Basic summary is that the Yuzu developers agreed to shut down development, give their domain to Nintendo, and delete all copies that they posess of Yuzu and any other Switch hacking tools.
30k a month is only (roughly rounded) 1 mill per 3 years. So that be 6 years income without spending, and it’s likely their income wasn’t always at this level.
Because Nintendo will just ruin their lives otherwise
> * isn't strict emulation legal? Maybe not in the US...
Thank you DMCA for ruining this scene. The federal government should not be the one interjecting itself into this area, but here we are. Because of the anti-circumvention rules of the DMCA, right to repair is completely broken. Heck, WV was able to hide them lying about emissions because of it.
The same way Bowser did, I suppose. Wage garnishing + whatever Patreon money they earned?
Apparently it's estimated to have made some $1.2 million from patreon so that may help
>why did they settle for that much?
Bad crooked lawyers that said they had no chance or very good lawyers that said they had no chance. IANAL, so I can't truly say which.
> isn't strict emulation legal? Maybe not in the US...
It is AFAIK, apparently the judgement's big argument here is
>Developing or distributing software, including Yuzu, that in its ordinary course
functions only when cryptographic keys are integrated without authorization, violates the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act’s prohibition on trafficking in devices that circumvent effective
technological measures, because the software is primarily designed for the purpose of
circumventing technological measures.
Again, I don't know how much water that holds.
>is there something fishy that was hidden somewhere?
Depends on if you think whether or not it would have cost more than $2.5m dollars to fight nintendo in a full battle. I imagine Yuzu doesn't have such funds nor means to. So this was the cheapest option for them.
Nintendo gave up on doing what was "morally correct" ages ago. That doesn't make anyone else's moral failing acceptable, but comparatively Nintendo's sins are far greater and they've never faced consequences that came remotely close to what they're putting Gary Bowser through.
more people need to just read the "history" section of Nintendo's Wikipedia page. because that "ages ago" is 140 years ago, when the company was founded, by being the only {morally,legally} bankrupt enough people willing to sell their wares to Yakuza-run casinos.
to be fair, they're not unique in this space. but the perception of them as "the family-friendly gaming company" has always been some very big amount of nonsense.
> and they've never faced consequences that came remotely close to what they're putting Gary Bowser through.
His own actions and the legal system are why he is where he is today. Nintendo isn’t putting him anything, unless you now think that Nintendo controls legal decisions that are handed down.
> As a part of that agreement, Bowser now has to send Nintendo 20-30% of any money left over after he pays for necessities such as rent.
> Bowser has now managed to secure housing, and he thinks that after rent, he has a couple of hundred dollars leftover for food and other necessities. He assumes he’ll be turning to food support services.
Nintendo's not being compensated any meaningful amount. This is nothing more than a lifelong public flogging. And for what?
I'm not pretending that Nintendo is the justice system, although I will admit that the US legal system does confuse me!
The point was that if you have deeper pockets than your opponent then you're able to leverage the legal system to make life hard and stressful for them.
Nintendo has deep pockets and the will to go after anyone it considers a threat to its business model.
> Developing or distributing software, including Yuzu, that in its ordinary course functions only when cryptographic keys are integrated without authorization, violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s prohibition on trafficking in devices that circumvent effective technological measures, because the software is primarily designed for the purpose of circumventing technological measures.
This seems like a massive stretch to ask a judge to sign off on, since it pretty radically expands what the DMCA covers. If were to come into force, you could slap some encryption on any piece of software and block anyone from interoperating with it.
If down voters want to explain their objection we'd probably all benefit - this may sound pithy but afaict parent is correct: Tropic Haize LLC is the defendant in TFA; LLC stands for Limited Liability Company. IANAL but this essentially means the company is on the hook for the damages, if it doesn't have that much then Nintendo probably becomes it's most senior creditor (gets paid first) in bankruptcy, but its directors (the emulator devs, presumably) are unlikely to be personally liable, at least wouldn't be in a judgement on this case. Settling would I assume imply that Nintendo thinks it is getting paid (won't bankrupt the company, or directors agreed to kick it in) though.
They most likely don't. Most of these settlements have another agreement made behind closed doors.
I was alleged to do stuff related to video game cheats, and was in settlement talks with a company bigger than Nintendo. I didn't end up signing, so a quick overview of what such secret agreements include (the money point is the last one):
- keep everything of the following secret
- be truthful with us and tell us everything
- hand over source code, server access, chats
- shut down social media, websites related to the cheats
- if defendant cant shut down the cheat site, defendant has to try to shut it down via other various means and email the plaintiff once every quarter for three years with the efforts made
- plaintiff will make a public announcement that defendant owes 2.5 million USD (used by the plaintiff for marketing / scaring people off). After X years, the plaintiff agrees to file a full satisfaction of the monetary award (aka plaintiff files that the defendant paid the money and so their credit score isn't totally fucked), BUT in reality the defendant only has to pay the money if they breach any of the terms above.
some grapevine reports indicate yuzu paid reviewers with early access to some games for pre-retail dumps that were then used to have speedy day1 compat.
it could be wrong, totk just leaked a week before release.
This feels like a "so what" issue to me. Maybe the early release guys who sold their copies should be in trouble for breaking a contract, but the Yuzu guys should be in the clear.
Paying someone to break the law makes you culpable. Paying someone to violate an NDA or other agreement with a private company you have no direct association with doesn't ordinarily make you culpable.
plot twist: they leave it up, collect telemetry to match and understand the data behind pirating vs. owned emulation, find it useful to open the platform, focus on services, and build their business to 10x on software almost exclusively
not probable, but that would be interesting to see
I grew up with Nintendo being my "main" game console and to this day I play (Switch) but I'm starting to wonder, might this be a company that's worth boycotting? Sure I'd miss out on the exclusives but lots of games exist on multiple platforms or have similar games on other platforms.
Nintendo's behaviour seems to be very much anti hacker and even anti-consumer in cases like this one. Anyone else have any strong feelings about this?
Nintendo’s disdain for historical preservation is frustrating and problematic. But this is an emulator for their current console, I’m not sure this is boycott-worthy. This is more, they’ve got a business to run, and Yuzu impacts their bottom line in a way that Dolphin doesn’t.
While that's a fair point, I also have to wonder how much of that is actually lost sales, vs. people who wouldn't have bought the games otherwise, or didn't have a Switch to play on, or etc.
Personally, I paid for a copy of Tears of the Kingdom when it came out, but only because I had a Switch I could borrow from someone to play it on - if I hadn't had that option, I wouldn't have bought a Switch just to play one game, and I just wouldn't have bought the game at all.
Had they released the game on PC as well as Switch, I would have bought it for PC, but that's not an option. As it stands, either you have to own an overpriced and underpowered console, even if you only want to play one Nintendo game, or you can pirate the game and play it on PC, and have a much better experience than on a real Switch. Nintendo is somewhat bringing this upon itself in my opinion and I don't feel much sympathy for their lost profits, real or imagined.
Valve used the Yuzu emulator in some of its Steam Deck initial marketing, and emulating the Switch is one of the most popular uses for the Steam Deck, so there is definitely a measurable impact.
Considering that the Steam Deck is more expensive than the Switch, arguably every SD player using Yuzu is several lost sales for Nintendo.
Nintendo is somewhat bringing this upon itself in my opinion and I don't feel much sympathy for their lost profits, real or imagined.
This is why they are going after Yuzu in the first place...Because Yuzu makes it easy to pirate Switch games and the pirates feel entitled to play those games on a more expensive device than the device they claim is too expensive.
Yes but the more expensive device is better in every conceivable way, it's a PC instead of a locked down walled garden that only exists as a platform for nintendo products. Just because someone owns a Deck doesn't mean they would otherwise own a switch, I own a Deck and haven't remotely considered buying any nintendo hardware since gamecube. If I couldn't emulate switch games I just wouldn't play them.
Anecdotally, the friends that I know who have a gaming PC own a Switch as well. The one guy running TotK @ 4K/60FPS on their rig was also the first to preorder the game. But we're all in our 30's with decent salaries.
> If I couldn't emulate switch games I just wouldn't play them.
Given this discussion started around whether to boycott Nintendo or not, it seems that you're not a Nintendo customer at all. So I'm not really sure what you would be boycotting?
I'm just chiming in to dispute the 'Deck owner with a switch emulator = lost sales' point that was made, but yes I've already been unconsciously 'boycotting' them for a while now.
How is the Switch overpriced and underpowered? I picked up a switch lite with a game as a bundle for my wife for £180 brand new. If you want detachable controllers and the ability to dock the Switch to a TV, you can spend more. But those features and the built-in screen are ones that literally no other games console had at the time and is only just starting to gain popularity in the handheld PC market recently. It may be underpowered now, but the Switch has been out for 7 years. And it still has enough power to play games like TOTK, The Witcher 3, Xenoblade Chronicles, etc.
As for releasing games on PC, I don't see any reason why they would? Developing for PC is much more difficult than a single console, when it comes to handling the variety of hardware, anti-cheat, etc. TOTK and their Mario games are system sellers, with the former even releasing alongside a special edition console and pro controller. Delaying the release of these games to add dev time for a PC port is never going to be worth it.
>Yuzu impacts their bottom line in a way that Dolphin doesn’t.
Dolphin could emulate nearly all commercial Wii games by April 2009.
That was sooner into the console's lifespan than where we are now with the switch. (29 months since the Wii's release vs 83 months since the Switch's release)
Maybe more people have gaming-grade computers sitting around now than they did 15 years ago?
>Maybe more people have gaming-grade computers sitting around now than they did 15 years ago?
You don't need a very powerful computer to emulate a Switch. My M1 Mac Mini w/ 8GB of RAM (~$400) has been able to play every Switch game I've been interested in with equal or slightly better performance than the actual console.
Most popular Wii games had significantly different control schemes than what is available on a standard PC. Afaik, dolphin was primarily used for things like Smash Bros but other system sellers like Wii Sports, Wii fit, and LoZ: Skyward Sword just wouldn't work at all. Even Mario Kart was typically played with motion controls, because that was new and exciting for home consoles at the time.
Contrast that to the Switch where most system sellers can be played on a standard controller without a gyroscope, the threat to their bottom line is much higher.
The wiimotes are just bluetooth and the tracking is 5 LEDs. I've used candles instead of the sensor bar before. You can buy a "dolphin bar" for $20 and use your wiimotes on the PC. It works great. I dumped my wii games and haven't touched the console in years.
Yeah I've used the candle trick with a Wii before too, but that doesn't mean it isn't a much larger barrier for entry than Switch games working most of the time with just a standard controller (and therefore keyboard mapping). As for controllers, I don't think I even had bluetooth in a desktop PC until somewhat recently (~3 years ago) when I paid a little extra for a motherboard with WiFi 6 and BT built-in.
Preservation isn't a matter of flipping a light switch on the moment a console isn't "current" anymore. The Switch came out in 2017 - that's a long time ago. If not for people preserving firmware updates and 1.0 builds of games, emulator developers and users would have nothing to start from when they start development on an emulator from scratch in ~2025 like you suggest doing.
The emulator could have been developed and released open source without the ability to decrypt Nintendo games, which (I believe) is a copyright violation and one side of the lawsuit. And also not put the latest emulator builds and private discord encouraging piracy behind a patreon paywall.
I have nothing against a Switch emulator existing at all, but making it conveniently easy for the masses to pirate games, condoning it in private spaces you manage, and profiting off the demand for the emulator due to that piracy are all against the ideas of preservation.
No it doesn't necessarily change what the emulator is used for, but it changes the optics on what it's developed for. If you develop an emulator without any methods of DRM circumvention built-in, then out-of-the-box it can only be used for homebrew stuff like making your own games/apps for that platform.
If you include DRM circumvention with the emulator, then there's an argument that it's developed specifically with piracy in mind.
Nintendo's been a horrible company in this regard for ages. Personally I've never given them money besides for Tears of the Kingdom when it released - I don't even own a Switch, I borrowed one to play it. They make good games sometimes but that's the first and last time they're getting any money from me.
>might this be a company that's worth boycotting? Sure I'd miss out on the exclusives but lots of games exist on multiple platforms or have similar games on other platforms.
As far as I'm concerned, this is an issue of the DMCA more than Nintendo itself. In the strictest sense, devs really don't care about this and lawyers are only doing their job.
Boycotting Nintendo may make sense in a moral sense, but not one that will change how the DMCA works.
>Nintendo's behaviour seems to be very much anti hacker and even anti-consumer in cases like this one. Anyone else have any strong feelings about this?
Anti-hacker, sure. 99% of companies are anti-hacker.
Anti-consumer... First, I really think this is the worst modern cliche of modern media discourse. Just to remind people of the definition:
> Anti-consumerism is concerned with the private actions of business corporations in pursuit of financial and economic goals at the expense of the public welfare, especially in matters of environmental protection, social stratification, and ethics in the governing of a society.
I don't really see how luxury entertainment can ever meet the true philosophical meaning of the term that halts social progress and suppressing the flow of money to the populace.
With all that said, the closest I feel Nintendo has gotten to anti-consumerism is the "vault" strategy done with Mario All Stars. Which they seemingly only did for that game and a few of those "100 multiplayer" style games. It's a strategy making use of false scarcity for a product that can be infinitely reproducible (and requires no servers on their end to operate) in order to increase urgency to play/buy said work. Not only is that morally repugnant, I'm not even sure if it's a financially sound decision for a company who's products are known for having a long tail in sales, unlike most video games.
----
in the colloquial sense of:
>not favorable to consumers : improperly favoring the interests of businesses over the interests of consumers.
every business technically strides to be anti-consumerist. The act of charging money for a product is anti-consumerist. I don't see how Nintendo differs here, nor how they are the worst, in a world where almost every AAA company in the west is trying to rely on psuedo-subscriptions with battle passes and every company in the east are making millions on mobile off of the lootbox model.
Nintendo seemed to dip their toes in indirectly a few times (reminder: they do not fully own any of the remaining IPs using Lootboxes) but mostly have pulled out, even removing the gacha from a few of their games. So they for the most part simply profit from an online service with "free" games and one time purchase of other console games.
Arguably, precedent (Bleem) supports yuzu here, the reality is that Nintendo doesn't really need a sound legal foundation to file a lawsuit against you, and their legal team can outspend almost anyone on the planet, so they can probably force almost anyone into a settlement, just like yuzu. The DMCA is a plague but I think this case would have resulted in a settlement even if the DMCA didn't exist, because Nintendo's resources dwarf the yuzu team's to that extent.
The problem (as per usual) is that the legal system is horribly biased in favour of whoever has the most money/resources. When one side has millions/billions to spend on lawyers and legal fees and the other doesn't, then the former is almost certainly going to drive the latter into settling (or bankruptcy), regardless of whether the latter did anything illegal.
There needs to be a way to fix the system so that both sides of any court battle are on (fairly) equal footing, and having significantly more resources than your opponent doesn't tilt the field in your favour in any practical way.
I stopped playing Nintendo products (on any platform, including my Switch) years ago and haven't really missed much. They put out good games, sure, but there are tons of good games available on other platforms where buying them isn't supporting a company that abuses the legal system to harass and imprison innocent people.
If you're talking about Bowser, the only thing they convicted him of is "conspiracy" to do things that shouldn't be illegal [1]. All the other charges were dropped. If you think "conspiring" to sell modchips is a crime worthy of prison I don't know how to convince you that we should have a fair and just legal system. It was a plea, too, and anyone who knows the legal system well understands that plea bargains are generally unjust and used to bully people into not defending themselves.
1: "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."
There's no point boycotting one company playing by the system rules.
Boycott the system which enable this much centralisation of power and removes freedom from citizens.
Copyright and patents are an artifact of the government being easily corruptible by media companies who make insane amount of money.
Until we get rid of the government we'll always have laws which help the rich steal from the people.
Well, we certainly aren't getting rid of the government, and it's an up-cliff battle to change current copyright and patent laws, so the best we can do is starve the companies that abuse these systems. Then they will have less money to perform lobbying and other activities.
I disagree. The other platforms built their walls secure enough that they don't bother. Nintendo is aggressively defending a low fence.
Most Nintendo cartridges will function a decade from now. Many discs for other consoles don't even have the full game on it... and many can't function without connecting to a service. I'd prefer the system that is possible to preserve (but gets aggressive with monetization) then the one that's impossible to preserve.
Points to xbox for doing well with backwards compatibility and carrying libraries forward. But that could change in future.
The problem with this list is a lot of the non-exclusive games are because they're on the PS4 as well – what proportion of games are non-exclusive to the playstation world?
Most of those are either remakes of older games, VR games, games that haven't been released yet, or games with poor ratings. The only real title there worth buying today would be Spider-Man 2.
I'm pretty disappointed in the PS5's library but for someone who never had a PS4 the PS5 is absolutely worth it. Maybe by the time they get through the backlog of good PS4 games there will be something worth playing on the PS5
A lot of games are only on PS5 and Xbox S/X, not available on PC or other platforms. So if it's exclusive only to other securely walled gardens, they still don't need to bother.
I've been "boycotting" them for a while now. Switch was cool, but they just cannot be reasonable when it comes to IP, so I just cannot stomach giving them any money. I'm not interested in applicable laws or "playing by the rules" or whatever other handwavy bullshit people will feed themselves to pretend that Nintendo is "in the right" here.
It's pretty simple: don't target people who aren't doing things that are morally reprehensible, even if it's a systemic threat to your company (cue the laughter from the capitalists who can't understand anything beyond industrial machinations). Evolve and adapt to include them in your assets, or die while the fitter companies do. Someday, someone's going to have more money than Nintendo and they will force Nintendo to do whatever they want them to. I'm just hoping its sooner rather than later. They've earned every second of their demise. Fuck any company that thinks lawfare is excusable as 'might makes right'.
The yuzu people were doing things that are morally reprehensible. From what I've heard:
* They managed a private discord with hired moderators that actively encouraged piracy.
* They saved important releases to coincide with major game releases like TOTK. These releases would include performance optimizations and bug fixes specifically for those games.
* These important releases would initially only be available behind a patreon paywall (like the private discord), so they actively profited off people trying to get the latest release specifically for pirating the latest games.
Personally, I only get DRM-free games, which mostly means GOG at this point (they also have a better refund policy). They have some issues too but seem to be much better than any other game stores in terms of customer friendly policies (unless you really want Linux support). I definitely wouldn't switch to Sony or Microsoft from Nintendo, that would make no sense (surprisingly there are a few Sony published games on GOG, although the latest announced one was supposed to be released a few months ago now so I'm suspicious that Sony was trying to sneak some DRM in and got caught). Reguarding Steam some would argue the Linux support makes up for the DRM, although I can't agree with that. Most of the other small platforms I've seen have DRM but with little or no positive. Itch mostly has solo developer games, doesn't clearly indicate if a game has DRM or not but mostly has DRM-free games, and has no refund policy other than what individual developers decide to do. Humble used to have some DRM-free games but has moved away from that under current ownership.
It seems that GitHub still serves the commit history through the existing forks of the repo. According to archive.org, this commit corresponds to the last release of yuzu-mainline before the repo takedown: http://web.archive.org/web/20240304185516/https://github.com...
They started deleting repos a couple of minutes ago. I checked a lot of links and they were in the Internet Archive. I'm sure there are plenty of forks of the main repo.
When you find a mirror, you can look for this commit, and know that if the commit hash matches it is probably a legit copy of the repo up until that point at least
commit dc94882c9062ab88d3d5de35dcb8731111baaea2 (HEAD -> master)
Merge: 30567a590 fc6a87bba
Author: liamwhite <liamwhite@users.noreply.github.com>
Date: Tue Feb 27 12:26:26 2024 -0500
Merge pull request #13135 from german77/hid-interface
service: hid: Migrate HidServer to new IPC
Considering the ongoing attacks against GitHub whereby people are creating repos with malicious code, it's probably wise to be bloody careful of any of these yuzu forks. :( :( :(
Just to add my two cents, software repositories like Ubuntu's still have the thing, with the source and the build readily downloadable. Not the latest, but still.
This is sad. Yuzu was such a well polished emulator. I hope everyone backs up a copy of yuzu and hopefully someone some day would continue the development...
Relative to what? Emulators are inherently complex software, and yuzu more than most since it has to deal with modern concerns like GPU drivers, game updates, DLC, etc. For all that it does, it is fine, it mostly works quite well.
I am all for there being emulators for past consoles as a form of preservation as the hardware gets harder and harder to get. Has Nintendo ever gone after Dolphin except for the Steam thing?
But, emulating a current console is not about preservation. It just isn't. You can try to say it is, but no. Maybe, maybe you could argue that you are putting in the work now so it's ready when it's needed. But then be careful about putting it out there.
Just go look at the steam deck subreddit and how often Switch games are talked about, I can't imagine Nintendo was very happy about that. This wasn't just some small project that people did not really know about or served a niche purpose.
This as asking for trouble and I am surprised it took so long honestly.
Edit:
Don't get me wrong, I hate exclusives and I wish the practice would end. But that is the current state of things and the choices leading up to this were questionable at best.
Edit Again:
Hold up, Yuzu was an actual company and had a Patreon bringing in over $29k a month? Yeah um, Nintendo has been bad but that's a choice for a current console. It is no surprise Nintendo went after them.
Obviously piracy plays a large (maybe the largest?) role here, though I wouldn't overlook the modding use case. I would be quite interested in running titles I legitimately own on more powerful hardware where I can play around with the resolution and framerate freely (and would have already used Yuzu for this purpose by now, but for laziness).
This is the only reason I have Yuzu installed - I own Tears of the Kingdom legitimately but the Switch is such a piece of underpowered, overpriced junk that I'll never replay the game on real hardware, when I can instead be playing at 1440p and 60fps with all kinds of enhancements on PC.
I just have a very hard time believing that, like you said, the majority of the use case is anything other than piracy.
I mean almost every emulation software somewhere says that you should only emulate games you own, but how many of us actually still own our NES or gamecube games that we may have downloaded. But it's easier to justify given that stuff not being easily accessible anymore, we don't even have a proper eshop for emulation on the Switch.
I feel like the difference here should be fairly obvious.
One is an open protocol, and one is proprietary technology. AWS even at one point supported the protocol.
I don't know if it's still a thing but it wasn't terribly uncommon to find Linux distros and other legitimate things shared through that protocol.
Here we are talking about proprietary technology by Nintendo. On a system that they are currently selling and making money on.
Given how much money they were bring in on patrion, it isn't much different than if they tried to make a physical knock off switch that could run switch games.
> x86 is also proprietary technology. Should Intel be able to sue AMD out of existence?
AMD has a perpetual license from Intel to use the technology.
Nouveau is different, you are still buying Nvidia cards just running an open source driver. Nvidia doesn't make money on their drivers, they make money on the graphics cards.
Similar situation to Ruffle, Adobe never charged for the end user to download flash. It was free. Ruffle is an alternative to that. Also it is worth mentioning that flash is all but dead and this really just keeps it breathing.
While both companies probably could make an argument to argue for a take down of both, they have no incentive to do it.
> AMD has a perpetual license from Intel to use the technology.
AMD only managed to negotiate that because Intel lost in arbitration [1]. Intel's preferred option was always to eliminate AMD entirely. It's good for us consumers that they didn't succeed in that!
> While both companies probably could make an argument to argue for a take down of both, they have no incentive to do it.
NVIDIA absolutely has an incentive to get rid of Nouveau. Its existence discloses IP (their GPU inner workings) that they would prefer to keep secret.
More examples: JavaScript was proprietary technology at the time. The fact that it was specific to Netscape browsers absolutely benefited Netscape's business model. The existence of Chrome depends on the fact that Netscape had no grounds to go after Microsoft for an independent implementation.
SMB is a proprietary Microsoft technology. '90s Microsoft would definitely have preferred to keep that specific to Windows in order to sell more Windows licenses. It's good for the industry that Microsoft never felt they could go after Samba.
Another fun one: The FBX file format, which Autodesk makes money on through Maya, has a half-hearted attempt at DRM in it to limit it to approved Autodesk licensees. Blender's FBX exporter breaks it with a pass-the-hash attack. Get rid of that and Blender can no longer talk to Unity. Obviously, the entire industry benefits from the fact that Autodesk can't go after Blender for this.
> AMD only managed to negotiate that because Intel lost in arbitration [1]. Intel's preferred option was always to eliminate AMD entirely. It's good for us consumers that they didn't succeed in that!
OK? regardless of why or how it happened, it happened and it means that AMD is fine. If you knew that I don't know why you even mentioned it in the first place.
> NVIDIA absolutely has an incentive to get rid of Nouveau. Its existence discloses IP (their GPU inner workings) that they would prefer to keep secret.
> Another fun one: The FBX file format, which Autodesk makes money on through Maya, has a half-hearted attempt at DRM in it to limit it to approved Autodesk licensees. Blender's FBX exporter breaks it with a pass-the-hash attack. Get rid of that and Blender can no longer talk to Unity. Obviously, the entire industry benefits from the fact that Autodesk can't go after Blender for this.
Again would love an article on this. I can't find anything backing up that this ever happened. Not only on Audodesk's website do they mention third party software but they have an SDK for this file format for others to use. While blender does in fact not use that SDK, and the format is proprietary, I can't find anything backing up what you claim.
> OK? regardless of why or how it happened, it happened and it means that AMD is fine.
AMD is only fine because Intel wasn't able to sue them out of existence. If Intel had managed to do in the 90s what Nintendo did to Yuzu just now, there'd be no Ryzen today.
> Seems counter to Nvidia offering support in publishing documents
NVIDIA only started publishing documents because Nouveau's success in reverse engineering meant that it was pointless trying to pretend that the genie could be put back in the bottle. Nintendo undoubtedly knows this too; lawsuits like this in 2024 ultimately aren't rational moves on their part, but big conservative Japanese companies have never been known to be particularly adaptable.
> Again would love an article on this. I can't find anything backing up that this ever happened. Not only on Audodesk's website do they mention third party software but they have an SDK for this file format for others to use. While blender does in fact not use that SDK, and the format is proprietary, I can't find anything backing up what you claim.
I found it myself when I was documenting the FBX file format (which I eventually gave up on because it was too horrifying of a format to motivate continuing) [1]. Blender calls it "CRC rules", but I think it's actually an attempt to lock non-licensees out. The SDK is closed-source, proprietary, and comes with a whole bunch of restrictions in its EULA.
>x86 is also proprietary technology that Intel is currently making money on. Should Intel be able to sue AMD out of existence?
AMD has a license to the x86 architecture, alongside Via (though I'm not sure if they even make x86 chips anymore). I'm sure Intel would love to take back AMD's license, but they're probably too afraid of antitrust actions to try.
Yep. It's a great example of how keeping clean-room reverse engineering legal is good for the industry. While Intel was stuck in Itanium hell, AMD was able to leapfrog them and create x86-64 because it had been legally successful with reverse engineering 32-bit x86 in the past. If Intel had been able to crush AMD in the 90s, there's a good chance x86 would be dead by now.
Android built their own implementation of the proprietary Java language to be able to run programs that were written to run on the official JRE. Can you imagine if Oracle tried to sue Google over that? :)
> Given how much money they were bring in on patrion, it isn't much different than if they tried to make a physical knock off switch that could run switch games.
Why would that be a problem? As long as they're not actually violating trademarks or patents and making an actual counterfeit product, there is no reason why they shouldn't be able to make their own hardware that is compatible with Switch games.
These products already exist for other systems, and they are a good way to allow you to play your existing games on more modern hardware.
Just because it upsets some executive at Nintendo doesn't make it illegal.
A torrent client is data agnostic. It can be used to transfer any type of data over the internet.
Yuzu is designed to play specific software which is quite difficult to acquire by legal means. Very little effort appears to have been spent on improving the UX of the legal process.
(It is true that Yuzu can also play homebrew software. I think the situation would be different if Yuzu was tested exclusively on Homebrew, and only emulated features which homebrew software uses. But then no one would care about Yuzu. Yuzu has tons of game-specific fixes for commercial titles.)
> (It is true that Yuzu can also play homebrew software. I think the situation would be different if Yuzu was tested exclusively on Homebrew, and only emulated features which homebrew software uses. But then no one would care about Yuzu. Yuzu has tons of game-specific fixes for commercial titles.)
Yuzu can also play games that were backed up by people who legitimately own the game. The legality of that might be questionable in the US, but not everywhere.
Apple Silicon machines have a "permissive security" mode which allows booting unsigned third party kernels. Asahi isn't circumventing anything, this is a officially supported feature.
I don’t think preservation is an important argument. If I own an AppleTV, and I purchase a movie through their service, why should it be illegal for me to export that movie to watch on a different device? I own the hardware and the data, why would any law even care at that point?
Obviously piracy should be illegal, but I just don’t see any argument against emulation even if it is current.
For this reason, most of the major studios are members of Movies Anywhere, which allows you to access movies purchased at any (participating) storefront on any participating VOD service. Amazon, Fandango, Vudu, Disney, are participants.
It's generally not, because you can run an OS on a PS5 that can then run the game, and the DMCA allows for this (with some limitations) because, and this is a very important point: there is generally no DRM-hacking required. But...if DRM hacking is required to get a PC game to work on a PS5, it's illegal to do so under the DMCA. (Note: DRM is defined very broadly for DMCA purposes.)
Dolphin does require a bit of DRM hacking, but Dolphin (arguably) falls under one of the DCMA exceptions for archival use purposes. This is the second important point: the Dolphin emulates a system which has not been on sale for a decade. It's still possible* to use it for general piracy instead of archival access, but the archival use trumps the piracy concern. (It would be different though if the Dolphin developers started offering Dolphin on a commercial basis.)
But Yuzu is a commercial offering, for a console that is still on sale, and its use requires DRM hacking. So it's got 3 fatal flaws.
The only surprise is that Nintendo let it live as long as it has. You can bet they won't make that mistake again with their next console.
> ...and this is a very important point: there is generally no DRM-hacking required. But...if DRM hacking is required to get a PC game to work on a PS5, it's illegal to do so under the DMCA. (Note: DRM is defined very broadly for DMCA purposes.)
Wouldn't Steam, MSTF store, Epic, etc. all count as DRM? Regardless, it's more of a philosophical argument than a legal argument. If I buy the Switch and the game, I don't see how there could be any argument that I should be considered a criminal for using the data on a PC.
Wouldn't Steam, MSTF store, Epic, etc. all count as DRM?
They could, which is why I was careful to point out that you can install an OS on your PS5, on which you can then run (some) games on it without having to circumvent DRM.
If I buy the Switch and the game, I don't see how there could be any argument that I should be considered a criminal for using the data on a PC.
Because U.S. (and EU) law doesn't have any exceptions that would cover that use, since the Switch is still being actively sold on the market today. (And as noted elsewhere, this is a large part of why SNES, N64, and Gamecube emulators haven't been targeted by Nintendo: the machines are no longer sold and so emulation allows for archival use/access to games on those platforms. This is generally a permitted use.)
As far as I'm aware, the DMCA doesn't have any sort of exception for archival, but it does have one for software interoperability, which emulators definitely are, regardless of how current the hardware being emulated is.
You don't own the data, just a temporary right to use it.
Of course it's completely bonkers and the result of massive corporations bribing governments to limit our freedom.
As long as I don't sign a contract with an entity I should be able to do anything I want with bytes. Once I enter into an agreement not to share some data I received then I should be punishable - but no shortcuts, sue everyone in court with a due process and lawyer fees.
Copyright and patents are the most retarded and culture damaging thing I've seen in my lifetime
Quite a pithy phrase that has been popular lately but piracy advocates have always claimed that piracy isn't stealing, regardless of whether or not "buying is owning" so I don't think the two are related.
> You don't own the data, just a temporary right to use it.
Agreed, bonkers. You didn't 'own the data' when it was a VCR recording a broadcast TV show or movie, but now it's all "but they broke our ROT13-super-crypto, throw the book at 'em".
Pretty sure the TOS of AppleTV prohibits exporting the movie - you have a limited license to view it only under the circumstances Apple dictates, in partnership with everyone Apple has deals with. If you want to be able to watch it on other devices, you need to purchase a limited perpetual license in the form of a DVD/bluray.
Now, of course, this depends on the movie having a physical release (which is becoming a bit of a rarity these days), but still, the MPAA has made sure to write ironclad contracts to prohibit watching streamed content the way you want.
Did you... not even read the entire line that you decided to just quote part of?
> But, emulating a current console is not about preservation. It just isn't. You can try to say it is, but no. Maybe, maybe you could argue that you are putting in the work now so it's ready when it's needed. But then be careful about putting it out there.
Especially considering that consoles have a less than stellar support from manufacturers, they just move on to the next console and you can say goodbye to your games, especially nowadays with game servers.
Nintendo have typically been pretty good with backwards compatibility as newer versions of consoles come out. GBAs could play GB/GBC games. DS could play GBA games. 3DS could play DS. Wii could play GC games. Wii U could play Wii games.
The Switch is an outlier in that regard but mostly because the hardware is so different from previous consoles. It could never support the 2 screens required for DS/3DS or some Wii U games, nor is it big enough to fit Wii U disks anyway. But it wouldn't surprise me if the Switch 2 could play Switch 1 games.
Nintendo also typically put entire games on their cartridges, and day 1 patches are for bug fixes only and are optional. If you keep the cartridges and your console, you keep your games perfectly fine. Or you can go out and buy cartridges second hand. And digital downloads will also still function, like my 3DS still has my digital purchases even if the eshop is gone. I just can't purchase new games anymore, for a 12 year old system.
>But, emulating a current console is not about preservation. It just isn't.
I disagree in the general case. Sure, beware of litigious companies, but it isn't immoral.
In the specific case of Yuzu bringing in cash from the endeavor, yes, I see why Nintendo did what they did.
---
Totally off-topic, but I have never bought a Switch despite liking the idea of all the games on it, because I don't want to pay $600 for a gameboy, 2-4 real controllers and a copy of Mario Party. I can't understand how it or Steam Deck is popular. But that's just me.
> Hold up, Yuzu was an actual company and had a Patreon bringing in over $29k a month? Yeah um, Nintendo has been bad but that's a choice for a current console. It is no surprise Nintendo went after them.
LOL
Yeah, as much as I am an anti-fan of Nintendo, it sounds like this company was asking to get sued.
> But, emulating a current console is not about preservation. It just isn't.
No, but it CAN be used as a tool to play legitimate copies of games on different hardware. A few people on this thread have said they do this. I haven't done it yet, but I'll probably dump the Switch games I want to play on my Deck instead of carrying the switch also.
So long as Nintendo doesn't end up going after emulators released before the Switch, then the de facto (not de jure) precedent is: don't release an emulator for their current latest console.
Overall, that's probably a mostly fine outcome for game preservation, and thinking about it more, it's probably much better for emulation and game preservation long term that Yuzu's devs settled instead of fighting this, as if they had lost and a legal precedent were set, many other emulators might have had to shut down or be hosted in countries where the DMCA doesn't apply. But with no legal precedent set here, emulators for consoles released before the Switch might very well be safe. Time will tell though.
> emulating a current console is not about preservation. It just isn't. You can try to say it is, but no. Maybe, maybe you could argue that you are putting in the work now so it's ready when it's needed. But then be careful about putting it out there.
What do you think of piracy in general? When would you consider pirating a PC game would be acceptable?
The reality is that the modern gaming industry is actively hostile to the consumer. Content is locked behind intrusive DRM, store front exclusivity deals, licensing terms that may revoke your access at any point, obnoxious launchers, always online requirements, reliance on servers that may disappear at any moment, insidious subscriptions, microtransactions, and many other schemes ranging from shady to borderline illegal. Hype-driven marketing pushing pre-orders based on lies, followed by empty promises of multi-year roadmaps to get games in a playable state. Yearly releases of rehashed and reskinned content, low-effort and premature "remasters"... The list goes on and on.
Is someone who plays a pirated version of a game they purchased, but can't access anymore, in the wrong? Or how about if they prefer the pirated version because it gives a better experience? Or how about if they're tired of always getting the short end of the stick by playing by the rules? The law says they are, but are they really?
The morality here is not so black and white.
BTW, I agree with you that Yuzu was clearly overstepping the boundaries, and that it's no surprise Nintendo took them out. I just think that Nintendo doesn't necessarily have the moral high ground, and that there's a strong argument in favor of not only emulation, but piracy.
You can tell that this was about protecting their hardware sales more than any claims about fair use or copyright or other IP because there are literally hundreds of companies which actively sell handheld systems with thousands of Nintendo brand or licensed ROMs on Amazon and elsewhere and I haven't seen a single one shut down.
I mean, yes? I'm not sure why you think you've exposed some kind of secret motivation. Yuzu is not the same thing as Dolphin: it's emulating a current console and is very obviously primarily for facilitating piracy, not historical preservation; people arguing otherwise are fucking kidding themselves. Of course it's about Nintendo protecting hardware sales.
Or it's for playing modern games on hardware from this decade. The Switch is now 7 years old, and was dated hardware from the outset.
Plenty of people use Yuzu to play Switch games on hardware that can actually support modern resolutions, or so you can actually achieve decent framerates at modern resolutions.
Dolphin was in development since the GameCube was the "current gen", on through the Wii's lifecycle. Hell, by this point in the Wii lifecycle, it was already on the way out and Wii-U was releasing.
Indeed I suspect a large part of the motivation for this lawsuit is the upcoming Switch 2, which will be using essentially the same architecture. A huge part of the necessary work for emulating it has already been done by Yuzu and Ryujinx.
It's open source. If there are people interested in continuing development it won't go away. And even if there aren't the current version will still work fine, just maybe not for future games.
You're assuming Nintendo doesn't file DMCA takedowns; especially considering they've literally just won a court case against it. And even if you are outside the US, I wouldn't be surprised if European service providers don't want to risk it because they are still under copyright treaties, of which the DMCA is just the US implementation.
I don't think it's that simple. For one thing emulation has been ruled legal in the US. By all reports Nintendo had an unusually strong case against Yuzu because the developers behind it didn't sufficiently distance themselves from piracy uses - the opposite if anything.
On the practical side, the fact that the developers were a for profit company also made Nintendo's job much easier.
Taking down a more legally careful, decentralized open source project should prove harder.
> For one thing emulation has been ruled legal in the US. By
Emulation was; breaking cryptographic locks under the DMCA never was. In addition, most of the pro-emulation lawsuits were decided before the relevant DMCA sections even came into effect (e.g. Bleem), and are quite possibly already obsolete.
In order to isolate one part of the software as "the bad bits", you need either clear specific language in the law or a clearly established relevant legal precedent. Neither of these things currently exist in the context of DMCA 1201.
If you're curious, here's the most relevant parts of the text:
> No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that [...] has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;[...]
> As used in this subsection—[...]a 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.
assuming you aren't a defendant in the above case, then the only ruling which would affect someone who wants to do this is (4):
> Developing or distributing software, including Yuzu, that in its ordinary course
functions only when cryptographic keys are integrated without authorization, violates the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act [...]
so, first reading, no: just taking Yuzu and splitting out the DRM stuff isn't legal if Yuzu still _depends_ on that DRM to function. you could maybe come up with some thing where you do full Switch emulation, with the code having literally zero concept of DRM/cryptography, and can only play homebrew games. do that and some other party would likely come around and do the (likely illegal) work to convert Switch games into a format your emulator understands. quite a bit like MAME cores, really.
fun speculating about how to bypass the spirit of this ruling though, huh? IMO if you actually want to do this don't bother with the roundabout. just do it directly and don't incorporate yourself in a state that cares about DMCA like a dumbass, and strictly distance your operations from your legal identity if you live under such a repressive regime.
> Taking down a more legally careful, decentralized open source project should prove harder.
Oh sweetheart, have you learnt about intimidation by legal fees? Doesn't matter whether it's legal or not, not many can bank to take against dedicated Nintendo legal team.
It's actually much harder for corporations to sue you if all they have on you is a github username.
But once you start taking "donations" and run the project like a business with non-trivial revenue, they can take you down easily by following the money trail.
You could probably contest the takedown on the basis that an open-source license allows you to post a fork, but Nintendo got them to agree that the content is illegal, so it seems questionable whether they could give you a license to distribute something it's no longer legal for them to distribute themselves. I wouldn't want to go to court over it, personally.
Nintendo did no such thing. They just settled out of court by owing enough money to bankrupt the company and agreeing to not distribute the work. It means nothing to other people that already have licenses to redistribute from earlier.
People have a license under the GPL to redistribute Yuzu, and the devs know this - I don't think a settlement can compel them to commit perjury (which is what they would be doing if they knowingly lied in a DMCA takedown)
They did not just win a court case though, they merely settled it outside of court; settling outside of court does not establish any legal precedent one way or another
I don't see how it could establish legal precedent in a way that would be meaningfully useful to Nintendo in other court cases (well, I guess the fact the Yuzu devs settled could scare others into also doing so, but I mean in a legal sense)
Out of court settlements are a thing, but this wasn't one. This was filed in-court. It's like the equivalent of a forfeit.
> Plaintiff Nintendo of America Inc. (“Plaintiff” or “Nintendo”) and Tropic Haze LLC (“Defendant” or “Tropic Haze”), by and through their undersigned counsel, hereby consent to judgment in favor of Nintendo, and jointly move the Court to enter monetary relief in the sum of US$2,400,000.00 in favor of Nintendo and against Defendant.
Translation:
"Hey court, we both agree that Nintendo wins, can we just skip the rest of this and mark this down as a win for them?"
What's the distinction, then ? I can't imagine a company can set precedent to their liking on basically any issue by suing someone who has a vague relation to that issue and doesn't have to money to fight back to get them to sign up to some random settlement that says "the company is right, please set a precedent on this issue. - person who didn't have the money to fight back", right ?
It doesn't set a "precedent" in the strict legal sense, especially that there's no point of law being discussed.
But it does set a "precedent" in that when courts deal with similar cases in the future, they would look back and see the settlement, and it does influence a judges' assessment of whether Nintendo has a case or not, in the sense of "well, the defendants in the prior case forfeited, they must have had an open and shut case, right?"
In a perfect world where courts have all the time and resources to try a case, this shouldn't happen, but in practice courts use all sorts of heuristics (as long as they're not explicitly banned)...
this is what i thought too, since it's just a settlement between Tropic Haze and Nintendo rather than a more broad ruling. but somebody linked this settlement elsewhere here and it adds up to distribution of the Yuzu code likely being a DMCA violation [1]
FINDINGS OF FACT
...
3. Yuzu, a video game emulator, circumvents the Technological Measures and allows for the play of encrypted Nintendo Switch games on devices other than a Nintendo Switch. For example, Yuzu executes code that decrypts Nintendo Switch video games (including component files) immediately before and during runtime using unauthorized copies of Nintendo Switch cryptographic keys. Yuzu is primarily designed to circumvent and play Nintendo Switch games. In the ordinary course of its operation with those games, Yuzu requires the Nintendo Switch’s proprietary cryptographic keys to gain access to and play Nintendo Switch games.
4. Developing or distributing software, including Yuzu, that in its ordinary course functions only when cryptographic keys are integrated without authorization, violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s prohibition on trafficking in devices that circumvent effective technological measures, because the software is primarily designed for the purpose of circumventing technological measures. Id. § 1201(a)(2)(A).
but, then, this document appears to be a draft ("proposed final judgement"). so things are still weirdly ambiguous for all the 3rd parties currently dealing with Yuzu :(
Doesn't change the fact that yuzu itself is legal. Last I checked, Judgements don't override law, especially ones drafted by nintendo's crackpot lawyers.
Same thoughts. They should triple-up their public image efforts and make sure any shared ROM link on Ryujinx controlled infrastructure results in a ban or something, otherwise Nintendo comes for them next.
It's what Dolphin did - so much as a sniff about piracy and you're banned. It was unfortunately still rather common - people just can't stop telling on themselves - and that's after big warnings in every part of the forum sign up process and on the post page too.
I'm not sure they really lost much from the community because it of though - the vast majority banned were just "Free Gamez Pls" - and coming down on things like that hard can make sense if you don't want more of that creeping over time.
Considering the precedent in circumventing decryption issues by calling out to a library (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libdvdcss), what is the likelihood that someone just builds a libxcidecrypt and development of yuzu continues unimpeded on a fork (somewhere like Europe for example where the DMCA doesn't hold)?
I fully agree with you, except that I stopped buying their stuff after the Gamecube. There are several Nintendo games that I would certainly like to play, but I don't want to be forced to buy their hardware.
I think their point is that you're not taking a principled stand by stealing. If it matters enough to you to "boycott" the company, walk the walk and don't play the games by any means.
There might not be copyright infringement involved, so "stealing" is an unnecessary assumption (on top of being a misleading term for copyright infringement). Since Nintendo isn't the only source for games that run on Nintendo consoles, Nintendo might not get money from the self-proclaimed boycotter. But since there's no guarantee that Nintendo won't get money from the self-proclaimed either, I can understand why people would view the following scenario as cognitively dissonant:
A person only buys physical copies of non-Nintendo-made games which run on Nintendo devices from people reselling legally-distributed copies (legal in the US with the first-sale doctrine, which unfortunately doesn't apply to digital copies). The person plays those games by ripping the files and running them on third-party emulators. The person publicly states that they boycott Nintendo the company and that they play non-Nintendo-games made for Nintendo consoles. Resellers might or might not spend their money on more Nintendo games.
By the way, iamunr didn't claim to boycott Nintendo. Perhaps iamunr buys Nintendo games but plays them on emulators. throwaway48r7r didn't provide any information about whether they'll continue playing non-Nintendo-made games for Nintendo consoles.
Rather, multiple companies make games for one console. If you buy those games not made by Nintendo from sources other than Nintendo's shops then you can boycott Nintendo without boycotting non-Nintendo game developers.
I believe developers on consoles always pay the console manufacturer a fee per-copy, so not so much, but that's probably the way that pays Nintendo the least.
EDIT: Just remembered the second hand market. Carry on.
I pay for all the games I play, sometimes going way out of my way to do so (obscure japaese studios who don't sell outside), but I will never pay a company that attacks my rights. I say that as an x-nintindo superfan who owned every generation and 100s of games up until the wii when I learned of nintendo's outright delusional takes on reality and there abuse and misuse of laws and the legal system.
You are free to also delude yourself and call it piracy and "stealing" all you want, but emulation and playing ripped games absolutely is - and will hopefully remain - your right.
(i buy used games and use yuzu to play them. fuck nintendo.)
"Your entire gaming experience will be better if you spend twice as much on new hardware than something which came out 7 years ago, and also forfeit a bunch of other switch features like motion controls and detachable joycons"
Yuzu got me to start buying Nintendo games again. Two weeks ago I coincidentally decided to mod my Switch and extract all of my games to play on my steam deck because I hadn't touched my switch since getting a steam deck. Everything I am now running on my steam deck comes from my personal switch. I have been having so much fun and loving how my games look on an OLED screen. I also appreciate that I didn't have to generate any waste since I continue to only have my two devices rather than buying a new OLED switch. I was about to go on a shopping spree on the Nintendo store to buy more games even though I haven't bought a switch game in 2 years. This is disappointing to hear.
The interesting thing to me is the Wii U was sort of like youtube premium. Everyone complains about youtube ads yey refuses to pay for the ad-free experience. Similarly, I see people complain about not being able to buy old Nintendo games, but the Wii U eShop provided an abundance of retro games for purchase. Most of the retro games I play come from my Wii U. Nintendo has disappointingly made it more and more difficult over the years to buy their older games, but I suppose when it was easy to do, nobody did it unfortunately. All of this would be solved if Nintendo simply sold their games and we were allowed to play it on whatever hardware we want. But I understand why Nintendo doesn't want that and also that many people seem to not want to actually pay for the games they play.
You can do this right now. For example, I have bought retro games from gog and humble that included multiple builds for different systems and platforms, and no restrictions on where you run them - just that you don't distribute them.
This part I really don't understand. Nintendo has clearly got the technology at play to run everything at least prior to the GameCube on the Switch, ready to roll... but the only way to access those games is to pay for a subscription service which is already kind of annoying, only to then get a drip-feed of a few games every few months, selected by... somebody, no idea who, with no real consistency as to what makes the cut and what doesn't. It's, by all accounts, completely fucking arbitrary.
I love the Switch, it's IMO, the best console Nintendo's turned out in actual decades, and if I was given the option I would buy the shit out of a large library of games from previous Nintendo consoles, and given how many 3rd party projects have made playing those games on all manner of shit, chiefly desktop PCs, a possible thing, I struggle to really sympathize with Nintendo here. And again: the groundwork for this is already laid. I don't know how much work goes between, for example, taking a SNES title like Super Mario RPG and putting it on the Switch's virtual SNES console, but given that their virtual SNES has essentially the same features that every bog standard SNES emulator has had for over 10 years... you'll have to forgive me if I don't think it's much? If any?
I would absolutely understand if they want to playtest each game, make sure it's optimized, make sure there's no graphical oddities, etc. etc. but like... you can do that. I could do that. And hell, if a game made it through with some big glitch, give me the option to send your devs a fuckin email about it in-game with a dump of the memory at the time it happened so they can fix it.
But no, instead, peacemeal releases of games, on a subscription service only, that range from absolutely S-tier iconic to... what the fuck is this in terms of cultural significance. Instead of just a bloody storefront, and let me pick what I want, and pay a reasonable price for it. I'd bet anything if they charged like $9.99 per game for the entire library of NES, SNES, and N64 titles, they'd be absolutely swimming in money.
Like... the big corpos have never understood, this is what gave Steam the position they have now. Piracy is work. Hacking consoles is work. Installing and playing cracked games is work (and risk!). I don't want to work, I want to fucking play Donkey Kong. Give me a legal way to give you a reasonable amount of money so I can play Donkey Kong! And then I get Donkey Kong and you get money! It's the dictionary definition of a win/win scenario.
> Piracy is work. Hacking consoles is work. Installing and playing cracked games is work (and risk!). I don't want to work, I want to fucking play Donkey Kong
It takes work on the side of companies like Nintendo to make piracy inconvenient. If Nintendo and others didn't spend their resources locking down their consoles and squashing any form of piracy that gets too convenient then the easiest way to play any game would be to pirate it via some community-maintained all-in-one cross-platform game installer and launcher with every game ever dumped available. Then Nintendo would have no hope of competing with convenience. At a minimum they would need some sort of payment and accounting system which would introduce friction compared to a free piracy frontend. So naturally, Nintendo is not interested in engaging in a convenience competition. They want to use the law to maintain total control of how their games can be played, and then use that granted monopoly to make as much money from them as they can. Why sell an older game for a reasonable price if you're the only game in town and can instead use it as leverage to get people to give you money regularly for the privilege of playing it? Even better, bundle the game they want with a bunch that they don't and several that they kinda-sorta want to play at some point maybe? The more you can dilute and confuse the value of a purchase the more you can make off it. Ideally you reach a point where subscribers feel some nebulous obligation to pay you regularly, and the actual service you provide only serves as to assuage cognitive dissonance should a subscriber consider cancelling. "Oh, but I played Earthbound for a few hours last week, and maybe I'll want to get back to that at some point, so I guess I'll keep my subscription"
> It takes work on the side of companies like Nintendo to make piracy inconvenient. ... So naturally, Nintendo is not interested in engaging in a convenience competition.
Oh, sure, but 9/10ths of that is already done. The eShop already exists and distributes purchased DRM-locked content to their hardware. That's my point: all the pieces for this already exist and are implemented. The only problem is the business side that insists on doing this so bizarrely.
> Why sell an older game for a reasonable price if you're the only game in town and can instead use it as leverage to get people to give you money regularly for the privilege of playing it?
I mean, without access to their data I can't say this for sure, but I feel like a monthly subscription for these games is substantially less money than just selling them as is. It feels distinctly like a loss-leader for Nintendo's subscription thing so they can buff the numbers of subscribers.
> Even better, bundle the game they want with a bunch that they don't and several that they kinda-sorta want to play at some point maybe? The more you can dilute and confuse the value of a purchase the more you can make off it.
I really don't think that rule is as hard and fast as you're making it sound. The bundle maybe, sure. But what's the value proposition for all the games not available at all, purchase or subscription? That's my real beef is the arbitrary and often nonsensical selection process.
> Ideally you reach a point where subscribers feel some nebulous obligation to pay you regularly, and the actual service you provide only serves as to assuage cognitive dissonance should a subscriber consider cancelling. "Oh, but I played Earthbound for a few hours last week, and maybe I'll want to get back to that at some point, so I guess I'll keep my subscription"
But again: just price the Earthbound game according to the work required to bring it to the new storefront. Then you're already in the black without needing to sell a subscription in the first place. And sure you aren't continuing to make money off of it, but who's to say you'll continue doing that with the subscription? People find them irritating and no matter what psychological shit you try and pull on them, at some point it's not bad odds they're just going to go "I don't need this" and cancel.
> I'd bet anything if they charged like $9.99 per game for the entire library of NES, SNES, and N64 titles, they'd be absolutely swimming in money.
This is more or less how it worked on the Wii, Wii U, and 3DS so I would assume that they weren't swimming in money if they decided to change it now.
It wasn't the entire library, of course, but that probably is never going to happen anyways due to licensing issues that pirates don't have to worry about.
I just want to echo what a few people have mentioned here:
The legality of emulation was strongly upheld under pre-DMCA copyright law in U.S. court decisions where console makers lost against emulator developers.
However, the DMCA gave plaintiffs a whole new set of tools to prevent interoperability. Lots of interoperability and emulation cases have been lost under the DMCA. The DMCA radically limited the prior legal norm that you could create a compatible implementation of a proprietary technology from scratch.
If you agree that there should be a right to reimplement a third-party version of a proprietary system/technology/format/protocol (including one that uses some kind of secrecy to attempt to enforce DRM), you should oppose DMCA §1201.
involved a literal emulator. However, none involved an emulator as we would understand the concept (as opposed to "interoperability" more generally). There was also the matter of the PC clones, where IBM's only litigation was against those who literally copied the BIOS, as opposed to those who made compatible hardware without IBM's permission
although conceivably IBM was concerned about antitrust issues there in choosing not to litigate over the non-BIOS-copying clones.
As other commenters pointed out, there are court decisions in favor of emulators in the post-DMCA environment (Connectix and Bleem), where DMCA claims were not raised at all in those specific cases.
These two cases applied pre-DMCA copyright law to the question of the legality of the emulation, but weren't actually pre-DMCA chronologically. I'll take that as a very helpful correction to the way I phrased the point.
> The legality of emulation was strongly upheld under pre-DMCA copyright law in U.S. court decisions where console makers lost against emulator developers.
SCEA v. Bleem was filed in 1999, and the DMCA came into effect in 1998.
Careful, §1201(a)(1) (to which the exemption rulemaking process applies) was delayed, but §1201(a)(2) and §1201(b) (which don't have the exemption rulemaking attached) were not delayed this way. (a)(1) is an "acts" provision while (a)(2) and (b) are "tools" provisions.
But the DMCA's 1201 provisions didn't apply to Sony v. Bleem since the DRM scheme of the PlayStation didn't attempt to stop you from copying, but instead focused on stopping a legitimate PS1 from playing copies.
This is sad, but honestly the expected outcome. Not only did they receive money from people, which is like the #1 in the not-to-do list when you're offering a product in a legally grey area, but also they set up a company in the US (TROPIC HAZE LLC), which is like a giant target to be sued. An anonymous GitHub repo is by contrast much harder to sue.
I had never heard of this emulator before, but after all the news of this lawsuit, I looked at their compatibility list and am surprised at how many titles are supported and how well this seems to work! I'll definitely be giving this emulator a try soon.
I think Nintendo is probably shooting themselves in the foot a little bit by giving this project more publicity than it otherwise would have received.
(It's an issue filed on the yuzu repo by someone claiming to be so upset about yuzu dropping Windows 7 support that they sent emails to Nintendo to bring it to their attention.)
Big companies don't wait for some rando to complain to take these kinds of enforcement actions. Chances are it was already well underway by the time he typed up his message.
We saw a similar and opposite situation with Pokemon fans bothering Nintendo to go after Palworld. Considering Nintendo released a statement that boiled down to "we already know", it's clear that whatever Nintendo does or doesn't do has nothing to do with people telling them.
I simply can’t get used to the entitlement of gamers, it’s on a whole nother level. This person writes as if the authors mugged their mother, but the problem is “your emu stopped working on my computer”.
I don't think the intent of posting on a visible, high traffic public space is to only offend the onlookers but to also incite outrage that cascades into other communication channels. Free attention from vitriolic strangers stemming almost solely from lacking self control to the point of expressing frustrated opinions is all they could ever ask for, at a minimum.
391 comments
[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 273 ms ] threadBasic summary is that the Yuzu developers agreed to shut down development, give their domain to Nintendo, and delete all copies that they posess of Yuzu and any other Switch hacking tools.
* how will they pay $2M?
* why did they settle for that much?
* isn't strict emulation legal? Maybe not in the US...
* is there something fishy that was hidden somewhere?
They actually made quite a bit of money, around ~$30k/mo from just Patreon, wouldn't surprise me if they had that much money.
> * why did they settle for that much?
Expensive to fight it, and if they lose they'd have to pay even more. Nintendo can go on forever, they have so much money and the best lawyers.
Probably patreon
> * why did they settle for that much?
Because Nintendo will just ruin their lives otherwise
> * isn't strict emulation legal? Maybe not in the US...
Thank you DMCA for ruining this scene. The federal government should not be the one interjecting itself into this area, but here we are. Because of the anti-circumvention rules of the DMCA, right to repair is completely broken. Heck, WV was able to hide them lying about emissions because of it.
The same way Bowser did, I suppose. Wage garnishing + whatever Patreon money they earned?
Apparently it's estimated to have made some $1.2 million from patreon so that may help
>why did they settle for that much?
Bad crooked lawyers that said they had no chance or very good lawyers that said they had no chance. IANAL, so I can't truly say which.
> isn't strict emulation legal? Maybe not in the US...
It is AFAIK, apparently the judgement's big argument here is
>Developing or distributing software, including Yuzu, that in its ordinary course functions only when cryptographic keys are integrated without authorization, violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s prohibition on trafficking in devices that circumvent effective technological measures, because the software is primarily designed for the purpose of circumventing technological measures.
Again, I don't know how much water that holds.
>is there something fishy that was hidden somewhere?
Depends on if you think whether or not it would have cost more than $2.5m dollars to fight nintendo in a full battle. I imagine Yuzu doesn't have such funds nor means to. So this was the cheapest option for them.
Hell, I just even knew about Yuzu because of that lawsuit. #streisand
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2024/feb/01/the-man-who-ow...
to be fair, they're not unique in this space. but the perception of them as "the family-friendly gaming company" has always been some very big amount of nonsense.
His own actions and the legal system are why he is where he is today. Nintendo isn’t putting him anything, unless you now think that Nintendo controls legal decisions that are handed down.
> Bowser has now managed to secure housing, and he thinks that after rent, he has a couple of hundred dollars leftover for food and other necessities. He assumes he’ll be turning to food support services.
Nintendo's not being compensated any meaningful amount. This is nothing more than a lifelong public flogging. And for what?
The point was that if you have deeper pockets than your opponent then you're able to leverage the legal system to make life hard and stressful for them.
Nintendo has deep pockets and the will to go after anyone it considers a threat to its business model.
This seems like a massive stretch to ask a judge to sign off on, since it pretty radically expands what the DMCA covers. If were to come into force, you could slap some encryption on any piece of software and block anyone from interoperating with it.
They will get the assets though. So $30k in patron money for the month, the domain, the trademark, and the copyright to the GPL'd code.
They most likely don't. Most of these settlements have another agreement made behind closed doors.
I was alleged to do stuff related to video game cheats, and was in settlement talks with a company bigger than Nintendo. I didn't end up signing, so a quick overview of what such secret agreements include (the money point is the last one):
- keep everything of the following secret
- be truthful with us and tell us everything
- hand over source code, server access, chats
- shut down social media, websites related to the cheats
- if defendant cant shut down the cheat site, defendant has to try to shut it down via other various means and email the plaintiff once every quarter for three years with the efforts made
- plaintiff will make a public announcement that defendant owes 2.5 million USD (used by the plaintiff for marketing / scaring people off). After X years, the plaintiff agrees to file a full satisfaction of the monetary award (aka plaintiff files that the defendant paid the money and so their credit score isn't totally fucked), BUT in reality the defendant only has to pay the money if they breach any of the terms above.
it could be wrong, totk just leaked a week before release.
So, Nintendo will receive all future Yuzu's telemetry.
not probable, but that would be interesting to see
Nintendo's behaviour seems to be very much anti hacker and even anti-consumer in cases like this one. Anyone else have any strong feelings about this?
Personally, I paid for a copy of Tears of the Kingdom when it came out, but only because I had a Switch I could borrow from someone to play it on - if I hadn't had that option, I wouldn't have bought a Switch just to play one game, and I just wouldn't have bought the game at all.
Had they released the game on PC as well as Switch, I would have bought it for PC, but that's not an option. As it stands, either you have to own an overpriced and underpowered console, even if you only want to play one Nintendo game, or you can pirate the game and play it on PC, and have a much better experience than on a real Switch. Nintendo is somewhat bringing this upon itself in my opinion and I don't feel much sympathy for their lost profits, real or imagined.
Considering that the Steam Deck is more expensive than the Switch, arguably every SD player using Yuzu is several lost sales for Nintendo.
Nintendo is somewhat bringing this upon itself in my opinion and I don't feel much sympathy for their lost profits, real or imagined.
This is why they are going after Yuzu in the first place...Because Yuzu makes it easy to pirate Switch games and the pirates feel entitled to play those games on a more expensive device than the device they claim is too expensive.
And Nintendo is okay with that. If you're never going to be a paying customer, they don't care what you think.
Regardless of that particular commenter, many paying customers of Nintendo have the same attitude that they will only emulate switch games.
I think “many” is probably a bit much.
Given this discussion started around whether to boycott Nintendo or not, it seems that you're not a Nintendo customer at all. So I'm not really sure what you would be boycotting?
As for releasing games on PC, I don't see any reason why they would? Developing for PC is much more difficult than a single console, when it comes to handling the variety of hardware, anti-cheat, etc. TOTK and their Mario games are system sellers, with the former even releasing alongside a special edition console and pro controller. Delaying the release of these games to add dev time for a PC port is never going to be worth it.
>Yuzu impacts their bottom line in a way that Dolphin doesn’t.
Dolphin could emulate nearly all commercial Wii games by April 2009.
That was sooner into the console's lifespan than where we are now with the switch. (29 months since the Wii's release vs 83 months since the Switch's release)
Maybe more people have gaming-grade computers sitting around now than they did 15 years ago?
You don't need a very powerful computer to emulate a Switch. My M1 Mac Mini w/ 8GB of RAM (~$400) has been able to play every Switch game I've been interested in with equal or slightly better performance than the actual console.
> That was sooner into the console's lifespan than where we are now with the switch.
I don't have any insight into why they didn't go after Dolphin in 2009, but I do think it explains why they're going after Yuzu now.
Contrast that to the Switch where most system sellers can be played on a standard controller without a gyroscope, the threat to their bottom line is much higher.
I have nothing against a Switch emulator existing at all, but making it conveniently easy for the masses to pirate games, condoning it in private spaces you manage, and profiting off the demand for the emulator due to that piracy are all against the ideas of preservation.
If you include DRM circumvention with the emulator, then there's an argument that it's developed specifically with piracy in mind.
Nintendo themselves don't disdain historical preservation. They preserve their code, assets, games, etc themselves.
And the target audience is still kids/family. Playing games doesn't need to be PC first or mobile first and it hinders quality.
Nintendo has the same right as Sony and ms to sell their system.
I would love to have it for PC, don't get me wrong, but families don't play games in front of a PC.
I don't think this argument is fair.
As far as I'm concerned, this is an issue of the DMCA more than Nintendo itself. In the strictest sense, devs really don't care about this and lawyers are only doing their job.
Boycotting Nintendo may make sense in a moral sense, but not one that will change how the DMCA works.
>Nintendo's behaviour seems to be very much anti hacker and even anti-consumer in cases like this one. Anyone else have any strong feelings about this?
Anti-hacker, sure. 99% of companies are anti-hacker.
Anti-consumer... First, I really think this is the worst modern cliche of modern media discourse. Just to remind people of the definition:
> Anti-consumerism is concerned with the private actions of business corporations in pursuit of financial and economic goals at the expense of the public welfare, especially in matters of environmental protection, social stratification, and ethics in the governing of a society.
I don't really see how luxury entertainment can ever meet the true philosophical meaning of the term that halts social progress and suppressing the flow of money to the populace.
With all that said, the closest I feel Nintendo has gotten to anti-consumerism is the "vault" strategy done with Mario All Stars. Which they seemingly only did for that game and a few of those "100 multiplayer" style games. It's a strategy making use of false scarcity for a product that can be infinitely reproducible (and requires no servers on their end to operate) in order to increase urgency to play/buy said work. Not only is that morally repugnant, I'm not even sure if it's a financially sound decision for a company who's products are known for having a long tail in sales, unlike most video games.
----
in the colloquial sense of:
>not favorable to consumers : improperly favoring the interests of businesses over the interests of consumers.
every business technically strides to be anti-consumerist. The act of charging money for a product is anti-consumerist. I don't see how Nintendo differs here, nor how they are the worst, in a world where almost every AAA company in the west is trying to rely on psuedo-subscriptions with battle passes and every company in the east are making millions on mobile off of the lootbox model.
Nintendo seemed to dip their toes in indirectly a few times (reminder: they do not fully own any of the remaining IPs using Lootboxes) but mostly have pulled out, even removing the gacha from a few of their games. So they for the most part simply profit from an online service with "free" games and one time purchase of other console games.
There needs to be a way to fix the system so that both sides of any court battle are on (fairly) equal footing, and having significantly more resources than your opponent doesn't tilt the field in your favour in any practical way.
Reality (and the courts) disagree with you.
1: "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."
Copyright and patents are an artifact of the government being easily corruptible by media companies who make insane amount of money.
Until we get rid of the government we'll always have laws which help the rich steal from the people.
This is a bad attitude - every system can be gamed - social/market pressure is an important mechanism for shaping outcomes.
Most Nintendo cartridges will function a decade from now. Many discs for other consoles don't even have the full game on it... and many can't function without connecting to a service. I'd prefer the system that is possible to preserve (but gets aggressive with monetization) then the one that's impossible to preserve.
Points to xbox for doing well with backwards compatibility and carrying libraries forward. But that could change in future.
The other platforms have also way less exclusives. The PS5 has a grand total of 12 exclusive games listed here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:PlayStation_5-only_ga... . Why even bother?
For example for PS4 only games there's a decent amount more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:PlayStation_4-only_ga...
I'm pretty disappointed in the PS5's library but for someone who never had a PS4 the PS5 is absolutely worth it. Maybe by the time they get through the backlog of good PS4 games there will be something worth playing on the PS5
It's pretty simple: don't target people who aren't doing things that are morally reprehensible, even if it's a systemic threat to your company (cue the laughter from the capitalists who can't understand anything beyond industrial machinations). Evolve and adapt to include them in your assets, or die while the fitter companies do. Someday, someone's going to have more money than Nintendo and they will force Nintendo to do whatever they want them to. I'm just hoping its sooner rather than later. They've earned every second of their demise. Fuck any company that thinks lawfare is excusable as 'might makes right'.
The leak that exposed that information showed it was part of Nintendo's larger 5-step plan to bully and silence the homebrew scene.
[1] https://www.technadu.com/nintendo-spying-3ds-hacker-neimod-t...
[1] https://www.patreon.com/yuzuteam
Edit: he's dead, Jim
It seems that GitHub still serves the commit history through the existing forks of the repo. According to archive.org, this commit corresponds to the last release of yuzu-mainline before the repo takedown: http://web.archive.org/web/20240304185516/https://github.com...
``` git remote add irfanhakim-as https://github.com/irfanhakim-as/yuzu-mainline git fetch irfanhakim-as 537296095ab24eddcb196b5ef98004f91de9c8c2 ```
Then if you want the commit to look like the latest one for the original repo edit the file `.git/packed-refs`. Mine now looks like:
``` # pack-refs with: peeled fully-peeled sorted 537296095ab24eddcb196b5ef98004f91de9c8c2 refs/remotes/origin/master ```
(Be careful with raw editing git files. There might be a more 'official' way to do it, but this worked for me)
When you find a mirror, you can look for this commit, and know that if the commit hash matches it is probably a legit copy of the repo up until that point at least
But yeah they'll be gone soon (making a repo without fork won't help either.)
It'll definitely get purged, but I think in this case the rightsholder needs to submit a separate DMCA request.
Regardless, if you want the code, cloning it to a local storage medium is always the most robust option :)
No you can actually do multiple in one request.
> Regardless, if you want the code, cloning it to a local storage medium is always the most robust option :)
100%, that is the way to go.
https://archive.softwareheritage.org/browse/search/?q=github...
https://github.com/roblabla/yuzu/forks?include=active&page=1...
Considering the ongoing attacks against GitHub whereby people are creating repos with malicious code, it's probably wise to be bloody careful of any of these yuzu forks. :( :( :(
https://packages.ubuntu.com/mantic/yuzu
I guess that depends on your definition of "well polished emulator". From what I hear, it is not well polished.
Relative to what? Emulators are inherently complex software, and yuzu more than most since it has to deal with modern concerns like GPU drivers, game updates, DLC, etc. For all that it does, it is fine, it mostly works quite well.
But, emulating a current console is not about preservation. It just isn't. You can try to say it is, but no. Maybe, maybe you could argue that you are putting in the work now so it's ready when it's needed. But then be careful about putting it out there.
Just go look at the steam deck subreddit and how often Switch games are talked about, I can't imagine Nintendo was very happy about that. This wasn't just some small project that people did not really know about or served a niche purpose.
This as asking for trouble and I am surprised it took so long honestly.
Edit:
Don't get me wrong, I hate exclusives and I wish the practice would end. But that is the current state of things and the choices leading up to this were questionable at best.
Edit Again:
Hold up, Yuzu was an actual company and had a Patreon bringing in over $29k a month? Yeah um, Nintendo has been bad but that's a choice for a current console. It is no surprise Nintendo went after them.
I just have a very hard time believing that, like you said, the majority of the use case is anything other than piracy.
I mean almost every emulation software somewhere says that you should only emulate games you own, but how many of us actually still own our NES or gamecube games that we may have downloaded. But it's easier to justify given that stuff not being easily accessible anymore, we don't even have a proper eshop for emulation on the Switch.
Even if this is true, torrent clients are predominantly used for piracy too and they don't get sued. Neither are explicitly designed to facilitate it.
Can anyone explain why Yuzu's case is different?
One is an open protocol, and one is proprietary technology. AWS even at one point supported the protocol.
I don't know if it's still a thing but it wasn't terribly uncommon to find Linux distros and other legitimate things shared through that protocol.
Here we are talking about proprietary technology by Nintendo. On a system that they are currently selling and making money on.
Given how much money they were bring in on patrion, it isn't much different than if they tried to make a physical knock off switch that could run switch games.
Over in computer land we would call that "IBM PC Compatible".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectix_Virtual_Game_Station
x86 is also proprietary technology that Intel is currently making money on. Should Intel be able to sue AMD out of existence?
NVIDIA's GPU specs are proprietary technology that NVIDIA is currently making money on. Should NVIDIA be able to shut down Nouveau?
Flash is proprietary technology that Adobe still sells under the name Adobe Animate. Should Adobe be able to shut down Ruffle?
AMD has a perpetual license from Intel to use the technology.
Nouveau is different, you are still buying Nvidia cards just running an open source driver. Nvidia doesn't make money on their drivers, they make money on the graphics cards.
Similar situation to Ruffle, Adobe never charged for the end user to download flash. It was free. Ruffle is an alternative to that. Also it is worth mentioning that flash is all but dead and this really just keeps it breathing.
While both companies probably could make an argument to argue for a take down of both, they have no incentive to do it.
AMD only managed to negotiate that because Intel lost in arbitration [1]. Intel's preferred option was always to eliminate AMD entirely. It's good for us consumers that they didn't succeed in that!
> While both companies probably could make an argument to argue for a take down of both, they have no incentive to do it.
NVIDIA absolutely has an incentive to get rid of Nouveau. Its existence discloses IP (their GPU inner workings) that they would prefer to keep secret.
More examples: JavaScript was proprietary technology at the time. The fact that it was specific to Netscape browsers absolutely benefited Netscape's business model. The existence of Chrome depends on the fact that Netscape had no grounds to go after Microsoft for an independent implementation.
SMB is a proprietary Microsoft technology. '90s Microsoft would definitely have preferred to keep that specific to Windows in order to sell more Windows licenses. It's good for the industry that Microsoft never felt they could go after Samba.
Another fun one: The FBX file format, which Autodesk makes money on through Maya, has a half-hearted attempt at DRM in it to limit it to approved Autodesk licensees. Blender's FBX exporter breaks it with a pass-the-hash attack. Get rid of that and Blender can no longer talk to Unity. Obviously, the entire industry benefits from the fact that Autodesk can't go after Blender for this.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD#IBM_PC_and_the_x86_archite...
OK? regardless of why or how it happened, it happened and it means that AMD is fine. If you knew that I don't know why you even mentioned it in the first place.
> NVIDIA absolutely has an incentive to get rid of Nouveau. Its existence discloses IP (their GPU inner workings) that they would prefer to keep secret.
Any articles to back that up? Seems counter to Nvidia offering support in publishing documents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouveau_(software)#History
> Another fun one: The FBX file format, which Autodesk makes money on through Maya, has a half-hearted attempt at DRM in it to limit it to approved Autodesk licensees. Blender's FBX exporter breaks it with a pass-the-hash attack. Get rid of that and Blender can no longer talk to Unity. Obviously, the entire industry benefits from the fact that Autodesk can't go after Blender for this.
Again would love an article on this. I can't find anything backing up that this ever happened. Not only on Audodesk's website do they mention third party software but they have an SDK for this file format for others to use. While blender does in fact not use that SDK, and the format is proprietary, I can't find anything backing up what you claim.
AMD is only fine because Intel wasn't able to sue them out of existence. If Intel had managed to do in the 90s what Nintendo did to Yuzu just now, there'd be no Ryzen today.
> Seems counter to Nvidia offering support in publishing documents
NVIDIA only started publishing documents because Nouveau's success in reverse engineering meant that it was pointless trying to pretend that the genie could be put back in the bottle. Nintendo undoubtedly knows this too; lawsuits like this in 2024 ultimately aren't rational moves on their part, but big conservative Japanese companies have never been known to be particularly adaptable.
> Again would love an article on this. I can't find anything backing up that this ever happened. Not only on Audodesk's website do they mention third party software but they have an SDK for this file format for others to use. While blender does in fact not use that SDK, and the format is proprietary, I can't find anything backing up what you claim.
I found it myself when I was documenting the FBX file format (which I eventually gave up on because it was too horrifying of a format to motivate continuing) [1]. Blender calls it "CRC rules", but I think it's actually an attempt to lock non-licensees out. The SDK is closed-source, proprietary, and comes with a whole bunch of restrictions in its EULA.
[1]: https://github.com/blender/blender-addons/blob/main/io_scene...
AMD has a license to the x86 architecture, alongside Via (though I'm not sure if they even make x86 chips anymore). I'm sure Intel would love to take back AMD's license, but they're probably too afraid of antitrust actions to try.
Why would that be a problem? As long as they're not actually violating trademarks or patents and making an actual counterfeit product, there is no reason why they shouldn't be able to make their own hardware that is compatible with Switch games.
These products already exist for other systems, and they are a good way to allow you to play your existing games on more modern hardware.
Just because it upsets some executive at Nintendo doesn't make it illegal.
Yuzu is designed to play specific software which is quite difficult to acquire by legal means. Very little effort appears to have been spent on improving the UX of the legal process.
(It is true that Yuzu can also play homebrew software. I think the situation would be different if Yuzu was tested exclusively on Homebrew, and only emulated features which homebrew software uses. But then no one would care about Yuzu. Yuzu has tons of game-specific fixes for commercial titles.)
Yuzu can also play games that were backed up by people who legitimately own the game. The legality of that might be questionable in the US, but not everywhere.
It's about the shitty part of DMCA's anti-circumvention.
If you want to see how stupid this law is, look at the number of exemptions given for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...
All Apple will need to claim is that Asahi is bypassing some "client side protection", and Asahi is shut down.
Is Asahi bypassing some client side protection?
If Apple wanted to kill Asahi Linux, they could just remove this functionality from iBoot.
Apple will not remove this functionality, because they would not have added it in the first place if they did not want people to be able to use it.
Obviously piracy should be illegal, but I just don’t see any argument against emulation even if it is current.
Dolphin does require a bit of DRM hacking, but Dolphin (arguably) falls under one of the DCMA exceptions for archival use purposes. This is the second important point: the Dolphin emulates a system which has not been on sale for a decade. It's still possible* to use it for general piracy instead of archival access, but the archival use trumps the piracy concern. (It would be different though if the Dolphin developers started offering Dolphin on a commercial basis.)
But Yuzu is a commercial offering, for a console that is still on sale, and its use requires DRM hacking. So it's got 3 fatal flaws.
The only surprise is that Nintendo let it live as long as it has. You can bet they won't make that mistake again with their next console.
Wouldn't Steam, MSTF store, Epic, etc. all count as DRM? Regardless, it's more of a philosophical argument than a legal argument. If I buy the Switch and the game, I don't see how there could be any argument that I should be considered a criminal for using the data on a PC.
They could, which is why I was careful to point out that you can install an OS on your PS5, on which you can then run (some) games on it without having to circumvent DRM.
If I buy the Switch and the game, I don't see how there could be any argument that I should be considered a criminal for using the data on a PC.
Because U.S. (and EU) law doesn't have any exceptions that would cover that use, since the Switch is still being actively sold on the market today. (And as noted elsewhere, this is a large part of why SNES, N64, and Gamecube emulators haven't been targeted by Nintendo: the machines are no longer sold and so emulation allows for archival use/access to games on those platforms. This is generally a permitted use.)
Of course it's completely bonkers and the result of massive corporations bribing governments to limit our freedom.
As long as I don't sign a contract with an entity I should be able to do anything I want with bytes. Once I enter into an agreement not to share some data I received then I should be punishable - but no shortcuts, sue everyone in court with a due process and lawyer fees.
Copyright and patents are the most retarded and culture damaging thing I've seen in my lifetime
Agreed, bonkers. You didn't 'own the data' when it was a VCR recording a broadcast TV show or movie, but now it's all "but they broke our ROT13-super-crypto, throw the book at 'em".
Now, of course, this depends on the movie having a physical release (which is becoming a bit of a rarity these days), but still, the MPAA has made sure to write ironclad contracts to prohibit watching streamed content the way you want.
Of course, piracy deprives other people of their property and/or lives which is not something we should accept. Neither is copyright.
So we should all just wait until they stop selling a console before working to emulate it?
Just imagine if they had this attitude when it came to reverse engineering IBM PC's bios.
> But, emulating a current console is not about preservation. It just isn't. You can try to say it is, but no. Maybe, maybe you could argue that you are putting in the work now so it's ready when it's needed. But then be careful about putting it out there.
Today's present is tomorrow's past.
The Switch is an outlier in that regard but mostly because the hardware is so different from previous consoles. It could never support the 2 screens required for DS/3DS or some Wii U games, nor is it big enough to fit Wii U disks anyway. But it wouldn't surprise me if the Switch 2 could play Switch 1 games.
Nintendo also typically put entire games on their cartridges, and day 1 patches are for bug fixes only and are optional. If you keep the cartridges and your console, you keep your games perfectly fine. Or you can go out and buy cartridges second hand. And digital downloads will also still function, like my 3DS still has my digital purchases even if the eshop is gone. I just can't purchase new games anymore, for a 12 year old system.
I disagree in the general case. Sure, beware of litigious companies, but it isn't immoral.
In the specific case of Yuzu bringing in cash from the endeavor, yes, I see why Nintendo did what they did.
---
Totally off-topic, but I have never bought a Switch despite liking the idea of all the games on it, because I don't want to pay $600 for a gameboy, 2-4 real controllers and a copy of Mario Party. I can't understand how it or Steam Deck is popular. But that's just me.
LOL
Yeah, as much as I am an anti-fan of Nintendo, it sounds like this company was asking to get sued.
No, but it CAN be used as a tool to play legitimate copies of games on different hardware. A few people on this thread have said they do this. I haven't done it yet, but I'll probably dump the Switch games I want to play on my Deck instead of carrying the switch also.
Overall, that's probably a mostly fine outcome for game preservation, and thinking about it more, it's probably much better for emulation and game preservation long term that Yuzu's devs settled instead of fighting this, as if they had lost and a legal precedent were set, many other emulators might have had to shut down or be hosted in countries where the DMCA doesn't apply. But with no legal precedent set here, emulators for consoles released before the Switch might very well be safe. Time will tell though.
What do you think of piracy in general? When would you consider pirating a PC game would be acceptable?
The reality is that the modern gaming industry is actively hostile to the consumer. Content is locked behind intrusive DRM, store front exclusivity deals, licensing terms that may revoke your access at any point, obnoxious launchers, always online requirements, reliance on servers that may disappear at any moment, insidious subscriptions, microtransactions, and many other schemes ranging from shady to borderline illegal. Hype-driven marketing pushing pre-orders based on lies, followed by empty promises of multi-year roadmaps to get games in a playable state. Yearly releases of rehashed and reskinned content, low-effort and premature "remasters"... The list goes on and on.
Is someone who plays a pirated version of a game they purchased, but can't access anymore, in the wrong? Or how about if they prefer the pirated version because it gives a better experience? Or how about if they're tired of always getting the short end of the stick by playing by the rules? The law says they are, but are they really?
The morality here is not so black and white.
BTW, I agree with you that Yuzu was clearly overstepping the boundaries, and that it's no surprise Nintendo took them out. I just think that Nintendo doesn't necessarily have the moral high ground, and that there's a strong argument in favor of not only emulation, but piracy.
Plenty of people use Yuzu to play Switch games on hardware that can actually support modern resolutions, or so you can actually achieve decent framerates at modern resolutions.
Dolphin was in development since the GameCube was the "current gen", on through the Wii's lifecycle. Hell, by this point in the Wii lifecycle, it was already on the way out and Wii-U was releasing.
The games themselves are propietary, ok, but in the FSF ladder step it's a step up in the right direction.
What becomes of Ryujinx?
On the practical side, the fact that the developers were a for profit company also made Nintendo's job much easier.
Taking down a more legally careful, decentralized open source project should prove harder.
Emulation was; breaking cryptographic locks under the DMCA never was. In addition, most of the pro-emulation lawsuits were decided before the relevant DMCA sections even came into effect (e.g. Bleem), and are quite possibly already obsolete.
If you're curious, here's the most relevant parts of the text:
> No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that [...] has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;[...]
> As used in this subsection—[...]a 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.
FYI: I am not a lawyer, but you can listen to a lawyer explain the above at the following link https://youtu.be/wROQUZDCIMI?t=868
> Developing or distributing software, including Yuzu, that in its ordinary course functions only when cryptographic keys are integrated without authorization, violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act [...]
so, first reading, no: just taking Yuzu and splitting out the DRM stuff isn't legal if Yuzu still _depends_ on that DRM to function. you could maybe come up with some thing where you do full Switch emulation, with the code having literally zero concept of DRM/cryptography, and can only play homebrew games. do that and some other party would likely come around and do the (likely illegal) work to convert Switch games into a format your emulator understands. quite a bit like MAME cores, really.
fun speculating about how to bypass the spirit of this ruling though, huh? IMO if you actually want to do this don't bother with the roundabout. just do it directly and don't incorporate yourself in a state that cares about DMCA like a dumbass, and strictly distance your operations from your legal identity if you live under such a repressive regime.
Oh sweetheart, have you learnt about intimidation by legal fees? Doesn't matter whether it's legal or not, not many can bank to take against dedicated Nintendo legal team.
But once you start taking "donations" and run the project like a business with non-trivial revenue, they can take you down easily by following the money trail.
Wait what? When did this happen? Doesn't this story (about devs settling) mean the opposite of a court case being won or lost?
> Plaintiff Nintendo of America Inc. (“Plaintiff” or “Nintendo”) and Tropic Haze LLC (“Defendant” or “Tropic Haze”), by and through their undersigned counsel, hereby consent to judgment in favor of Nintendo, and jointly move the Court to enter monetary relief in the sum of US$2,400,000.00 in favor of Nintendo and against Defendant.
Translation:
"Hey court, we both agree that Nintendo wins, can we just skip the rest of this and mark this down as a win for them?"
But it does set a "precedent" in that when courts deal with similar cases in the future, they would look back and see the settlement, and it does influence a judges' assessment of whether Nintendo has a case or not, in the sense of "well, the defendants in the prior case forfeited, they must have had an open and shut case, right?"
In a perfect world where courts have all the time and resources to try a case, this shouldn't happen, but in practice courts use all sorts of heuristics (as long as they're not explicitly banned)...
1: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.rid.569...
I'm not sure they really lost much from the community because it of though - the vast majority banned were just "Free Gamez Pls" - and coming down on things like that hard can make sense if you don't want more of that creeping over time.
Nintendo is suing the creators of Switch emulator Yuzu - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39530203 - Feb 2024 (678 comments)
The most recent commit hash matches another comment in this thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39595014
Over the years they have put out some really terrific games, many of which I'd still buy today if they sold them as software.
But after the Wii I stopped being a Nintendo customer (and stopped buying PS/Xbox/etc. consoles altogether) and I don't think I'll ever go back.
Sad to see this happen to the Yuzu squad.
EDIT: Just remembered the second hand market. Carry on.
Is it a boycott if you are still playing the games?
My biggest issue with it is how people almost act like they're entitled to their stealing.
You are free to also delude yourself and call it piracy and "stealing" all you want, but emulation and playing ripped games absolutely is - and will hopefully remain - your right.
(i buy used games and use yuzu to play them. fuck nintendo.)
The interesting thing to me is the Wii U was sort of like youtube premium. Everyone complains about youtube ads yey refuses to pay for the ad-free experience. Similarly, I see people complain about not being able to buy old Nintendo games, but the Wii U eShop provided an abundance of retro games for purchase. Most of the retro games I play come from my Wii U. Nintendo has disappointingly made it more and more difficult over the years to buy their older games, but I suppose when it was easy to do, nobody did it unfortunately. All of this would be solved if Nintendo simply sold their games and we were allowed to play it on whatever hardware we want. But I understand why Nintendo doesn't want that and also that many people seem to not want to actually pay for the games they play.
We all know steam exists that wasnt what OP meant.
This part I really don't understand. Nintendo has clearly got the technology at play to run everything at least prior to the GameCube on the Switch, ready to roll... but the only way to access those games is to pay for a subscription service which is already kind of annoying, only to then get a drip-feed of a few games every few months, selected by... somebody, no idea who, with no real consistency as to what makes the cut and what doesn't. It's, by all accounts, completely fucking arbitrary.
I love the Switch, it's IMO, the best console Nintendo's turned out in actual decades, and if I was given the option I would buy the shit out of a large library of games from previous Nintendo consoles, and given how many 3rd party projects have made playing those games on all manner of shit, chiefly desktop PCs, a possible thing, I struggle to really sympathize with Nintendo here. And again: the groundwork for this is already laid. I don't know how much work goes between, for example, taking a SNES title like Super Mario RPG and putting it on the Switch's virtual SNES console, but given that their virtual SNES has essentially the same features that every bog standard SNES emulator has had for over 10 years... you'll have to forgive me if I don't think it's much? If any?
I would absolutely understand if they want to playtest each game, make sure it's optimized, make sure there's no graphical oddities, etc. etc. but like... you can do that. I could do that. And hell, if a game made it through with some big glitch, give me the option to send your devs a fuckin email about it in-game with a dump of the memory at the time it happened so they can fix it.
But no, instead, peacemeal releases of games, on a subscription service only, that range from absolutely S-tier iconic to... what the fuck is this in terms of cultural significance. Instead of just a bloody storefront, and let me pick what I want, and pay a reasonable price for it. I'd bet anything if they charged like $9.99 per game for the entire library of NES, SNES, and N64 titles, they'd be absolutely swimming in money.
Like... the big corpos have never understood, this is what gave Steam the position they have now. Piracy is work. Hacking consoles is work. Installing and playing cracked games is work (and risk!). I don't want to work, I want to fucking play Donkey Kong. Give me a legal way to give you a reasonable amount of money so I can play Donkey Kong! And then I get Donkey Kong and you get money! It's the dictionary definition of a win/win scenario.
It takes work on the side of companies like Nintendo to make piracy inconvenient. If Nintendo and others didn't spend their resources locking down their consoles and squashing any form of piracy that gets too convenient then the easiest way to play any game would be to pirate it via some community-maintained all-in-one cross-platform game installer and launcher with every game ever dumped available. Then Nintendo would have no hope of competing with convenience. At a minimum they would need some sort of payment and accounting system which would introduce friction compared to a free piracy frontend. So naturally, Nintendo is not interested in engaging in a convenience competition. They want to use the law to maintain total control of how their games can be played, and then use that granted monopoly to make as much money from them as they can. Why sell an older game for a reasonable price if you're the only game in town and can instead use it as leverage to get people to give you money regularly for the privilege of playing it? Even better, bundle the game they want with a bunch that they don't and several that they kinda-sorta want to play at some point maybe? The more you can dilute and confuse the value of a purchase the more you can make off it. Ideally you reach a point where subscribers feel some nebulous obligation to pay you regularly, and the actual service you provide only serves as to assuage cognitive dissonance should a subscriber consider cancelling. "Oh, but I played Earthbound for a few hours last week, and maybe I'll want to get back to that at some point, so I guess I'll keep my subscription"
Oh, sure, but 9/10ths of that is already done. The eShop already exists and distributes purchased DRM-locked content to their hardware. That's my point: all the pieces for this already exist and are implemented. The only problem is the business side that insists on doing this so bizarrely.
> Why sell an older game for a reasonable price if you're the only game in town and can instead use it as leverage to get people to give you money regularly for the privilege of playing it?
I mean, without access to their data I can't say this for sure, but I feel like a monthly subscription for these games is substantially less money than just selling them as is. It feels distinctly like a loss-leader for Nintendo's subscription thing so they can buff the numbers of subscribers.
> Even better, bundle the game they want with a bunch that they don't and several that they kinda-sorta want to play at some point maybe? The more you can dilute and confuse the value of a purchase the more you can make off it.
I really don't think that rule is as hard and fast as you're making it sound. The bundle maybe, sure. But what's the value proposition for all the games not available at all, purchase or subscription? That's my real beef is the arbitrary and often nonsensical selection process.
> Ideally you reach a point where subscribers feel some nebulous obligation to pay you regularly, and the actual service you provide only serves as to assuage cognitive dissonance should a subscriber consider cancelling. "Oh, but I played Earthbound for a few hours last week, and maybe I'll want to get back to that at some point, so I guess I'll keep my subscription"
But again: just price the Earthbound game according to the work required to bring it to the new storefront. Then you're already in the black without needing to sell a subscription in the first place. And sure you aren't continuing to make money off of it, but who's to say you'll continue doing that with the subscription? People find them irritating and no matter what psychological shit you try and pull on them, at some point it's not bad odds they're just going to go "I don't need this" and cancel.
This is more or less how it worked on the Wii, Wii U, and 3DS so I would assume that they weren't swimming in money if they decided to change it now.
It wasn't the entire library, of course, but that probably is never going to happen anyways due to licensing issues that pirates don't have to worry about.
Yuzu (Nintendo Switch emulator) is dead - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39594795
The legality of emulation was strongly upheld under pre-DMCA copyright law in U.S. court decisions where console makers lost against emulator developers.
However, the DMCA gave plaintiffs a whole new set of tools to prevent interoperability. Lots of interoperability and emulation cases have been lost under the DMCA. The DMCA radically limited the prior legal norm that you could create a compatible implementation of a proprietary technology from scratch.
If you agree that there should be a right to reimplement a third-party version of a proprietary system/technology/format/protocol (including one that uses some kind of secrecy to attempt to enforce DRM), you should oppose DMCA §1201.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Games_Corp._v._Nintendo_....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Galoob_Toys,_Inc._v._Nin....
involved a literal emulator. However, none involved an emulator as we would understand the concept (as opposed to "interoperability" more generally). There was also the matter of the PC clones, where IBM's only litigation was against those who literally copied the BIOS, as opposed to those who made compatible hardware without IBM's permission
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible
although conceivably IBM was concerned about antitrust issues there in choosing not to litigate over the non-BIOS-copying clones.
As other commenters pointed out, there are court decisions in favor of emulators in the post-DMCA environment (Connectix and Bleem), where DMCA claims were not raised at all in those specific cases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emulator#Legal_issues
These two cases applied pre-DMCA copyright law to the question of the legality of the emulation, but weren't actually pre-DMCA chronologically. I'll take that as a very helpful correction to the way I phrased the point.
SCEA v. Bleem was filed in 1999, and the DMCA came into effect in 1998.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39599019
for a more detailed reply.
I think Nintendo is probably shooting themselves in the foot a little bit by giving this project more publicity than it otherwise would have received.
(It's an issue filed on the yuzu repo by someone claiming to be so upset about yuzu dropping Windows 7 support that they sent emails to Nintendo to bring it to their attention.)
“Now I hear news of a lawsuit. Probably from my awareness effort, maybe not.”
This claim would’ve been more credible if it was made before news about the lawsuit broke.
Thankfully the devs knew how to respond: “Linux would have solved your issues just fine.”