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

[Dardan Sandiego]

I paid Nintendo $70 for TOTK. If someone didn't they should be sued.

This is why I root for you

 

[LuigiBlood]

So, I'm not gonna respond to anyone in particular since I just read through all 7 pages of this thread, and have a lot I'd need to reply to.

I'll start with this: I am bias for both emulation and piracy as methods of game preservation, game ownership, and even mere game acquisition. I don't think that we should be pirating games or emulating consoles that are currently for sale, however I think it's distinctly harmful to advocate for case law to set precedent against that. Such a ruling would have to be done legislatively, with care, but I err on the side of "let people behave immorally"; we don't need to make every bad thing someone does illegal. People are allowed to be just bad people and/or do generally bad things.

I dislike the Yuzu developers as a whole. I think their practices of hiding distribution of Early Access behind their Patreon is stinky, and I think that their development philosophy of targeting compatibility with the latest hit-thing is pretty uncouth. Contrasting to Ryujinx who, while they do aim for compatibility, they aim for it in a way that increases emulator accuracy. Yuzu makes use of hackish code and shortcuts to make things work, while Ryujinx tends to follow the practice of "if we make it more accurate and performant, it'll become more compatible on its own".

I will clarify, for the sake of the discussion, that while distribution of Early Access is behind their Patreon, as I'm sure many are aware, Yuzu's under GPL 3.0 or later, and as a result, redistribution of the Yuzu emulator is free and legal. There's even a Github with access to it, however I'll refrain from naming it as that particular distribution is also explicitly positive on piracy, and distributes things like the prod.keys and shader caches; both of which violate the DMCA and should be retrieved by users manually instead.

I'm not sure if Nintendo has a case here, but if they win this case, depending on the court's opinion, it may have a ripple effect upon all emulators, including ones of legitimately archival consoles. The entire retro-gaming scene's going to be watching closely, because the outcome could be disastrous. On the other hand, should Nintendo (somehow) lose, it could sanction more open distribution and monetization of emulators, as well as it could set precedent that emulator developers can lay in the territory of being given "the benefit of the doubt" when it comes to pirating games, including ones that are yet to be released. I think this is a bad result too, but a lesser-bad one.

I dislike that Nintendo even attempted this lawsuit. The outcomes don't look good regardless. It'll also be difficult if Nintendo files for an injunction on Yuzu's Patreon and a freeze on the funds they've recieved from them. Currently, Yuzu makes around $30k/month from their Patreon, and with this lawsuit and the fear its creating in the community, that value's increasing by the hour. They could fund a solid legal defence with those funds, but if Nintendo were to successfully file injunction, Yuzu would have to resort to a proper legal defence fund, from which we don't know how successful that'd even be as the initial outpouring of support slows.

Best case scenario, this case gets thrown out, but given this isn't a SLAPP case, and how well Nintendo funds their legal team, I find that next to impossible.

Honestly the only post worth reading, but I want to add a few things myself, and I can't be bothered to read the entire thread:

• Early Access is just official precompiled builds for people without the technical knowledge to build. The code of Early Access builds were always public day one, and those who don't pay always have access to builds for what I believe to be a week after Early Access or something like that, but not an overly long wait. Else, if you want to have the Early Access builds without paying, gotta build it yourself or rely on unofficial builds. I believe there's a ton of open source projects that do this, and I do not see Yuzu as unethical as a result of using Patreon for that. The amount of projects that essentially make you pay purely for convenience is not new.
• Yuzu DID NOT support TOTK before its official release. Early Access also did not support it, you needed custom builds (AND NINTENDO MENTIONS THAT IN THE LAWSUIT), those builds were done by people outside the Yuzu team, or possibly other modifications that makes the game boot on official Yuzu with like cheats or something, but isn't necessarily supported by the Yuzu team themselves. The game was only supported on the official emulator build on release day.
• If Nintendo wins this lawsuit, it won't affect every emulator available, only emulators that does the process of decryption to access games. Emulators up to around GameCube, Xbox, Dreamcast and Playstation 2 are not supposed to be affected by this as they do not perform this kind of thing. See how Dolphin was prevented to go on Steam purely for the Wii side of things, not GameCube.

 

[Yamanoi]

This is why I root for you

 

[Smash Kirby]

Stanning the Yuzu folks as some champions of emulation and defenders of the good is very funny considering the allegations against them.

I think they aren't great people but a good defense for a lawsuit is a good story. I'm just starting what I think is their best defense.

Except the lawsuit primarily alledges that they are reverse engineering/bypassing TPMs, something which is illegal by law (DMCA § 1201), not by their EULAs. The piracy is a secondary complaint.

I despise 1201 a lot (it's the worst part of the DMCA in my personal opinion, in no small part because even the most token of TPM counts as illegal to bypass - you can use completely broken security technology but bypassing it will still be seen as illegal), but this defense will absolutely not fly in any courtroom.

"Nintendo has bad game availability" is not a defense against "you are bypassing and reverse engineering our security".

The argument that the law creates criminals out of normal citizens could be used, but Yuzu are bad actors. The DMCA shouldn't be used for consumer software as it can make normal people into criminals.

 

[xghost777]

The conversation here is dipping in and out at times at advocation for piracy which is against site rules. We’ll be locking the thread here and the conversation can continue when major news hits. -xghost777, MissingNo, Dardan Sandiego, Tangerine Cookie