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

[Melpomene]

the following post is a joke and for all intents and purposes does not endorse or condone piracy

imho it is okay to pirate zelda but not pikmin

Standing up for the little guy.

The really, really little guy. Hundreds of them, even.

 

[Hartmann]

I absolutely hope Nintendo wins this case.

 

[Monster Mash]

I understand being a fan of Nintendo games. I'm one of them!

I do not understand being a fan of the company Nintendo. I do not understand being such a fan of Nintendo that one would genuinely care about things like whether or not their executives are happy, or whether or not they could be slightly more profitable.

I like Zelda, and Donkey Kong, and Metroid, etc. I don't particularly care if they beat their quarterly earnings projections, and I don't really think anyone else should either.

It's quite strange to see tbh

 

[Individualised]

Absolutely no one should be cheering this on regardless of how you feel about piracy or not. This sets a very bad precedent regarding copyright that extends far past the topic of pirating current gen games and I find it shocking that anyone on this forum would even remotely suggest this is a good thing given how left-leaning we are here. I'm glad that the majority aren't.

 

[Yamanoi]

Usually very shitposty and snarky in these kinds of threads but I'm very glad to see how most of this place has responded to this thread. Very few of the usual suspects bending over for Nintendo.

If Nintendo was cool, they'd do this instead of worrying about emulation:

 

[Monster Mash]

Usually very shitposty and snarky in these kinds of threads but I'm very glad to see how most of this place has responded to this thread. Very few of the usual suspects bending over for Nintendo.

If Nintendo was cool, they'd do this instead of worrying about emulation:

they'd bring back the wii u Willem Dafoe-verse

 

[AstroOhHey]

Game preservation literally needs emulation/people dumping ROM's to survive, that alone should make it obvious why this stuff is important to keep going.

 

[Mango]

Emulators are important for preservation, but a million people playing TotK before launch is absurd. I don't think preservation outweighs the potential harm piracy can have on the industry.

 

[Individualised]

Emulators are important for preservation, but a million people playing TotK before launch is absurd. I don't think preservation outweighs the potential harm piracy can have on the industry.

That actually has nothing to do with emulation though and everything to do with ROM sharing. It just so happens that people were using emulators to run those games because it's the most convenient way to do so. If Switch emulation wasn't a thing, that wouldn't have stopped people playing ToTK before it released. We would just see more people with modded Switches playing pirated copies of games, instead of playing those pirated copies on a different platform. In some ways that would actually be worse for Nintendo.

 

[Hermii]

Yea, the fact that they were actually working on improving emulation quality on a game that isn't out, and profiting of it makes me think Nintendo has a decent case.

 

[Individualised]

Yea, the fact that they were actually working on improving emulation quality on a game that isn't out, and profiting of it makes me think Nintendo has a decent case.

Wasn't this Ryujinx and not Yuzu?

This is the type of stuff that concerns me though as it seems the developers of both emulators have been quite reckless in some of their decisions. Not that I think this should put them in the wrong (I think that copyright law as a whole should be heavily revised/replaced) but it's not a good look for them.

 

[Mango]

That actually has nothing to do with emulation though and everything to do with ROM sharing. It just so happens that people were using emulators to run those games because it's the most convenient way to do so. If Switch emulation wasn't a thing, that wouldn't have stopped people playing ToTK before it released. We would just see more people with modded Switches playing pirated copies of games, instead of playing those pirated copies on a different platform. In some ways that would actually be worse for Nintendo.

I mean this particular team seem to have been specifically working to try and get TotK up and running before release, and went out of their way to advertise and promote the piracy of the game. This coupled with the increasing mindset of people believing it's morally ok to pirate games because they feel the company:

1. Has slighted them in some way.
2. Isn't offering the exact hardware they want when they want it.
3. Nintendo isn't "preserving" their old games so it's fair for me to pirate the new ones.

Its hard for me to feel any sympathy if Yuzu is wiped from the face of the earth. Preservation is important but if Nintendo wins this, y'all only got the pirates to blame.

 

[Lugia667]

Wasn't this Ryujinx and not Yuzu?

This is the type of stuff that concerns me though as it seems the developers of both emulators have been quite reckless in some of their decisions. Not that I think this should put them in the wrong (I think that copyright law as a whole should be heavily revised/replaced) but it's not a good look for them.

Nintendo is alleging that they were using pirated copies to improve the game on the emulator before it's official release date. I don't think they would say this if they had no substance

Trust me, the court would not side with Yuzu is this was proven

 

[Individualised]

I understand being a fan of Nintendo games. I'm one of them!

I do not understand being a fan of the company Nintendo. I do not understand being such a fan of Nintendo that one would genuinely care about things like whether or not their executives are happy, or whether or not they could be slightly more profitable.

I like Zelda, and Donkey Kong, and Metroid, etc. I don't particularly care if they beat their quarterly earnings projections, and I don't really think anyone else should either.

It's quite strange to see tbh

I feel like the main reason people get upset over piracy is that they're concerned that less sales = less money going to the actual creators/developers of the games, rather than it being a corporate loyalism thing. I don't think things actually work out that way though.

I mean this particular team seem to have been specifically working to try and get TotK up and running before release, and went out of their way to advertise and promote the piracy of the game. This coupled with the increasing mindset of people believing it's morally ok to pirate games because they feel the company:

1. Has slighted them in some way.
2. Isn't offering the exact hardware they want when they want it.
3. Nintendo isn't "preserving" their old games so it's fair for me to pirate the new ones.

Its hard for me to feel any sympathy if Yuzu is wiped from the face of the earth. Preservation is important but if Nintendo wins this, y'all only got the pirates to blame.

I actually think that current copyright law, and capitalism as a whole, is immoral, so we will have to disagree.

 

[BowserIsMyFather]

Emulation of a 'dead' console is one thing, but the emulation of a console that's currently on the shelves of shops is a whole other business.

The developers of Yuzu know exactly how it's going to be used, and are absolutely culpable in any damage it does to Nintendo. 1 million illegally downloaded copies of the program as well as a massive spike in usage isn't a coincidence.

"I didn't rob the bank, your honour. I just drove the car".

 

[Secu]

I am curious why you consider Yuzu innocent. In fact, they have gained a lot of profits from this, and many people are defending them. I agree that piracy has its benefits, but I don't think it's reasonable for them to profit from piracy.

 

[Individualised]

Emulation of a 'dead' console is one thing, but the emulation of a console that's currently on the shelves of shops is a whole other business.

The developers of Yuzu know exactly how it's going to be used, and are absolutely culpable in any damage it does to Nintendo. 1 million illegally downloaded copies of the program as well as a massive spike in usage isn't a coincidence.

"I didn't rob the bank, your honour. I just drove the car".

It's more like trying to sue the car manufacturer.

It does seem that Yuzu have been a bit reckless though which is very unfortunate and also worrying, as if they lose the case this could set a very bad precedent.

 

[Dardan Sandiego]

It's not that emulation itself is illegal (even though Nintendo seems to strongly imply that it is, which is obviously lame as fuck) but Nintendo's angle, if I got it correctly, here seems to be that Yuzu facilitated and promoted piracy of Nintendo software. To use an imperfect analogy, it's as if a maker of bolt cutters specifically advertised towards people who use bolt cutters to break locks to steal shit, illegally acquired an upcoming lock to better tailor their bolt cutters towards cracking that lock and gave instructions to people so they can better steal shit. Whether Nintendo can actually prove this in court is a different question. Discovery might uncover some pretty damning stuff but the current evidence seems pretty circumstantial.

The bigger worry here is what this might spell for emulation in general and what a win for Nintendo would spell for the emulation scene at large. Cheering this on as a regular consumer just seems like a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. I don't know how we stand to profit from Nintendo winning this case.

 

[ertaboy356b]

That actually has nothing to do with emulation though and everything to do with ROM sharing. It just so happens that people were using emulators to run those games because it's the most convenient way to do so. If Switch emulation wasn't a thing, that wouldn't have stopped people playing ToTK before it released. We would just see more people with modded Switches playing pirated copies of games, instead of playing those pirated copies on a different platform. In some ways that would actually be worse for Nintendo.

How is a jailbroken switch worse than a free for all piracy?

1. A jailbroken switch is still a switch. Nintendo had sales from the hardware. Nintendo had the potential to have sales elsewhere (peripherals) like amiibos, controllers, and the like. Let's all not kid ourselves, a jailbroken switch requires effort to produce. There are not many Gen 1 switches for everyone to use, most are modchipped and that requires time and money to accomplish.

2. Nintendo does not profit whatsoever on the emulator. As a matter of fact, emulation is a negative for them because they allow non-switch owners to pirate switch games. The emulator is also widespread, easily downloaded, and can be ran on a mobile phone, and you know who owns a mobile phone, probably everyone.

3. There's also the fact that Steam games with DRM are getting bypassed by a simultaneously released switch version using Yuzu or Ryujinx.

4. I understand that there is potential sale in piracy (i.e. conversion) but this looks like an exception.

 

[Mekanos]

The bigger worry here is what this might spell for emulation in general and what a win for Nintendo would spell for the emulation scene at large. Cheering this on as a regular consumer just seems like a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. I don't know how we stand to profit from Nintendo winning this case.

Multiple posts in this thread seem to amount to "Some people criticize Nintendo in ways I find annoying, so it's okay if they set the precedent for draconian laws against emulation." Which is disappointing but not surprising. These corporations are really, really good at influencing fans to think of them as a person with rights and needs, and not a collection of IP ownership upheld by shareholders and executives. Millions are spent to research how to advertise and promote brands in a way that makes consumers subconsciously associate positively with the corporation in this way.

 

[Raccoon]

I understand being a fan of Nintendo games. I'm one of them!

I do not understand being a fan of the company Nintendo. I do not understand being such a fan of Nintendo that one would genuinely care about things like whether or not their executives are happy, or whether or not they could be slightly more profitable.

I like Zelda, and Donkey Kong, and Metroid, etc. I don't particularly care if they beat their quarterly earnings projections, and I don't really think anyone else should either.

It's quite strange to see tbh

I'm a big fan of the company because it's run by the people who made wave race 64

its high retention means that the company has rich history and culture

 

[Tentacle-tropes]

Yeah. I think this case really is less "Nintendo vs Piracy" and more "Nintendo vs Specific Emulator Creator That May Have Done Something Very Stupid".

If the Yuzu team did something in their practice that is actually legally questionable in the creation of their emulator(and it's doubtful that Nintendo would bring a case like this to court without doing their homework), Nintendo is going to try to pin them on that.

Nintendo can't take down all emulators and shouldn't be able to do so, but like, if a guy makes an emulator using actual Switch access keys, and also runs a Patreon to make money off of this work...I mean, yeah. That's not exactly cut-and-dried.

This is not to mention some of the other things the Yuzu team may have gotten into that, if brought to court, may be found during the discovery phase. The fact that there is a big ol’ image with a lot of other questionable stuff on it is not a good look.

 

[Darknut85]

Usually very shitposty and snarky in these kinds of threads but I'm very glad to see how most of this place has responded to this thread. Very few of the usual suspects bending over for Nintendo.

If Nintendo was cool, they'd do this instead of worrying about emulation:

A handheld about NOTHING!

 

[Darknut85]

I'm a big fan of the company because it's run by the people who made wave race 64

its high retention means that the company has rich history and culture

Not to forget that they love racoons.

 

[Aquamarine]

It's not that emulation itself is illegal (even though Nintendo seems to strongly imply that it is, which is obviously lame as fuck) but Nintendo's angle, if I got it correctly, here seems to be that Yuzu facilitated and promoted piracy of Nintendo software. To use an imperfect analogy, it's as if a maker of bolt cutters specifically advertised towards people who use bolt cutters to break locks to steal shit, illegally acquired an upcoming lock to better tailor their bolt cutters towards cracking that lock and gave instructions to people so they can better steal shit. Whether Nintendo can actually prove this in court is a different question. Discovery might uncover some pretty damning stuff but the current evidence seems pretty circumstantial.

The bigger worry here is what this might spell for emulation in general and what a win for Nintendo would spell for the emulation scene at large. Cheering this on as a regular consumer just seems like a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. I don't know how we stand to profit from Nintendo winning this case.

On May 1st, 2023, a trimmed, unstripped XCI dump of Tears of the Kingdom was leaked somewhere on the Internet and started circulating.

By May 4th (8 days before Tears of the Kingdom officially released), there was a widely-accessible pirate repack that leveraged pre-configured and pre-packaged Ryujinx and Yuzu emulators, with a custom fork to make Yuzu work:

I think this gets at the heart of Nintendo's legal argument. Emulators as a "tool" have been frequently leveraged by bad actors to immediately provide a superior alternative for pirates, and in this case giving pirates an eight-day advantage. The emulator developers, perhaps spurred by the six-figure Patreon funds they were receiving, seemed to speedrun development as fast as humanly possible to enable this.

In other words, it's taking a tool and pushing it to the absolute limits of fair use. I'm all for emulation as a tool for preservation but in this case it's become a bit absurd. Yuzu / Ryujinx really needed to take a step back and allow time to pass before accomplishing playable builds like this.

 

[Wtfpigeons]

Being skeptical about the financial damage a company suffered from piracy ≠ justifying piracy or even influencing someone to do so.

You also have to understand that sometimes, piracy is a matter of accessibility. Some companies (notably nintendo) are very unfriendly when it comes to that - they don't bother with adjusting prices properly to coincide with certain countries economic reality nor do they offer proper discounts to their games (at least not commonly).

I used to be the kind of person who would say "well, if you can't buy it just wait till you can, save some money, don't be an asshole and pirate".

Now I realize it's way more complicated than that.

Could say the same about pretty much every luxury goods, you‘re also not free to take them as you please.

 

[Dardan Sandiego]

Multiple posts in this thread seem to amount to "Some people criticize Nintendo in ways I find annoying, so it's okay if they set the precedent for draconian laws against emulation." Which is disappointing but not surprising. These corporations are really, really good at influencing fans to think of them as a person with rights and needs, and not a collection of IP ownership upheld by shareholders and executives. Millions are spent to research how to advertise and promote brands in a way that makes consumers subconsciously associate positively with the corporation in this way.

Pretty much. If we all based our politics on how annoying we find people on the internet we'd all be in big trouble lol.

On May 1st, 2023, a trimmed, unstripped XCI dump of Tears of the Kingdom was leaked somewhere on the Internet and started circulating.

By May 4th (8 days before Tears of the Kingdom officially released), there was a widely-accessible pirate repack that leveraged pre-configured and pre-packaged Ryujinx and Yuzu emulators, with a custom fork to make Yuzu work:

I think this gets at the heart of Nintendo's legal argument. Emulators as a "tool" have been frequently leveraged by bad actors to immediately provide an alternative for pirates, and in this case giving pirates an eight-day advantage. The emulator developers, perhaps spurred by hundreds of thousands of Patreon developers, seemed to speedrun development as fast as possible to make these kind of glaring oversights a reality.

In other words, it's taking a tool and pushing it to the absolute limits of fair use. I'm all for emulation as a tool for preservation but in this case it's become a bit absurd. Yuzu / Ryujinx really needed to take a step back and allow time to pass before accomplishing playable builds like this.

I'm not a lawyer so I can't really judge how and if this would make the Yuzu staff liable but as I said, I wouldn't be surprised if they uncovered some shady if not straight up illegal stuff during discovery. Having custom settings to run the game a week before the official release is pretty damning.

 

[7hatDeadCat]

Yuzu / Ryujinx really needed to take a step back and allow time to pass before accomplishing playable builds like this.

as far as i remember, yuzu and ryujinx did exactly that. no updates were pushed to either emulators builds by the devs specifically targeting totk playability. ryujinx was able to play it by virtue of being a rather accurate emulator to begin with. and yuzu straight up would not run the game until emulator hack/cheat makers created some workarounds. none of that was because of the developers specifically trying to make it playable during the leaked time period

 

[JR436]

My view on emulation has always been that, if you legally own a copy, then you should be able to emulate it as you wish. Everyone wins - Nintendo gets a sale, and you get to run the game on better hardware if you so desire.

If these guys have been explicitly facilitating piracy however, I kinda find it hard to sympathise.

Hopefully, whatever happens, the other emulators will not be affected.

 

[Ahmed]

Emulators will in the end be the death of Nintendo as a hardware maker, in the future millions upon millions will have PCs capable of emulating Switch 2, this thing will only get bigger and bigger with time. Console gaming is dying already today, if emulation takes more market share from these companies then that market is dead.

That's not true at all, and you know that. Emulation has existed for decades and the gaming industry has only grown.

We probably should have a standard post containing it, but we have actual data that piracy doesn't hurt sales.

hmm... I work with a networking company. Doing that in the USA (and many of other places) is illegal as far as I know. Breaking the DRM is illegal, modifying your system renders it not covered under warranty anymore and possibly liable if you use it to commit a crime or cause damages to the manufacturer...

I'm sure it is in the US, the Nintendo lawyers didn't make it up out of thin air, I get that. And there are many other places where it is legal. And something being illegal isn't always immoral, depending on who you ask.

There are many laws that are just pro-corporate. We don't have to defend billion dollar corporations (not saying that you're doing that of course!), they're not victims in any way.

 

[Razgriz]

I think this gets at the heart of Nintendo's legal argument. Emulators as a "tool" have been frequently leveraged by bad actors to immediately provide a superior alternative for pirates, and in this case giving pirates an eight-day advantage.

This is a pretty interesting argument because Switch (but really, any console's) games don't tend to come with Denuvo/other DRM schemes since publishers tend to trust the platform operators to provide the necessary security that DRM provides them. (Without delving into the ethics of DRM itself; different argument.)

Yuzu by emulating Switch games makes it trivial to bypass those limitations, even for DRM schemes considered near impossible to break; the graphical bump most Switch titles take is configurable by editing configuration files stored with the game itself (something which an emulator can do and which Nintendo does highlight in their complaint). A lot of repack piracy sites over the years have defaulted to packing Yuzu with the games (Ryujinx tends to get packaged less often since by design, it has a slower emulation/compatability process - they're taking the hard but more accurate road to compatability) instead of waiting for the one Russian hacker that can break Denuvo.

 

[crazybenjamin]

If Switch emulation wasn't a thing, that wouldn't have stopped people playing ToTK before it released. We would just see more people with modded Switches playing pirated copies of games, instead of playing those pirated copies on a different platform. In some ways that would actually be worse for Nintendo.

Could you elaborate on how it would be worse?

 

[Galgavias]

I'm trying to get up to speed with this, so genuinely asking if there was any attempt by Yuzu to firefight the TOTK leaks and do their absolute best to close off the avenues by which people could pirate it, or whether they just stood aside saying 'well that happened' while they watched their Patreon subscribers go up. Because if it's the latter, I think they're kinda screwed. Nintendo won't see them as being any different to the other myriad of ROM dump sites out they dedicate a huge amount of time to quashing.

If there is any truth to Nintendo's claim that TOTK was pirated a million times (and the burden of proof is on them here), then that's not a number to be handwaved, and means that Yuzu has flown a little too close to the sun. You've got to be careful when emulating because there will always be people who cross that line in the sand, and you don't want to give a company as notorious for sueing as Nintendo an open goal like this.

 

[dingbat]

Could you elaborate on how it would be worse?

I don't read minds, but the sophistication and popularization of easy to use hardware mods in the absence of robust emulation has a far greater potential reach than tech-literate PC players. Very debatable, but considering the prevalence of "plug-and-play" tools like R4 carts for DS among pretty casual audiences, I can kinda see it. I don't think it's a great justification either way tbh.

 

[SunnyDays]

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.

 

[SunnyDays]

I'm trying to get up to speed with this, so genuinely asking if there was any attempt by Yuzu to firefight the TOTK leaks and do their absolute best to close off the avenues by which people could pirate it, or whether they just stood aside saying 'well that happened' while they watched their Patreon subscribers go up. Because if it's the latter, I think they're kinda screwed. Nintendo won't see them as being any different to the other myriad of ROM dump sites out they dedicate a huge amount of time to quashing.

Both Ryujinx and Yuzu, as well as most other major emulators, will refuse support to anyone who admits to piracy. Anything beyond that would be difficult to implement, though.

I can't speak for Yuzu, but Ryujinx will also refuse support and label pirate anyone whose Discord says they're playing an unreleased (pirated) game, at least for major titles, such as TOTK.

 

[PixelKnight]

I guess what I'm interested the most in this all...

Why now?

Nintendo could have pushed a legal case against emulation at any point in the last couple decades. The Switch has been dealing with PC emulation competition from the start 7 years ago, and the Wii U before it. If they were worried about lost revenue, that's a generation worth of potential lost sales, why come at them towards the end? Why not go for it during the Steam/Dolphin situation was in the public attention?

Nintendo seems to have been more or less accepting of the status quo. They've still been unimaginably successful.

Something is different, and we don't know what yet. Either Nintendo sees something so dangerous that they'll risk the status quo, or the risk has been greatly reduced to the point where they don't feel nervous at all about going for it, ie, Yuzu messed up and they have proof.

Either way, this is all worth keeping an eye on.

From Reddit (via the other site), it seems like there's evidence of the devs sharing games around before release.

Long image

Yeah. I think this case really is less "Nintendo vs Piracy" and more "Nintendo vs Specific Emulator Creator That May Have Done Something Very Stupid".

If the Yuzu team did something in their practice that is actually legally questionable in the creation of their emulator(and it's doubtful that Nintendo would bring a case like this to court without doing their homework), Nintendo is going to try to pin them on that.

Nintendo can't take down all emulators and shouldn't be able to do so, but like, if a guy makes an emulator using actual Switch access keys, and also runs a Patreon to make money off of this work...I mean, yeah. That's not exactly cut-and-dried.

Just catching up on this this morning, but to answer WestEgg’s ‘why now’, I’m guessing it’s because ‘if not now then when’. Winning a high profile case is no different to winning a low profile one in establishing precedent, but it has a far wider reach beyond the legal world, and in this case there’s more there to make the case they want to when it’s all being shared before the release of their biggest game of the year, rather than years later.

Not sure of the knock-on effect on the wider emulation scene, but this seems more aimed at how no one involved in development could have had a legit copy of the game, which then allows a million people to pirate it before release. So the ‘piracy before release’ element is more a consequence Nintendo is bigging up (and is now being shared on social media as a nice big number fits easily on a Twitter post and will spread across the games press like lightning). But reading their actual argument, it is against the developers who facilitated it early (they seem confident they can prove the link) who are going to struggle to make the good faith ‘it’s for emulation’ defence they need to when even they couldn’t have had a legit copy to start with.

Nintendo must really think they have a smoking gun here, otherwise they wouldn’t touch it for the usual risk of a court decision against them making the situation (in their eyes) a hundred times worse.

 

[Lugia667]

as far as i remember, yuzu and ryujinx did exactly that. no updates were pushed to either emulators builds by the devs specifically targeting totk playability. ryujinx was able to play it by virtue of being a rather accurate emulator to begin with. and yuzu straight up would not run the game until emulator hack/cheat makers created some workarounds. none of that was because of the developers specifically trying to make it playable during the leaked time period

Both Ryujinx and Yuzu, as well as most other major emulators, will refuse support to anyone who admits to piracy. Anything beyond that would be difficult to implement, though.

I can't speak for Yuzu, but Ryujinx will also refuse support and label pirate anyone whose Discord says they're playing an unreleased (pirated) game, at least for major titles, such as TOTK.

I just wonder if this is really enough for a court, especially if Nintendo has recepits on them

 

[Bonejack]

I think a lot of people here with that "they have no case"-mentality seem to underestimate that Nintendo would never have their legal partners do a lot of work and research if they were sure there's no case. Money burning is not something Nintendo does.

And yeah, add me to the team that thinks promoting "New game XYZ now runs on our product" in Patreon posts is incredibly stupid if you're dealing in a grey-zone.

Gabe Newell: Piracy is an issue of service, not price

“Piracy is not a pricing issue,” insists Valve boss

www.gamesradar.com

Feel this quote is relevant coming from the richest person in the entire gaming industry.

I wonder what kinds of service Nintendo could offer for those people who're not willing to pay for a big new game? I legit can't think of any.
Offer a better system? Well that's an "easier said than done" thing. Offer on other systems? Why would they do that? Plus this wouldn't even mean better game performance because the games would still be developed for Switch first and before all.
Same with old games, they offer a (somewhat lukewarm) service, though i think that both the selection of games and the amount of money they want for it won't really change the minds of pirates.

Yeah preservation, because Smash Ultimate and Tears of the Kingdom are super rare games desperately in need of "preservation"

sorry but until the Switch isn't being sold anymore, the preservation shit falls flat for me. Especially when the most common games being "preserved" are conveniently the most popular ones

Maybe i have a completely wrong definition, but on top of the "preservation of a current, still supported console" counter argument, i don't think preservation means that you're empowered to play it.
And when it comes to that preservation topic, i'd say Nintendo is even one of the best ones doing that. In the meaning of "keeping sources so it could be made available again".

 

[JR436]

Nintendo are much worse at making - or hell, in the case of 3D All Stars, keeping - their games  available as opposed to preserved.

 

[ertaboy356b]

I wonder what kinds of service Nintendo could offer for those people who're not willing to pay for a big new game? I legit can't think of any.
Offer a better system? Well that's an "easier said than done" thing. Offer on other systems? Why would they do that? Plus this wouldn't even mean better game performance because the games would still be developed for Switch first and before all.
Same with old games, they offer a (somewhat lukewarm) service, though i think that both the selection of games and the amount of money they want for it won't really change the minds of pirates.

That Gabe statement has been propagated by pirates ever since. Valve is not even a full on game dev at that point in time. IMO valve should try making high budget AAA single player games without DRM and see how far it will go.

 

[Enpsty]

I love emulators as long as the system they emulate is not on sale anymore. In that case I agree with the restoration argument.
Emulation of consoles that are well and alive is 99% piracy and I don't like piracy.
Just my 2 cents.

 

[Individualised]

this seems more aimed at how no one involved in development could have had a legit copy of the game, which then allows a million people to pirate it before release.

Technically ToTK wasn't "leaked". Some retailers were selling it early, and it was dumped, just like every Switch game that is released. So there is a possibility that a Yuzu dev did have a legitimate copy of the game; whether they did or not is another question.

Could you elaborate on how it would be worse?

They absolutely do not want this type of thing in their ecosystem.

 

[dingbat]

I love emulators as long as the system they emulate is not on sale anymore. In that case I agree with the restoration argument.
Emulation of consoles that are well and alive is 99% piracy and I don't like piracy.
Just my 2 cents.

That's a fair line to draw, but in the legal documents of this very case Nintendo argues that because they make old games available through paid services like NSO, all non-Nintendo sanctioned emulation -- including that of classic game systems that aren't for sale -- harms them. This case isn't just gonna affect Yuzu if Nintendo gets their way, and there's a real chance of it cascading throughout the entire emulation scene.

 

[Guaraná]

yuzu is an open-source emulator, right?
like, anyone can pick up from where they stoped and keep developing the app

 

[VDenter]

You are right. Emulating your owned games is legal. But pirating games is not. We shouldn't pretend that all 1,000,000 of those people playing early emulated copies of TotK went on to buy the game to make it "legal."

I get what you're saying but this is going off that

1. 1,000,000 downloads translate into lost sales.

2. 1,000,000 of those downloaded copies were used on Yuzu as opposed to say jailbroken Switch hardware.

3. That the Yuzu devs knew about it and encouraged it. and somehow responsible for the leaks and story spoilers?

Everyone wants to claim that emulation is legal and that it's okay and we don't owe these companies everything. I'm willing to meet you half way and say that I can see no issue with people who dump their own game copies and system keys just to have better graphics and performance, but in that scenario you'd also have to admit that an equal amount of people most likely are just straight up stealing and pirating these games that exist in an active system where games are readily available to purchase legally.

I am not denying that people use emulators for piracy. That would be dumb, but that's not an emulator problem. That's a piracy and a Nintendo problem. They should go after the people dumping these games online and distributing them. Emulators aren't responsible for that. They are barking at the wrong tree unless they can prove that Yuzu devs encouraged piracy and posted download links to TOTK, or maybe some other technicality mumbo jumbo which I doubt they could.

Long story short, emulation being legal is great on a perfect world, but we will be fools to admit that a lot of people aren't using these tools for straight piracy, which is an issue with active platforms.

Same thing I said above, if it's legal it's legal. If you seriously expect all devs to just wait 8-10 years before they start making an emulator for a system then that's absurd. That's never going to happen.

 

[fantomena]

I absolutely hope Nintendo wins this case.

Why?

 

[Onilink]

As long i'm not really convinced to use an emulator that run currents games, Nintendo can't to legally nothing to that people.
Btw, they will bury the team in legal fees, so "so long space cowboys"

 

[SunnyDays]

As long i'm not really convinced to use an emulator that run currents games, Nintendo can't to legally nothing to that people.
Btw, they will bury the team in legal fees, so "so long space cowboys"

Currently Yuzu makes 30k in support per month through support. They'll need an injunction against Yuzu or else Yuzu will have a healthy defence fund. Heck, even if there was such an injunction, I imagine a GoFundMe for the defence would be quite successful, as this entire case will set precedent for the emulation community at large.

 

[Bonejack]

Currently Yuzu makes 30k in support per month through support. They'll need an injunction against Yuzu or else Yuzu will have a healthy defence fund. Heck, even if there was such an injunction, I imagine a GoFundMe for the defence would be quite successful, as this entire case will set precedent for the emulation community at large.

No matter how much Patreon money they make and have, or how successful an additional GoFundMe would be, Nintendo can, and if they have to will, outspend them.

Easily.

And from what i gathered in this thread, there's not going to be a lot of other emulation devs jumping to Yuzu's defense.
In the end, you shouldn't "Fuck around and find out" 360° in all directions.