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News Nintendo is suing the creators of popular Switch emulator Yuzu. They claim TOTK was pirated over 1 million times before release

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@Team Yuzu

may-the-force-be-with-you-hans-solo-with-chewbacca-9ofeeirmu2nwbdtz.gif
 
A video game emulator is a piece of software that allows users to unlawfully play pirated video games that were published only for a specific console on a general-purpose computing device.
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Lol at this definition. Especially when you use one to run your old games.
 
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damn, 1 million downloads of TotK before it even came out lol. people are so brazen about it too. this gacha Discord server I'm in people post 4k pics of the latest Nintendo game off their PC before it's out like it's normal
 
Not sure how they intend to prove that Yuzu is responsible for the TOTK leak or that pirates weren't already playing TOTK on hacked Switch systems?
 
Based on this timeline of Yuzu coming across Nintendo's radar, I wonder if this means the Palworld legal suit is gonna come around in late 2025/early 2026
 
Honestly emulation has been the main thing keeping my attention on Switch as of late. I've bought games specifically to play on PC for better performance and modding.
 
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I have to imagine the rise of Patreon funding these emulators changes the equation (in Nintendo's PoV) from previous decades, when emulation law was established.
 
Yuzu/Ryujinx has been really damn careful to avoid incorporating anything copyrighted (like prod.keys) that Nintendo can pin on them, so I feel like they'd lose this lawsuit and Nintendo's tactics here are just intimidation to help dissuade Switch 2 emulation development. But they've also been flying a little too close to the sun by raking in $360K a year in donations, making pre-release leaked carts playable, as well as making brand new releases like Super Mario Wonder fully playable day-one. So who knows in our current legal environment.

Even if Nintendo succeeds in shutting down the projects, Nintendo emulation development will undoubtedly continue, but this time it'll be significantly more underground and shadowy. You'd lose the public-facing part of it, essentially.
 
Legally they should have no case. At best, they could hammer them for the Patreon money.

Still, if they just intend to bankrupt the devs instead in order to scare others, that would also be typical Nintendo.
 
Another thing, definitely not legal expert but I worked for some months together with the legal team of one of my previous companies due to some serious open source software licensing issue. The stuff I read during those months were much more in depth than what I read in this case. This one seems kind of superficial, I wonder if they didn't involve their tech team too much on this. Or maybe it's intentional to caught judges attention.

EDIT: nvm, first pages weren't in the technical quality I expected but I could understand their focus after finishing it.
 
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Leica said:
Ryujinx exists.

Yuzu has always been a bit sketchier if you've kept up with development of both.
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I have both. And I wouldn't assume for a second that they won't go after both, especially if they take down Yuzu.
 
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Based on what Moon Channel has said, up until this point, there was a sort of MAD situation where neither dare test things. The use of emulation is, contrary to what some say, is not legally protected. That Sony case merely said it was not illegal to reverse engineer an emulator. That might suggest this is a case of Nintendo going after the crowbar manufacturer and not burglar. The risk is because of that they might not win and set a worse precedent.

However, Moon Channel also has repeatedly said that letting things be risks allowing common law precedent. If you've been fine with it for this long, what's the problem now. And if piracy of TOTK happened on such a large scale thanks to Yuzu and Yuzu has been raking in significant income off the back of it, Nintendo may have felt forced to risk a legal test in order to try to get a line in the sand drawn.
 
This is one of the issues with having such weak hardware - and I'm not being facetious about that at all. Both in that it's actually emulatable by modern PCs, but also the lack of power drives people to seek out emulators for a better experience.

If I had a capable PC, I would absolutely have played TotK there just to get decent IQ, and I'm sure I would have counted as one of those million downloads.

As long as those people actually bought a copy of the game I don't have any problem with that at all.
 
balgajo said:
Another thing, definitely not legal expert but I worked for some months together with the legal team of one of my previous companies due to some serious open source software licensing issue. The stuff I read during those months were much more in depth than what I read in this case. This one seems kind of superficial, I wonder if they didn't involve their tech team too much on this. Or maybe it's intentional to caught judges attention.
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Pretty sure they want to bury the developers of Yuzu in legal fees
 
Glom said:
Based on what Moon Channel has said, up until this point, there was a sort of MAD situation where neither dare test things. The use of emulation is, contrary to what some say, is not legally protected. That Sony case merely said it was not illegal to reverse engineer an emulator. That might suggest this is a case of Nintendo going after the crowbar manufacturer and not burglar. The risk is because of that they might not win and set a worse precedent.

However, Moon Channel also has repeatedly said that letting things be risks allowing common law precedent. If you've been fine with it for this long, what's the problem now. And if piracy of TOTK happened on such a large scale thanks to Yuzu and Yuzu has been raking in significant income off the back of it, Nintendo may have felt forced to risk a legal test in order to try to get a line in the sand drawn.
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Yes, it is a legal grey area (however the use of black box testing is definitely legal). However, the consequences of Nintendo losing a case such as this would be dire for them, which is why they never attempted anything like this before. I don't believe Yuzu helped facilitate piracy of TotK though - AFAIK they went out of their way to stop discussion of it on all official channels and you had to do some extra stuff to get it to run in the first place? Not sure exactly.

I think it is pretty stupid of them, tbh.
 
balgajo said:
Another thing, definitely not legal expert but I worked for some months together with the legal team of one of my previous companies due to some serious open source software licensing issue. The stuff I read during those months were much more in depth than what I read in this case. This one seems kind of superficial, I wonder if they didn't involve their tech team too much on this. Or maybe it's intentional to caught judges attention.
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The hearing hasn't started yet. AFAIK
 
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I'm fine with emulation existing but it was really dumb of Yuzu devs to ask for money, no company (and especially Nintendo) likes when people make money out of piracy.

Brock Reiher said:
Also this tells me Nintendo will absolutely be taking legal action against PalWorld sooner or later.
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No. Two completely different things.
 
Heron said:
This is one of the issues with having such weak hardware - and I'm not being facetious about that at all. Both in that it's actually emulatable by modern PCs, but also the lack of power drives people to seek out emulators for a better experience.

If I had a capable PC, I would absolutely have played TotK there just to get decent IQ, and I'm sure I would have counted as one of those million downloads.

As long as those people actually bought a copy of the game I don't have any problem with that at all.
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Yeah. I think that from the piracy perspective, the users can get fucked. But from a legitimate buyer trying to enter the Wind Temple without the framerate and resolution absolutely tanking, I get it.

Edit: Something we’ll never get the data for, but I’d be very curious to see, is just how many users are legitimate owners of the games they’re playing. It’s why I find myself pretty cynical when it comes to proponents of emulation of modern Nintendo games. Anecdotally, most people I know in person that have dabbled absolutely do not own the games they’re booting up. Wouldn’t be surprising to find the majority of legitimate users probably reside on forums like this.
 
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TheCongressman said:
Honestly emulation has been the main thing keeping my attention on Switch as of late. I've bought games specifically to play on PC for better performance and modding.
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Same! Modding stuff like Mario Wonder and improving performance for gorgeous games like Forgotten Land (Plus getting them on Steam Deck for higher portable resolution, retaining mod support, and being part of a larger library) is great.
 
Party Sklar said:
I'm fine with emulation existing but it was really dumb of Yuzu devs to ask for money, no company (and especially Nintendo) likes when people make money out of piracy.


No. Two completely different things.
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Lol I know right. Nintendo would not dare sue Palword until they are sure that elements from their games have been plagiarized through AI generation.

In this case, Nintendo is 100% positive that people are mass pirating their games and attempting to take legal action on the emulator is their only way to control the situation.
 
Ideally Nintendo loses so that no legal precedent against emulation can be set, however, and I realize this will be unpopular: Nintendo is right.

I've always thought it's incredibly stupid that Yuzu paywalled early access versions of the emulator that, coincidentally, run unreleased games better and better on an essentially daily basis leading up to the game's official release date. If part of Nintendo's argument is that the Yuzu team profits off of piracy, they are objectively correct due to the Patreon.

It feels like the Yuzu team left this window wide open for Nintendo. Hell, there are public Patreon numbers, including the amount earned per month, that Nintendo can pull from to showcase how much money Yuzu was making in the periods between a title leaking and the official release date.
 
I'm not really sure the Patreon thing actually counts as a profit motive tbh, but I don't know what the precedent, if any, is on Patreons.
 
Party Sklar said:
I'm fine with emulation existing but it was really dumb of Yuzu devs to ask for money, no company (and especially Nintendo) likes when people make money out of piracy.
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But people are paying them for the emulator, not the ROMs. It's not their problem if people use their software for illegal means IMO
 
Add me to the list of people who think Nintendo is doing this to bury Yuzu in legal fees rather than actually having a case. Regardless of the Patreon money, users had to bring their own files. IANAL but the bit of the document where Nintendo goes "see!! people had to hack their Switches to get the keys to run the emulator" as an attack against comes across as really incoherent and superficial. And above all else it sucks from a moral POV, hope Nintendo gets fucked.
 
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Yuzu didn't distribute the game. It's a switch emu that's what it does. They don't distribute prod keys file Nintendo does with system updates. And user profile should be user generated but people share one around. Even shaders are compiled by user or community.

Pretty sure the emulator isn't stealing any code right?

I haven't dabbled in the emu for like 2 years and just use my og switch but that's how it worked back then.
 
I find it baffling that Nintendo is taking action against Yuzu. It's not a case they can win, I think.

The makers of the Yuzu emulator are ultimately not responsible for the portion of users who obtain games illegally. The responsibility lies with the end user. If I were Nintendo, I would rather go after the websites that distribute iso/rom files on the Internet.
 
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Nintendo doesn't sue for fun. Their argument will not be about emulation but piracy and they will cite specific damages with Totk. I think it's a different case from saying emulation is illegal, just that the specific emulator specifically caused damages due to widespread piracy of a game before release. That's something a court can decide

Interesting they are citing patreon numbers as well. Will be interesting what other things are brought up
 
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