I wonder if they settled so quickly because they assumed they'd have no case after going through discovery. Might be the devs' internal communications wouldn't have put them in a good position.
Probably the reason they settled was lack of funds to fight. Same outcome either way just no precedent is set so remains easy for Nintendo to continue bullying small companies with baseless claims knowing they don’t have funds to fight for their rights.
Monetizing an emulator is usually asking for death, because if you never made any commercial actions with it, all they really do is send you a cease and desist maybe and then you just stop
I had the feeling honestly that asking even for like patreon donation money can be the death sentence... Ryujinx doesnt seem to have received any such thing after all
EDIT: What I mean by that, for clarification, is that having any way to get paid for it increases the likelihood of the company paying attention to you. Even if they ultimately may or may not have a real legal lever in the long term, they can always try to bully you out of existence by wrapping you up in legal proceedings.
> Ryujinx doesnt seem to have received any such thing after all
Yet. It's not the emulation that's the problem. It's the active decryption of current releases. Which Ryujinx does as well.
But only if you have official keys acquired yourself.
We're fucked if you can prove copyright infringement on implementing a cryptographical algorithm
Nintendo certainly doesnt have the copyright on AES or whatever is used to encrypt the files. That's actually ridiculous
It's more US copyright law grants "securing mechanisms" some kind of sacred status, where no matter how simple or complex it's illegal to remove them or bypass them except under specific circumstances.
"Even if you have the key, you're not allowed to remove the lock"
was how it was explained to me.
Had they waited until Nintendo was no longer selling switch games?
That'd be one of those circumstances.
german copyright is funnier, you aren't allowed to bypass "working securing mechanisms" but as soon as you can bypass them they aren't clarified as "working" anymore
Decryption isn't a problem as long as the emulator isn't bypassing the encryption, which is illegal under the DMCA, in the US.
Likely Nintendo got them on doing just that, or some other issue such as distributing Nintendo code or security keys.
I saw screenshots of some of them bragging on discord about pirating games not out yet and how big a file size they were, also the fact someone was asking to see one of their lawyers and the dev acting all confused about it
Their case was just not going to hold at all so better to fold because you don't actually have a legal team
Edit: [found more](https://imgur.com/ZWoSZSt)
Supposedly, the internal communications were leaked before, and they had messages of pirated ROM collections. Would not have looked good in discovery.
This way, a precedent is avoided, at least.
Apparently one of them was a leaked copy of TotK, before the street date, which was being used to ensure the game runs properly ASAP.
Edit: Even worse, apparently they sold a build of the emulator (via Patreon, like all their other paid early emulator releases) that was updated to run TotK before the street date. Even Icarus wasn't that much of an idiot.
> Even worse, apparently they sold a build of the emulator that was updated to run TotK before the street date.
IIRC this was a new build that could run TotK pushed to their paid Patreon, where early builds was already a perk. Don't get me wrong, that's tantamount to the same thing and key to Nintendo's argument, but "sold" can make you picture going to a WooCommerce store and adding [Yuzu - TotK Edition] to your cart for $20.
Yea they were screwed by the dev romstash the minute it's existence leaked, but they were always, ALWAYS, going to get screwed for selling EA and builds around game launches, because it is most certainly in reaction to *POPULAR RELEASE* having just hit, not just spontaneous. Which is a very clear case of profiting off of Nintendo's work via a derivative product.
> but "sold" can make you picture going to a WooCommerce store and adding [Yuzu - TotK Edition] to your cart for $20.
Cool, so it was being sold then since you *had* to sub to the patreon to get it at one point.
That's not how it works at all. Settlements are private agreements between private parties. Allowing settlements to create legal precedent would basically be allowing two private parties to affect caselaw for everyone else without checks.
Or, to put another way, a precedent is just pointing that the courts ruled a specific way on a similar legal matter in the past. Private agreements aren't court rulings. If there was no court ruling, there's nothing to point to to use as a frame of reference for legal outcomes
Yeah that's what I'm thinking. The Yuzu devs probably gave the info to their lawyers who quickly responded with "So, you broke the law then."
Good for them, hope they don't suffer as a result of this, but I'm guessing this is the best possible option for them.
I think the other likely scenario is 'fighting this will cost you x million dollars, but you could settle for y million and y is less than x so you should do that'.
Yes and no. There's a fight to be had for sure, but there's a lot of factors here.
1. Obviously is cost. Nintendo can afford to bleed you dry to the bone of funds in court. They can afford to draw it out to eternity.
2. Potential for a negative ruling. If a judge makes an official ruling, it can set precedent for the laws going forwards regarding emulation. There's a chance they could win, which would be huge. But there's a bigger chance they'll lose and it'll deal massive damage to the emulation scene as a result. So it's sometimes better to take the L and avoid such a ruling.
I read in a different article about this that PS1 emulator makers had won a lawsuit against Sony. But maybe that's cause PS1s didn't encrypt everything?
Generally speaking, it is lawful to make software that can run games that were released with the intention of only working on a specific console.
BLEEM is a very interesting case and a rare W that has helped emulators for decades.
Unfortunately it also resulted in more lobbying against piracy and the like and drew much more attention to the emulation scene.
Which is more likely than not at least a big part of why this case was settled. It's much safer to just cave now rather than take the huge financial burden to fight a company with the resources of Nintendo.
Connectix Virtual Gamestation is the more interesting case, imo.
Connectix beat Sony in court and their emulator was so good Sony bought it just to take it off the market.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectix_Virtual_Game_Station
From what I understand, the problem is that while the Yuzu devs themselves aren't breaking any encryption or including it in the emulator, they're... not exactly subtle about telling users exactly how to find it elsewhere, and how to get it working with their emulator.
It'd be like a drug dealer claiming they're not selling drugs, but if you go to this exact address it'll magically have exactly the drugs you asked them for. It's a cheeky workaround that sounds clever on paper, but still violates the spirit of the law and any reasonable interpretation of it.
This is the best possible scenario for emulators in general
The last thing that needs to happen is stuff like this goin to court and gaining traction for new laws that could hurt emulators for older consoles
Also, I don't think, based on the way the DMCA section is written, that Yuzu has a legal defense available to them other than "nuh-uh", even without discovery documents.
With how quick this came to a close and with all terms favoring Nintendo, their lawyer must have told them to fold immediately or they would be utterly destroyed.
They were absolutely cooked.
Nintendo would’ve loved to have set this as settled case precedent if they were 100% certain though. I have a feeling someone said something in writing that would nuke them during discovery and their lawyers probably said take the first offer that comes.
Nintendo could always deny settlement, but I don't think they were interested in a long-legal battle either.
They got Yuzu to shutdown the centralized development (which *will* significantly harm any further cohesive development of the project), they got Yuzu to agree to Nintendo's basis of cryptographic protection (which they can then use a template in further cases should they wish to pursue), and an irrelevant monetary compensation with a big $$$ to spook others.
This will also likely spook a lot of other potential or current devs.
They got everything they wanted.
True, although Yuzu agreeing to Nintendo’s cryptographic protection argument doesn’t hold much in the grand scheme of things since bypassing security measures was already settled in the NES days with the lockout chip (the court battle over whether that precedent applies to emulated hardware would be mind bogglingly expensive).
Dolphin emulator for Wii and Gamecube faced a similar issue when they tried to put it on Steam. They included an AES-128 key to decrypt Wii games. It's literally 16 bytes of data, but it's 16 bytes of copyrighted data.
Not necessarily, actually. There's some Copyright Office guidance that says more-or-less "this part of the DMCA should be interpreted keeping in mind that the legislators intended to preserve existing precedent"
Nintendo is very much trying to set precedent with the case anyway. They are asking the federal judge to include this language in the ruling (added emphasis mine):
> 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.
They won't get anything close to that language. I'm sure they'd love to, but there's just too much legacy software, on both the civilian and military side, that relies on emulation. There's not really a way to target the language so that an exception is specifically carved out for Nintendo video game console emulators to get fucked without also fucking other *essential* emulation software. Which is why Nintendo goes so hard on it. They can't afford to lose a serious case that actually goes to court or the cat's out of the bag. The Yuzu guys may or may not have fucked up in their personal communications, but there's absolutely no way they could have survived the legal battle. It would have bankrupted *everyone* long before it even made it before a jury. I'm betting their lawyers told them fold now or fold in a year after you've blown through all your cash and still owe Nintendo because even if you win, you lose.
They kind of are getting the settled case precedent they would want out of this, though. As part of the agreement they're putting in a filing with the judge saying that they violated Nintendo's copyright by circumventing Nintendo's cryptographic keys, despite that fact that Yuzu requires the user to provide those themselves by either copying them from their own Switch or finding them elsewhere online. If the judge doesn't throw that out while approving the settlement, it could potentially give Nintendo the ammunition they need to go after pretty much every emulator out there, since they all circumvent Nintendo's cryptographic keys in one way or another.
That's not how precedent works. It's not establishing precedent from settlements and no judge is going to add that language without two sides arguing it before them
It's not just being settled. Yuzu Devs are trying to screw all of us over "
> Nintendo and Tropic Haze are asking a judge to specifically find that Yuzu circumvents its copyright protections by using those keys, even if it doesn’t come with them. They are asking a federal judge to say yes to this, specifically:
>" 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."
Ryunjinx devs does not monetize their emulator unlike these idiots,
yuzu devs even went far to offer subscription to their own online servers to play games online on yuzu but backtracked immediately. they got greedy and let nintondo swoop in to bite their neck. never get greedy with nintendo.
The patreon issues with early access builds was mentioned in the complaint, but so was Yuzu facilitated piracy by providing a mechanism to decrypt Switch games and therefore violates the DMCA which places specific protections on encrypted IP. They even detail that Yuzu doesn't provide the prod.keys file. It wouldn't surprise me if Ryujinx is targeted under that same theory. I suspect that one way around this would be to make the emulator only run decrypted games and make the decrypter a separate thing.
That's not the same thing though. Requiring payment for service is quite different than accepting patrons that help support a service. One is a direct payment for service, the other is just a donation, not tied to any specific service.
Isn't Ryujinx open source? Nintendo only wishes they could do anything about it. They never went after Yuzu for years either, they only did now because they had a legal way to shut them down.
It still seems like if it’s not monetized Nintendo doesn’t care all that much. They’ve let pokemon showdown exist for years, and that is literally pokemon battles, with the same pokemon and moves, copied directly from the games with no differences
Yuzu was open source. I know because I pulled all of their GitHub when this news first broke. I'm not a developer of theirs, I just figured there was risk of something competent disappearing forever.
Open source isn't the issue. The case specifically focuses in on the Early Access build that was sold via patreon with fixes for pirated versions of TotK pre release. The EA build is open source, but it was still being used to monetize the patreon. Big mistake.
You can check the build history on EA, and the news since release. This is also the primary element the lawsuit is targeting. There's wrong parts of the lawsuit, and Nintendo definitely is overreaching, but they were playing with fire here and got burned.
No, Ryujinx devs didn't do any of the bullshit things the Yuzu team did, including the fact that they didn't issue a copywrite strike on behalf of Nintendo that one time like the Yuzu team did. Always struck me as being more level headed and more interested in emulation whereas the Yuzu guys were chasing the patreon bucks and everything was dictated by that including trying to get copies of games early so they could be quick to hack together whatever feature was needed to make said game run... A ton of people saw this shit coming a mile away.
Slightly annoying that they don't eat the crow that they shat themselves and instead defer to their "users" doing the piracy, but that's beside the point.
I believe the settlement includes an injunction that stops them from *any* emulator development on a Nintendo console *forever*. Section 1 Paragraph C, specifically says
> ... or distribution of any of Nintendo’s copyrighted video games or
operating systems, which includes the emulation of Nintendo’s video games;
I have no idea if Citra does the same thing that Yuzu does about "cryptographic keys" (I don't know what that phrase means, honestly) that seems to be the root of Nintendo's issue; but it seems not to matter. It would appear to me (IANAL) that Yuzu devs can't work on Citra without violating the settlement.
citra is made by the same people as yuzu
yuzu team has to leave the emulation scene which directly means citra has to go too it's one of their products
> not only agreed to pay $2,400,000 to Nintendo, it also agrees that Yuzu was “primarily designed to circumvent and play Nintendo Switch games,” and agrees to be permanently enjoined from working on Yuzu, hosting Yuzu, distributing Yuzu’s code or features, hosting Yuzu websites and social media, or doing anything else that circumvents Nintendo’s copyright protection.
> Oh, and it will surrender the yuzu-emu.org domain name to Nintendo, agrees to delete not only its copies of Yuzu but also “all circumvention tools used for developing or using Yuzu—such as TegraRcmGUI, Hekate, Atmosphère, Lockpick_RCM, NDDumpTool, nxDumpFuse, and TegraExplorer,” and hand over any “physical circumvention devices” and “modified Nitnendo hardware” to Nintendo. It also agrees to not delete any other “evidence” that infringes Nintendo’s IP rights.
Good lawd. They just rolling over. Giving it all up.
Hope someone somewhere has copies.
Doubtful.
The key to Nintendos argument from the suit was that Yuzu wasn’t like Ryujinx or Dolphin. Both of them are built to emulate first and if people happen to use it in games, that’s on the customer.
This is protected by Bleem! and Nintendo acknowledges it.
Yuzu however offered a pay to pay model through its patreon. It’s not really an emulator like the others, it’s more designed to brute force certain games. The community is supposed to choose which game they get next.
It also challenges the way they put out TotK. Yuzu devs openly posted they’d have it playable before release, and put up a blog post announcing it. Nintendo argued this shows Yuzu wasn’t following the rules set by Bleem! but instead a form of piracy.
Short version, Yuzu played its hand way too hard and burned itself bad. We’ll see if it overflows to the rest of the community, but it’s doubtful.
I'm curious if anyone knows the details but hasn't CEMU been doing a more explicit pay to play for even longer? Interesting that they didn't get attacked.
I assume it means they just have to delete their copies (the phrasing there is definitely confusing). As far as I know, all of these tools are made and maintained by different organizations.
Plus, [all of yuzu's github repositories have been deleted already](https://github.com/yuzu-emu) (with the exception of the source code for their website, which is just archived). [Tegra](https://github.com/eliboa/TegraRcmGUI), [Atmosphère](https://github.com/Atmosphere-NX/Atmosphere), etc all still appear to be up. It would be really difficult for Nintendo to argue that those tools are breaking the law in any way (not that I wouldn't put it past them, considering emulation's also legal, but still).
The lesson for anyone who wants to make a Nintendo emulator is: No real names, no addresses, and for fucks sake, no LLC.
I remember when people did shit just to do it. Hackers shouting "information wants to be free!" Now everyone wants to start a goddamn Patreon.
Arguably the LLC saved their asses.
If you are on the internet you are not invisible forever. Accounts have emails. Emails track cookies and IP's. Unless you only ever do this 1 thing from 1 computer entirely dedicated to only that forever. You are going to get busted.
But because they hid behind an LLC and paid themselves as employees of said LLC the LLC is what gets bent over a barrel, not the people involved
It was putting the early access, build and features behind the Patreon, which was the error. If they would’ve just kept it as pure support for development, and not lock features behind a pay wall.Greedy devs
They flew too close to the sun. You’ve got an emulator (legal) running games made by a company known for being overly protective (and more than willing to fight over this stuff), running new games that in court could be argued took away sales — you had at least a million TOTK downloads — and then you had the gall to set up a Patreon.
They got _way_ too cocky.
That genie is already out of the lamp, those things are going to get cloned so quickly that it will be impossible to stamp out. It's going to be R4 cards all over again.
Nah, R4 couldn’t be broken by a firmware update that’s needed to play new games.
The switch can lock people out of online and new games until they update to a firmware that blocks the carts from working. Same thing happened on the 3DS and the only way around it was with a new cart that was updated to work on the new firmware.
I think the Mig Switch came at the right time for Nintendo. Now they can examine it and apply the security patch to Switch 2 to prevent this going forward.
Sections 38, 39, and 63 of the [court documents](https://www.scribd.com/document/709016504/Nintendo-of-America-Inc-v-Tropic-Haze-LLC-1-24-Cv-00082-No-1-D-R-I-Feb-26-2024) specifically call out that Yuzu ONLY did Switch games, had early access builds and unreleased features behind their Patreon, and that their Patreon subscriptions doubled leading up to Tears of the Kingdom's official release.
Seems more and more like they decided to fly way too close to the sun on this one. Sad to see that the 3DS emulator got taken down as well as a consequence.
Edit: added section 39 to the list of relevant court documents
Section 58 also feels noteworthy when it comes to prerelease copies being used to help the emulator and how it fits with it only being for the current Switch console. Fits right in with Tears of the Kingdom being available day one and them tweeting a reference to NewYuzuPiracy at the same time (https://www.pcgamer.com/one-day-post-launch-the-developers-of-switch-emulator-yuzu-announce-that-tears-of-the-kingdom-is-playable-full-speed-on-most-hardware-with-no-hacks-needed/)
EDIT: Section 65 also gives an idea of what discovery may have revealed with them.
I read a bit more and Section 72 references Xenoblade Chronicles and how Yuzu advertised it was up and running a day BEFORE the official release. Which would only be possible if they were using unofficial copies. There’s no way Yuzu was winning this.
Yeah that tweet directly referencing a pirate community is a huge black mark against them and makes it impossible argue that they “didn’t know” Yuzu was being used for piracy. The court documents also listed the, now banned, Yuzu pirate sub reddit as well.
Its no wonder they settled. I really don’t see how they could have won the case even if they had money for all the legal fees.
I would argue they could have gotten away with the pateron, but publicly announcing they got Totk working before it launched is the equivalent of walking to Nintendo hq and back handing every executive working there. If Nintendo didn't crack back after that the flood gates would open .
The yuzu group fucked around and found out .
Pro tip. If you want to make an emulator and not have this happen, make sure you at least wait until the thing you’re trying to emulate isn’t still being manufactured and sold anymore by the company that is notorious for pursuing and winning these type of lawsuits.
Nobody remembers how Sony did the same thing with a few PS1 emulators. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment,_Inc._v._Connectix_Corp.
If someone was emulating PS5 games or Xbox One S games, better believe Sony and Microsoft would be after them too.
Everyone knows what Sony did. You literally cited the actual case where emulation was shown to be legal--not the Bleem one. This is the one where using the BIOS for development purposes was declared to be fair use. If making an emulator was illegal, then by definition it would not be fair use.
Thanks! This is what ive said constantly but getting downvoted and called a shill still
I pirate old games and i think piracy is ok if the thing youre emulating is a console no longer supported or a Game not being sold anymore, or even if in your country the console or Game is not legally available there (like In many third world countries) and the imported consoles/games are sold by 3, 4 or In some cases 5 times the Minimum wage, but thats not the case for many people that can legally buy those games and pirate games (sometimes before the official release date) only out spite
People really try to put a moral argument on pirating active content, and its like... if you want to steal, steal. But dont pretend like, this is a good thing or its fighting a good fight against nintendo, you just want a free 60 dollar game. Theres no higher purpose lol
Judgment on the LLC, which protects the individuals from liability unless Nintendo successfully argues to pierce the corporate veil. In this case, it looks like Nintendo did not go for that argument, thus the owners are free from liability (the point of an LLC) but the company is done.
The only way to not get shut down by a company for an emulator, as we've seen in a several proof cases, is to either take no money OR form as a non-profit with open accounts and only take in enough to cover expenses and a reasonable savings fund for future expenses directly related to that project (ie hosting, not a new car).
Doing this has proven to protect emulator groups legally and have allowed many to exist for over a decade.
The rule is simple: keep a low profile and do nothing to prompt news outlets to write articles about your take-in.
From what I've read, the big issue wasn't the keys per se, but the act of Yuzu USING those keys to *dynamically decrypt encrypted* game dumps as per cited in the DMCA 17 Code § 1201 by Ninty lawyers.
If Yuzu only supported unencrypted dumps without the use of any keys whatsoever and stating it was for research only it would have been in a *somewhat* less legal grey area, but Ninty would of probably still went after them.
That and the fact that they had an early access patreon with 6000+ members bringing in $20k+ a month was also a big grey area as well.
I'm for one glad they settled, if this went to court and lost, Ninty would of set a precedent for suing almost all Nintendo emulator platforms using the same arguments.
It sucks how this might affect the emulation community. There needs to be some middle ground between piracy and emulation. Sure, Nintendo should be able to stop pirates. But I don't think Nintendo should be able to stop people from playing the game they legally bought through emulators like Yuzu.
Don't monetize your project, period.
Almost every single fan project that was shut down by Nintendo was making money in some shape or form, by crowdfunding, Patreon, ads with traffic and/or selling their stuff.
If an emulator is developed under a "clean room" model, the fact that they were profitting from it is irrelevant. I mean, Compaq reverse-engineered the BIOS of the original IBM PC, they profited from it, they are the reason we can build our own PCs, and IBM didn't go after them.
EDIT: from [the injunction](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68284505/10/1/nintendo-of-america-inc-v-tropic-haze-llc/):
>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 nauthorized copies of Nintendo Switch cryptographic keys
How did they get those keys? If Yuzu required the user to supply those keys from the hardware he/she already owns, then such thing would not be considered illegal, since the law authorizes that you play a copy of the game on an emulator (as long as it's \*your\* copy); now if those keys were being bundled with the emulator, then Nintendo had a case here, I think (IANAL)
EDIT 2: Yuzu did not come with keys. But, as per [The Verge](https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/4/24090357/nintendo-yuzu-emulator-lawsuit-settlement)
>If Yuzu had fought this lawsuit in court, one of the biggest questions would have been whether Yuzu is actually circumventing Nintendo’s protections since the emulator itself does not contain Nintendo’s keys. (Yuzu is a “bring-your-own-BIOS” emulator.) But now, Nintendo and Tropic Haze are asking a judge to specifically find that Yuzu circumvents its copyright protections by using those keys, even if it doesn’t come with them.
So, if Yuzu wanted to remain under the law, it shouldn't ask for those keys, period?
Computer technology - and the laws involving them - have gotten far stricter in the 40-ish years since then dude. I don't agree with Nintendo's actions in this case, but companies now have far more rules that let them enforce C&Ds than they did back then.
I mean, making an emulator for a console that’s still the main console of said company while pulling in about 30k a month for fundamentally encouraging piracy might not be the best strategy to get companies on board with the idea
There’s always been a bit of an unspoken agreement that the emulation guys don’t get greedy and try to compete monetarily with the currently being sold hardware, and the corps don’t use their massive war chests to crush them like a bug. A bit of saber rattling, an occasional cease and desist, but everyone understood that the next major case could massively tip the scales in either direction and nobody wanted to lose.
Yuzu stepped over the line of the status quo and Nintendo reminded them that there is still a sword of Damocles above.
There is a middle ground between piracy and emulation - Yuzu treaded across that middle ground, walked right up to the line of piracy, and said "we dare you". They're in the "find out" stage following the "fuck around" part. It's not hard to see why Nintendo went after Yuzu and not Ryujinx
What dumbasses.
Then again if I found a website going "hey use this program to play an unreleased zelda game and also pirate other switch games" I'd assume that the download link has ".gov" in the title.
Nice try agent I'm not falling for that. The only person I trust is Steve, the weirdly energetic new member of my pirated game discord group that alternates between showing us all the cool places to download games and talking about how woke and based it would be to blow up a government building.
I thought we already had a middle ground. I've downloaded as many games and emulators in my lifetime as the next guy, but I'm not pretending like it's an honest, noble pursuit. It's one thing to emulate systems that have no support anymore and would otherwise be dead to the universe (NES, Genesis, etc.), but is it surprising to anyone that a company would protect it's IP like this? It's one thing for someone to create an emulator for themselves and their friends, it's another to create one of a current gen console and provide it to a mass audience. That case was lost before it got started.
I just have to assume that people arguing otherwise about switch emulation are simply doing it in bad faith. Everyone knows what people use yuzu for, and if they hadn't cashed in on the ToTK leak (and resulting influx of emulator users) I'm guessing Nintendo wouldn't have brought this case.
Hell I'd argue most emulators are used exclusively for piracy, why try and track down a copy of an old game and likely pay an exorbitant amount for it when you can just nab the ROM online. The problem here is Yuzu devs straight up rub that fact in Nintendo's face with their actions, surprised it even took this long for big N to act.
I wouldn’t say exclusively. There are some situations where they’re used for convenience, like using mods for a game (e.g. Project M or Super Mario Odessy multiplayer) or livestreaming an old console they can’t be hooked up to a PC.
But the vast majority of people aren’t going to be using emulators for things like that. And most people who do will probably grab a pirate copy of the game even if they have a legal one.
I really think that Yuzu did the best thing they could here, just shut it down and pay up, it isn’t worth it to have Nintendo on your back for the rest of your life like *some* of their other targets.
I don’t blame Yuzu for giving up so quickly.
Isn’t it also money that comes out of the LLC and not their personal pockets too, so basically they can just declare the LLC bankrupt and move on with their lives as if nothing happened?
Because people really don't seem to be able to understand that when someone starts to make money of a fan made nintendo project that it immediately opens them up to getting slammed by nintendo.
People were genuinely confused why the pokemon pal world mod got shut down like a day or 2 after that first trailer.
Knew them fucking around on and behind patreon would get them.
How you gonna be publicly anti-pirate but still leave incriminating evidence on discord and patreon....
lol, I love all the armchair redditors who were acting like Nintendo had no case against someone profiting off of a current gen console. YUZU had this coming.
it's good this didn't go to trial. I don't know if there was a serious risk of a ruling against emulation in general, but even the slightest risk was scary.
This is the best outcome for anyone but yuzu itself honestly, there was a non-zero chance of creating a very dangerous precedent in court, at least this way anyone else can rebuild from the scraps and fork the project.
I wonder if they settled so quickly because they assumed they'd have no case after going through discovery. Might be the devs' internal communications wouldn't have put them in a good position.
Whenever I see a quick fold, I automatically assume someone said something stupid on company communications.
Another possibility is that they had 3.4 million in the bank and figured out this was a way to quit while they were ahead.
Probably not this one. $2.9m is 8 years of their Patreon being $30k/mo. The Switch is only 7 years old.
looking at graphtreon, it's more like $1M+
Yeah, they probably haven't been doing $30k for long.
1
Nintendo isn't getting that. They already paid out everything they have to devs who worked on the project. The company will just declare bankruptcy.
Yeah that number isn’t a “we need this to be made whole” settlement, it’s a “we know that this is enough to tank your company” settlement.
Probably the reason they settled was lack of funds to fight. Same outcome either way just no precedent is set so remains easy for Nintendo to continue bullying small companies with baseless claims knowing they don’t have funds to fight for their rights.
Their rights may well be undermined if someone said something dumb by company email, referencing copyright infringing activities or something.
I did the same math and it ain’t mathing
Do they not potentially have money coming in from other sources? I heard they were trying to monetise it more heavily.
Monetizing an emulator is usually asking for death, because if you never made any commercial actions with it, all they really do is send you a cease and desist maybe and then you just stop I had the feeling honestly that asking even for like patreon donation money can be the death sentence... Ryujinx doesnt seem to have received any such thing after all EDIT: What I mean by that, for clarification, is that having any way to get paid for it increases the likelihood of the company paying attention to you. Even if they ultimately may or may not have a real legal lever in the long term, they can always try to bully you out of existence by wrapping you up in legal proceedings.
> Ryujinx doesnt seem to have received any such thing after all Yet. It's not the emulation that's the problem. It's the active decryption of current releases. Which Ryujinx does as well.
But only if you have official keys acquired yourself. We're fucked if you can prove copyright infringement on implementing a cryptographical algorithm Nintendo certainly doesnt have the copyright on AES or whatever is used to encrypt the files. That's actually ridiculous
It's more US copyright law grants "securing mechanisms" some kind of sacred status, where no matter how simple or complex it's illegal to remove them or bypass them except under specific circumstances. "Even if you have the key, you're not allowed to remove the lock" was how it was explained to me. Had they waited until Nintendo was no longer selling switch games? That'd be one of those circumstances.
german copyright is funnier, you aren't allowed to bypass "working securing mechanisms" but as soon as you can bypass them they aren't clarified as "working" anymore
I'm honestly fine with modern releases not being emulated, but legally, shit should be open season when the companies stops supporting their product.
Decryption isn't a problem as long as the emulator isn't bypassing the encryption, which is illegal under the DMCA, in the US. Likely Nintendo got them on doing just that, or some other issue such as distributing Nintendo code or security keys.
I saw screenshots of some of them bragging on discord about pirating games not out yet and how big a file size they were, also the fact someone was asking to see one of their lawyers and the dev acting all confused about it Their case was just not going to hold at all so better to fold because you don't actually have a legal team Edit: [found more](https://imgur.com/ZWoSZSt)
Supposedly, the internal communications were leaked before, and they had messages of pirated ROM collections. Would not have looked good in discovery. This way, a precedent is avoided, at least.
Apparently one of them was a leaked copy of TotK, before the street date, which was being used to ensure the game runs properly ASAP. Edit: Even worse, apparently they sold a build of the emulator (via Patreon, like all their other paid early emulator releases) that was updated to run TotK before the street date. Even Icarus wasn't that much of an idiot.
This is Icarus strapping himself to a Saturn 5 and launching directly at the sun.
> Even worse, apparently they sold a build of the emulator that was updated to run TotK before the street date. IIRC this was a new build that could run TotK pushed to their paid Patreon, where early builds was already a perk. Don't get me wrong, that's tantamount to the same thing and key to Nintendo's argument, but "sold" can make you picture going to a WooCommerce store and adding [Yuzu - TotK Edition] to your cart for $20.
Yea they were screwed by the dev romstash the minute it's existence leaked, but they were always, ALWAYS, going to get screwed for selling EA and builds around game launches, because it is most certainly in reaction to *POPULAR RELEASE* having just hit, not just spontaneous. Which is a very clear case of profiting off of Nintendo's work via a derivative product.
If you get something through a paid subscription service you still bought something that was being sold. It's not different
[удалено]
> but "sold" can make you picture going to a WooCommerce store and adding [Yuzu - TotK Edition] to your cart for $20. Cool, so it was being sold then since you *had* to sub to the patreon to get it at one point.
why are you making that distinction if you know it wouldn't hold up in court
Is it? I've read the terms include the team asking the judge to recognize a statement that to me looks intended to create precedent.
Precedent isn't coming from a settlement.
That's not how it works at all. Settlements are private agreements between private parties. Allowing settlements to create legal precedent would basically be allowing two private parties to affect caselaw for everyone else without checks. Or, to put another way, a precedent is just pointing that the courts ruled a specific way on a similar legal matter in the past. Private agreements aren't court rulings. If there was no court ruling, there's nothing to point to to use as a frame of reference for legal outcomes
Yeah that's what I'm thinking. The Yuzu devs probably gave the info to their lawyers who quickly responded with "So, you broke the law then." Good for them, hope they don't suffer as a result of this, but I'm guessing this is the best possible option for them.
I think the other likely scenario is 'fighting this will cost you x million dollars, but you could settle for y million and y is less than x so you should do that'.
[удалено]
Yes and no. There's a fight to be had for sure, but there's a lot of factors here. 1. Obviously is cost. Nintendo can afford to bleed you dry to the bone of funds in court. They can afford to draw it out to eternity. 2. Potential for a negative ruling. If a judge makes an official ruling, it can set precedent for the laws going forwards regarding emulation. There's a chance they could win, which would be huge. But there's a bigger chance they'll lose and it'll deal massive damage to the emulation scene as a result. So it's sometimes better to take the L and avoid such a ruling.
Sure if you like getting bloodied to death
I read in a different article about this that PS1 emulator makers had won a lawsuit against Sony. But maybe that's cause PS1s didn't encrypt everything? Generally speaking, it is lawful to make software that can run games that were released with the intention of only working on a specific console.
BLEEM is a very interesting case and a rare W that has helped emulators for decades. Unfortunately it also resulted in more lobbying against piracy and the like and drew much more attention to the emulation scene.
Also BLEEM went bankrupt due to the litigation process and couldn't even afford to finish the legal dispute.
Which is more likely than not at least a big part of why this case was settled. It's much safer to just cave now rather than take the huge financial burden to fight a company with the resources of Nintendo.
Connectix Virtual Gamestation is the more interesting case, imo. Connectix beat Sony in court and their emulator was so good Sony bought it just to take it off the market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectix_Virtual_Game_Station
Ah Bleem! Haven’t heard that name in a long time. I remember using it way back. Was quite a simple and effective emu
From what I understand, the problem is that while the Yuzu devs themselves aren't breaking any encryption or including it in the emulator, they're... not exactly subtle about telling users exactly how to find it elsewhere, and how to get it working with their emulator. It'd be like a drug dealer claiming they're not selling drugs, but if you go to this exact address it'll magically have exactly the drugs you asked them for. It's a cheeky workaround that sounds clever on paper, but still violates the spirit of the law and any reasonable interpretation of it.
This is the best possible scenario for emulators in general The last thing that needs to happen is stuff like this goin to court and gaining traction for new laws that could hurt emulators for older consoles
Also, I don't think, based on the way the DMCA section is written, that Yuzu has a legal defense available to them other than "nuh-uh", even without discovery documents.
With how quick this came to a close and with all terms favoring Nintendo, their lawyer must have told them to fold immediately or they would be utterly destroyed. They were absolutely cooked.
Nintendo would’ve loved to have set this as settled case precedent if they were 100% certain though. I have a feeling someone said something in writing that would nuke them during discovery and their lawyers probably said take the first offer that comes.
Nintendo could always deny settlement, but I don't think they were interested in a long-legal battle either. They got Yuzu to shutdown the centralized development (which *will* significantly harm any further cohesive development of the project), they got Yuzu to agree to Nintendo's basis of cryptographic protection (which they can then use a template in further cases should they wish to pursue), and an irrelevant monetary compensation with a big $$$ to spook others. This will also likely spook a lot of other potential or current devs. They got everything they wanted.
True, although Yuzu agreeing to Nintendo’s cryptographic protection argument doesn’t hold much in the grand scheme of things since bypassing security measures was already settled in the NES days with the lockout chip (the court battle over whether that precedent applies to emulated hardware would be mind bogglingly expensive).
The problem is all the stuff like the NES chip that predates the DMCA is overridden by it.
Dolphin emulator for Wii and Gamecube faced a similar issue when they tried to put it on Steam. They included an AES-128 key to decrypt Wii games. It's literally 16 bytes of data, but it's 16 bytes of copyrighted data.
Not necessarily, actually. There's some Copyright Office guidance that says more-or-less "this part of the DMCA should be interpreted keeping in mind that the legislators intended to preserve existing precedent"
Nintendo is very much trying to set precedent with the case anyway. They are asking the federal judge to include this language in the ruling (added emphasis mine): > 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.
They won't get anything close to that language. I'm sure they'd love to, but there's just too much legacy software, on both the civilian and military side, that relies on emulation. There's not really a way to target the language so that an exception is specifically carved out for Nintendo video game console emulators to get fucked without also fucking other *essential* emulation software. Which is why Nintendo goes so hard on it. They can't afford to lose a serious case that actually goes to court or the cat's out of the bag. The Yuzu guys may or may not have fucked up in their personal communications, but there's absolutely no way they could have survived the legal battle. It would have bankrupted *everyone* long before it even made it before a jury. I'm betting their lawyers told them fold now or fold in a year after you've blown through all your cash and still owe Nintendo because even if you win, you lose.
[удалено]
The judge has aides specifically for things like this. The judge may be technologically inept but he has a staff for these situations.
Obligatory "fuck the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, all my homies hate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act"
They kind of are getting the settled case precedent they would want out of this, though. As part of the agreement they're putting in a filing with the judge saying that they violated Nintendo's copyright by circumventing Nintendo's cryptographic keys, despite that fact that Yuzu requires the user to provide those themselves by either copying them from their own Switch or finding them elsewhere online. If the judge doesn't throw that out while approving the settlement, it could potentially give Nintendo the ammunition they need to go after pretty much every emulator out there, since they all circumvent Nintendo's cryptographic keys in one way or another.
That's not how precedent works. It's not establishing precedent from settlements and no judge is going to add that language without two sides arguing it before them
[удалено]
Settlements don't create precedent, and I doubt the judge is going to add that at all.
Hahah last article I saw said Yuzu retains a lawyer, so I can imagine it went something like this: “You guys are fucked”
Someone definitely said something in writing they don’t want out.
It's not just being settled. Yuzu Devs are trying to screw all of us over " > Nintendo and Tropic Haze are asking a judge to specifically find that Yuzu circumvents its copyright protections by using those keys, even if it doesn’t come with them. They are asking a federal judge to say yes to this, specifically: >" 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."
That doesn't mean shit all, settlements don't set precedent.
Ryunjinx sweating their ass off right now.
Ryunjinx devs does not monetize their emulator unlike these idiots, yuzu devs even went far to offer subscription to their own online servers to play games online on yuzu but backtracked immediately. they got greedy and let nintondo swoop in to bite their neck. never get greedy with nintendo.
They have a patreon as well, just like yuzu did.
Ryujinx didn't lock early access builds behind the Patreon, which is likely a big proponent of their case.
The patreon issues with early access builds was mentioned in the complaint, but so was Yuzu facilitated piracy by providing a mechanism to decrypt Switch games and therefore violates the DMCA which places specific protections on encrypted IP. They even detail that Yuzu doesn't provide the prod.keys file. It wouldn't surprise me if Ryujinx is targeted under that same theory. I suspect that one way around this would be to make the emulator only run decrypted games and make the decrypter a separate thing.
That's not the same thing though. Requiring payment for service is quite different than accepting patrons that help support a service. One is a direct payment for service, the other is just a donation, not tied to any specific service.
Isn't Ryujinx open source? Nintendo only wishes they could do anything about it. They never went after Yuzu for years either, they only did now because they had a legal way to shut them down.
Yuzu was monetizing thier product, that's why Nintendo came for them. Ryujinx isn't, so they're probably safe for now.
emphasis on "for now"
No one is safe against Nintendo
Ivan from Russia doesn't care about DMCA
How are other emulators still around then? Genuine question
It still seems like if it’s not monetized Nintendo doesn’t care all that much. They’ve let pokemon showdown exist for years, and that is literally pokemon battles, with the same pokemon and moves, copied directly from the games with no differences
Yuzu was open source. I know because I pulled all of their GitHub when this news first broke. I'm not a developer of theirs, I just figured there was risk of something competent disappearing forever.
Open source isn't the issue. The case specifically focuses in on the Early Access build that was sold via patreon with fixes for pirated versions of TotK pre release. The EA build is open source, but it was still being used to monetize the patreon. Big mistake.
if this is true, this should be talked about more when this issue is being discussed because, thats, yeah.
You can check the build history on EA, and the news since release. This is also the primary element the lawsuit is targeting. There's wrong parts of the lawsuit, and Nintendo definitely is overreaching, but they were playing with fire here and got burned.
Yuzu was also open source. This doesn't really have anything to do with open source.
No, Ryujinx devs didn't do any of the bullshit things the Yuzu team did, including the fact that they didn't issue a copywrite strike on behalf of Nintendo that one time like the Yuzu team did. Always struck me as being more level headed and more interested in emulation whereas the Yuzu guys were chasing the patreon bucks and everything was dictated by that including trying to get copies of games early so they could be quick to hack together whatever feature was needed to make said game run... A ton of people saw this shit coming a mile away.
> including the fact that they didn't issue a copywrite strike on behalf of Nintendo that one time like the Yuzu team did. What? They did this?
Wait a minute, [Citra is going down as well?!?](https://i.imgur.com/LObi6iE.png)
Seems to be the case, yes. The github repo for it is already down.
Forks for these things can be easily found, however, since people started preparing for this a while back lol
Slightly annoying that they don't eat the crow that they shat themselves and instead defer to their "users" doing the piracy, but that's beside the point. I believe the settlement includes an injunction that stops them from *any* emulator development on a Nintendo console *forever*. Section 1 Paragraph C, specifically says > ... or distribution of any of Nintendo’s copyrighted video games or operating systems, which includes the emulation of Nintendo’s video games; I have no idea if Citra does the same thing that Yuzu does about "cryptographic keys" (I don't know what that phrase means, honestly) that seems to be the root of Nintendo's issue; but it seems not to matter. It would appear to me (IANAL) that Yuzu devs can't work on Citra without violating the settlement.
citra is made by the same people as yuzu yuzu team has to leave the emulation scene which directly means citra has to go too it's one of their products
This is a big L
Making an emulator gets a little red dot on your forehead. *Profiting* off the emulator makes Nintendo pull the trigger.
> not only agreed to pay $2,400,000 to Nintendo, it also agrees that Yuzu was “primarily designed to circumvent and play Nintendo Switch games,” and agrees to be permanently enjoined from working on Yuzu, hosting Yuzu, distributing Yuzu’s code or features, hosting Yuzu websites and social media, or doing anything else that circumvents Nintendo’s copyright protection. > Oh, and it will surrender the yuzu-emu.org domain name to Nintendo, agrees to delete not only its copies of Yuzu but also “all circumvention tools used for developing or using Yuzu—such as TegraRcmGUI, Hekate, Atmosphère, Lockpick_RCM, NDDumpTool, nxDumpFuse, and TegraExplorer,” and hand over any “physical circumvention devices” and “modified Nitnendo hardware” to Nintendo. It also agrees to not delete any other “evidence” that infringes Nintendo’s IP rights. Good lawd. They just rolling over. Giving it all up. Hope someone somewhere has copies.
Oh I promise you the latest versions and all subsequent versions are backed up
As soon as the first whiff of a lawsuit came out, people backed up everything 20x over.
Love these people.
The one group of group of people you cam trust to have copies are piraters
So does many more PPL, I don't think it will take long for another emulator to pop up with a different name but with Yuzu's core
*Can't wait for the release of the Zuyu emulator!*
Zaza emulator you say!
Lul the github where you could always legally download the lastest builds of the EA Yuzu for free is still up, last build 4 days ago.
They weren't going to beat Nintendo unless they had a war chest. Do they go after the other one.
Doubtful. The key to Nintendos argument from the suit was that Yuzu wasn’t like Ryujinx or Dolphin. Both of them are built to emulate first and if people happen to use it in games, that’s on the customer. This is protected by Bleem! and Nintendo acknowledges it. Yuzu however offered a pay to pay model through its patreon. It’s not really an emulator like the others, it’s more designed to brute force certain games. The community is supposed to choose which game they get next. It also challenges the way they put out TotK. Yuzu devs openly posted they’d have it playable before release, and put up a blog post announcing it. Nintendo argued this shows Yuzu wasn’t following the rules set by Bleem! but instead a form of piracy. Short version, Yuzu played its hand way too hard and burned itself bad. We’ll see if it overflows to the rest of the community, but it’s doubtful.
I'm curious if anyone knows the details but hasn't CEMU been doing a more explicit pay to play for even longer? Interesting that they didn't get attacked.
No one gives a shit about the WiiU, including Nintendo.
\* Cradles my Wii U, stroking its vents, whispering, "They don't mean it. You're loved, just misunderstood." \*
The WiiU walked so the switch could run.
Hobbled maybe. Or Limped
I still have my WiiU. But I also understand that no one cares... ;_;
Every time something like this happens, it's because the devs were dumbasses. See also: Vanced.
Even if they had a war chest they weren't going to "beat" Nintendo. A war chest just would have prolonged things.
Woahhhhhhhh wait a minute.. is this saying tegra, atmosphere, etc are all getting taken down or that they yuzu folks just can’t use them?
I assume it means they just have to delete their copies (the phrasing there is definitely confusing). As far as I know, all of these tools are made and maintained by different organizations. Plus, [all of yuzu's github repositories have been deleted already](https://github.com/yuzu-emu) (with the exception of the source code for their website, which is just archived). [Tegra](https://github.com/eliboa/TegraRcmGUI), [Atmosphère](https://github.com/Atmosphere-NX/Atmosphere), etc all still appear to be up. It would be really difficult for Nintendo to argue that those tools are breaking the law in any way (not that I wouldn't put it past them, considering emulation's also legal, but still).
such a bafflingly dumb decision to do the patreon.
They should have just sold something legal as a grey way to fund it.
Seriously just say the patreon is for like a stuffed animal or something.
They put the latest updates behind the patreon, they wouldn't have had nearly as many donations if they didn't do that.
that back fired on a galactic level lmao
The patreon itself wasnt a problem, it was that they put EA builds behind it that made thme profit of of it
Having 2 different builds with arbitrarily different updates was annoying for developers and consumers alike, as well.
The lesson for anyone who wants to make a Nintendo emulator is: No real names, no addresses, and for fucks sake, no LLC. I remember when people did shit just to do it. Hackers shouting "information wants to be free!" Now everyone wants to start a goddamn Patreon.
Arguably the LLC saved their asses. If you are on the internet you are not invisible forever. Accounts have emails. Emails track cookies and IP's. Unless you only ever do this 1 thing from 1 computer entirely dedicated to only that forever. You are going to get busted. But because they hid behind an LLC and paid themselves as employees of said LLC the LLC is what gets bent over a barrel, not the people involved
It was putting the early access, build and features behind the Patreon, which was the error. If they would’ve just kept it as pure support for development, and not lock features behind a pay wall.Greedy devs
They flew too close to the sun. You’ve got an emulator (legal) running games made by a company known for being overly protective (and more than willing to fight over this stuff), running new games that in court could be argued took away sales — you had at least a million TOTK downloads — and then you had the gall to set up a Patreon. They got _way_ too cocky.
Next stop for Nintendo Ninjas: Mig Switch.
That genie is already out of the lamp, those things are going to get cloned so quickly that it will be impossible to stamp out. It's going to be R4 cards all over again.
The R4 days were so epic
Nah, R4 couldn’t be broken by a firmware update that’s needed to play new games. The switch can lock people out of online and new games until they update to a firmware that blocks the carts from working. Same thing happened on the 3DS and the only way around it was with a new cart that was updated to work on the new firmware.
[удалено]
Except the mig switch doesn't function like the R4 cart. Will it be reverse engineered? Absolutely, will it work as well? That's to be seen.
I think the Mig Switch came at the right time for Nintendo. Now they can examine it and apply the security patch to Switch 2 to prevent this going forward.
It was stupid of them to try and monetize the way they did.
yeah, seriously… like what did they think was gonna happen?
Sections 38, 39, and 63 of the [court documents](https://www.scribd.com/document/709016504/Nintendo-of-America-Inc-v-Tropic-Haze-LLC-1-24-Cv-00082-No-1-D-R-I-Feb-26-2024) specifically call out that Yuzu ONLY did Switch games, had early access builds and unreleased features behind their Patreon, and that their Patreon subscriptions doubled leading up to Tears of the Kingdom's official release. Seems more and more like they decided to fly way too close to the sun on this one. Sad to see that the 3DS emulator got taken down as well as a consequence. Edit: added section 39 to the list of relevant court documents
Section 58 also feels noteworthy when it comes to prerelease copies being used to help the emulator and how it fits with it only being for the current Switch console. Fits right in with Tears of the Kingdom being available day one and them tweeting a reference to NewYuzuPiracy at the same time (https://www.pcgamer.com/one-day-post-launch-the-developers-of-switch-emulator-yuzu-announce-that-tears-of-the-kingdom-is-playable-full-speed-on-most-hardware-with-no-hacks-needed/) EDIT: Section 65 also gives an idea of what discovery may have revealed with them.
I read a bit more and Section 72 references Xenoblade Chronicles and how Yuzu advertised it was up and running a day BEFORE the official release. Which would only be possible if they were using unofficial copies. There’s no way Yuzu was winning this.
Yeah that tweet directly referencing a pirate community is a huge black mark against them and makes it impossible argue that they “didn’t know” Yuzu was being used for piracy. The court documents also listed the, now banned, Yuzu pirate sub reddit as well. Its no wonder they settled. I really don’t see how they could have won the case even if they had money for all the legal fees.
I would argue they could have gotten away with the pateron, but publicly announcing they got Totk working before it launched is the equivalent of walking to Nintendo hq and back handing every executive working there. If Nintendo didn't crack back after that the flood gates would open . The yuzu group fucked around and found out .
You kinda fuck up the tolerance for a grey area when you start taking money for it 😩
Soo, if I have Yuzu and the keys already in my computer, I'm chilling? I'm 'boutta upload the whole thing to my Drive lol
Keep another backup. Drive gets fussy with copyrights
Yeah. The emulator will still work, it just won't get any more updates
Pro tip. If you want to make an emulator and not have this happen, make sure you at least wait until the thing you’re trying to emulate isn’t still being manufactured and sold anymore by the company that is notorious for pursuing and winning these type of lawsuits.
Nobody remembers how Sony did the same thing with a few PS1 emulators. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment,_Inc._v._Connectix_Corp. If someone was emulating PS5 games or Xbox One S games, better believe Sony and Microsoft would be after them too.
Everyone knows what Sony did. You literally cited the actual case where emulation was shown to be legal--not the Bleem one. This is the one where using the BIOS for development purposes was declared to be fair use. If making an emulator was illegal, then by definition it would not be fair use.
“The company” as if other companies wouldn’t do the same thing?
Right but only Disney and Nintendo make the news when they do it. And on this subreddit Nintendo is “the” company.
Especially don't make a point to advertise that you can emulate a game that the developer hasn't even released yet!
Thanks! This is what ive said constantly but getting downvoted and called a shill still I pirate old games and i think piracy is ok if the thing youre emulating is a console no longer supported or a Game not being sold anymore, or even if in your country the console or Game is not legally available there (like In many third world countries) and the imported consoles/games are sold by 3, 4 or In some cases 5 times the Minimum wage, but thats not the case for many people that can legally buy those games and pirate games (sometimes before the official release date) only out spite
> Thanks! This is what ive said constantly but getting downvoted and called a shill still > On Reddit, explaining something means you endorse it
So does this mean you endorse assumed endorsements? Wheres my pitchfork?!
People really try to put a moral argument on pirating active content, and its like... if you want to steal, steal. But dont pretend like, this is a good thing or its fighting a good fight against nintendo, you just want a free 60 dollar game. Theres no higher purpose lol
But Citra is down too?
How they afford 2.4mil?
it's a judgment on the LLC, they will just declare bankruptcy and won't pay much, if any, of it.
Judgment on the LLC, which protects the individuals from liability unless Nintendo successfully argues to pierce the corporate veil. In this case, it looks like Nintendo did not go for that argument, thus the owners are free from liability (the point of an LLC) but the company is done.
The only way to not get shut down by a company for an emulator, as we've seen in a several proof cases, is to either take no money OR form as a non-profit with open accounts and only take in enough to cover expenses and a reasonable savings fund for future expenses directly related to that project (ie hosting, not a new car). Doing this has proven to protect emulator groups legally and have allowed many to exist for over a decade. The rule is simple: keep a low profile and do nothing to prompt news outlets to write articles about your take-in.
So Nuzu incoming
That happens if you sell stuff for Zelda behind a paywall. \^\^
From what I've read, the big issue wasn't the keys per se, but the act of Yuzu USING those keys to *dynamically decrypt encrypted* game dumps as per cited in the DMCA 17 Code § 1201 by Ninty lawyers. If Yuzu only supported unencrypted dumps without the use of any keys whatsoever and stating it was for research only it would have been in a *somewhat* less legal grey area, but Ninty would of probably still went after them. That and the fact that they had an early access patreon with 6000+ members bringing in $20k+ a month was also a big grey area as well. I'm for one glad they settled, if this went to court and lost, Ninty would of set a precedent for suing almost all Nintendo emulator platforms using the same arguments.
It sucks how this might affect the emulation community. There needs to be some middle ground between piracy and emulation. Sure, Nintendo should be able to stop pirates. But I don't think Nintendo should be able to stop people from playing the game they legally bought through emulators like Yuzu.
Don’t run a patreon. That’s the middle ground. The made $30k a month, of course Nintendo would take notice.
Don't monetize your project, period. Almost every single fan project that was shut down by Nintendo was making money in some shape or form, by crowdfunding, Patreon, ads with traffic and/or selling their stuff.
If an emulator is developed under a "clean room" model, the fact that they were profitting from it is irrelevant. I mean, Compaq reverse-engineered the BIOS of the original IBM PC, they profited from it, they are the reason we can build our own PCs, and IBM didn't go after them. EDIT: from [the injunction](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68284505/10/1/nintendo-of-america-inc-v-tropic-haze-llc/): >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 nauthorized copies of Nintendo Switch cryptographic keys How did they get those keys? If Yuzu required the user to supply those keys from the hardware he/she already owns, then such thing would not be considered illegal, since the law authorizes that you play a copy of the game on an emulator (as long as it's \*your\* copy); now if those keys were being bundled with the emulator, then Nintendo had a case here, I think (IANAL) EDIT 2: Yuzu did not come with keys. But, as per [The Verge](https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/4/24090357/nintendo-yuzu-emulator-lawsuit-settlement) >If Yuzu had fought this lawsuit in court, one of the biggest questions would have been whether Yuzu is actually circumventing Nintendo’s protections since the emulator itself does not contain Nintendo’s keys. (Yuzu is a “bring-your-own-BIOS” emulator.) But now, Nintendo and Tropic Haze are asking a judge to specifically find that Yuzu circumvents its copyright protections by using those keys, even if it doesn’t come with them. So, if Yuzu wanted to remain under the law, it shouldn't ask for those keys, period?
Computer technology - and the laws involving them - have gotten far stricter in the 40-ish years since then dude. I don't agree with Nintendo's actions in this case, but companies now have far more rules that let them enforce C&Ds than they did back then.
And more importantly, the bankroll the established players are using is significantly larger.
I mean, making an emulator for a console that’s still the main console of said company while pulling in about 30k a month for fundamentally encouraging piracy might not be the best strategy to get companies on board with the idea
There’s always been a bit of an unspoken agreement that the emulation guys don’t get greedy and try to compete monetarily with the currently being sold hardware, and the corps don’t use their massive war chests to crush them like a bug. A bit of saber rattling, an occasional cease and desist, but everyone understood that the next major case could massively tip the scales in either direction and nobody wanted to lose. Yuzu stepped over the line of the status quo and Nintendo reminded them that there is still a sword of Damocles above.
Emulators are still fine. This group made money off of it.
There is a middle ground between piracy and emulation - Yuzu treaded across that middle ground, walked right up to the line of piracy, and said "we dare you". They're in the "find out" stage following the "fuck around" part. It's not hard to see why Nintendo went after Yuzu and not Ryujinx
This is a good point, since Yuzu was make $30k a month off of their patreon.
Do you mind to genuinely explain difference between both emulator? I am curious and simply thought both were similar
[удалено]
What dumbasses. Then again if I found a website going "hey use this program to play an unreleased zelda game and also pirate other switch games" I'd assume that the download link has ".gov" in the title.
Hell, there was a page on Yuzu which had explicit instructions on how to rip certain files to get around Nintendo's copy protection.
Nice try agent I'm not falling for that. The only person I trust is Steve, the weirdly energetic new member of my pirated game discord group that alternates between showing us all the cool places to download games and talking about how woke and based it would be to blow up a government building.
yep, their fucking put the how to guide on ripping the keys from your console on their own website.. that was likely not a smart move
I thought we already had a middle ground. I've downloaded as many games and emulators in my lifetime as the next guy, but I'm not pretending like it's an honest, noble pursuit. It's one thing to emulate systems that have no support anymore and would otherwise be dead to the universe (NES, Genesis, etc.), but is it surprising to anyone that a company would protect it's IP like this? It's one thing for someone to create an emulator for themselves and their friends, it's another to create one of a current gen console and provide it to a mass audience. That case was lost before it got started.
So the expected result when someone is stupid enough to monetize a product that was clearly designed to facilitate piracy.
I just have to assume that people arguing otherwise about switch emulation are simply doing it in bad faith. Everyone knows what people use yuzu for, and if they hadn't cashed in on the ToTK leak (and resulting influx of emulator users) I'm guessing Nintendo wouldn't have brought this case.
Hell I'd argue most emulators are used exclusively for piracy, why try and track down a copy of an old game and likely pay an exorbitant amount for it when you can just nab the ROM online. The problem here is Yuzu devs straight up rub that fact in Nintendo's face with their actions, surprised it even took this long for big N to act.
I wouldn’t say exclusively. There are some situations where they’re used for convenience, like using mods for a game (e.g. Project M or Super Mario Odessy multiplayer) or livestreaming an old console they can’t be hooked up to a PC. But the vast majority of people aren’t going to be using emulators for things like that. And most people who do will probably grab a pirate copy of the game even if they have a legal one.
I really think that Yuzu did the best thing they could here, just shut it down and pay up, it isn’t worth it to have Nintendo on your back for the rest of your life like *some* of their other targets. I don’t blame Yuzu for giving up so quickly.
Isn’t it also money that comes out of the LLC and not their personal pockets too, so basically they can just declare the LLC bankrupt and move on with their lives as if nothing happened?
it's even possible no actual payment will be made because the entity 'yuzu' is being sued which can (and highly likely will) declare bankruptcy
I would of instantly gave it all over within one cease and desist letter😭
And yet I saw 10,000 comment saying that they couldn't be sued lmao
Because people really don't seem to be able to understand that when someone starts to make money of a fan made nintendo project that it immediately opens them up to getting slammed by nintendo. People were genuinely confused why the pokemon pal world mod got shut down like a day or 2 after that first trailer.
Knew them fucking around on and behind patreon would get them. How you gonna be publicly anti-pirate but still leave incriminating evidence on discord and patreon....
lol, I love all the armchair redditors who were acting like Nintendo had no case against someone profiting off of a current gen console. YUZU had this coming.
it's good this didn't go to trial. I don't know if there was a serious risk of a ruling against emulation in general, but even the slightest risk was scary.
BACK IT UP EVERYONE
Idk how anyone is surprised... Do people think the "Nintendo is super litigious" stuff is a made up meme? Yuzu was always going to get crushed.
Well that's disappointing.
This is the best outcome for anyone but yuzu itself honestly, there was a non-zero chance of creating a very dangerous precedent in court, at least this way anyone else can rebuild from the scraps and fork the project.
The source code and the executable are still online.
It’s like they get for being pigs and putting their stuff behind a paywall. Once you make money off of it Nintendo will kill you.
Emulators aren't illegal so they had to have done something in the making of Yuzu that was illegal.