a time. I think requiring much more than roughly that amount of time before allowing DRM-free rips will just result in a lot of consumers not being able to play the games they purchased. I think legalizing piracy would destroy the gaming industry, but I think legally prohibiting the consumer from experiencing the media they purchased on future devices encroaches on their consumer rights and results in history being forgotten.
That said, I've never been a fan of Yuzu and Ryujinx releasing as early as they did. Approximately no new game sales have been lost due to RPCS3: by the time it became a useable enough emulator, no new PS3 games were being sold and a huge number of PS3 consoles had already stopped working. The same is true Xenia and the Xbox 360, PCSX2 and the PS2, and many other emulators. That's clearly not the case for Yuzu and Ryujinx though.
Still, while my feelings on Yuzu are somewhat negative due to when they released it, I do hope they ultimately win this lawsuit — if Yuzu isn't legal, it's very well possible that no home console emulator after the PS2 and GameCube era is legal, as they all arguably bypass DRM. Clearly, the existence of Yuzu has not harmed Nintendo all that much — they're currently the richest (though obviously not most valuable) company in Japan, with $11.44 billion in cash. The Switch has sold 139 million units and Tears of the Kingdom has sold over 20 million units. Yuzu clearly does not constitute a legitimate threat to the continuance of Nintendo making games, but Yuzu being shut down would pose a legitimate threat to the preservation of any video game released on consoles after around 2006.
Technically illegal, technically "piracy"? Probably! But morally, who cares.
[1] which is not necessarily true
For some people, if a tool has a single legitimate user, and otherwise haa illegitimate users, then the tool should be allowed.
For others, if the tool is mostly used for illegitimate means, then the tool should be banned.
Where the law lands in this case will be partly based on these values, and the benefits/harms to all parties.
I don't know enough about the case, but I don't think it's as clear cut as a hammer.
The same can be said for gun use (not ownership).
How much something is used for illegal activities should have no baring on whether it is allowed in a free country.
Nobody is dumping their own games. Very few buy the switch games they emulate.
The following usual claim is "it's Nintendo's own fault for not releasing their games on PC and Android". What kind of asinine argument is that?
Then there's the "emulation isn't illegal", which is probably the only sound argument.
But that isn't the issue here. The issue is the authors are now making over 500k/yr from their emulator, whose only purpose is to pirate games that are still commercially available.
I understand if you disagree with this argument (I don't know if I'd endorse it wholeheartedly), but I don't see how it is asinine. The wider context here is that there are people who believe in "general computing", i.e. the idea that users should retain full control over computing devices and software they buy.
The philosophy of companies of companies like Nintendo is that when you buy a game from them, you are buying the right to play the game in exactly the way they want. If they could make modding illegal, they would (it is in Japan, to my understanding). This runs counter to the idea of general computing, where you should be to play a game you buy in any way you want, including modding, or playing on a different device, etc.
So to return to the point, the argument is that by refusing to sell their games to users of other platforms (as well as their other actions), Nintendo is working against the goal of general computing, and therefore it's not worth feeling sorry for them when people pirate the game. Phrased differently, people who don't own a Switch have no way to play the game besides pirating, and people should be able to buy games separately from devices.
Another fundamental argument here is that hardware/software walled gardens which are enforced by anti-circumvention and copyright laws are basically anti-competitive monopolies.
Nintendo can’t be completely incompetent here; if they get Yuzu shut down someone will inevitably fork it, and they have to know this.
Presumably this is a play to try and establish precedent. They know that this lawsuit means nothing in itself, even if they win, but it can then be used to go after Retroarch or Higan or Mupen64 or Dolphin. This is bad.
Like, if I write a piece of software that does something innocuous, such as indexing files or something, then I probably wouldn't bother getting any kind of LLC, but I'm very unlikely to get sued over that. Nintendo, however, is famously litigious, has made their stance on emulation very clear, and has no problem going after individuals who dare to defy them. I think doing all the development through an LLC can limit Nintendo going after the individuals.
Of course it's to establish precedent. They can't file a case against "Yuzu and any future Switch emulators that don't exist yet". But that doesn't mean that it means nothing in itself. A victory against an emulator would be somewhat of a deterrent and would likely reduce piracy somewhat, at least for a little while.
There's so many second and third order consequences from a legal precedent for that it boggles the mind, and I'd hope that any judge that understood that should dismiss this lawsuit with prejudice. My fear is that it goes the other way and an injunction is successfully put in place against Yuzu.