New documents filed Monday, February 26 reveal that videogame giant Nintendo is taking action against the creators of the popular emulator tool Yuzu.
The copyright infringement filing, from Nintendo of America, states that the Yuzu tool (from developer Tropic Haze LLC) illegally circumvents the software encryption and copyright protection systems of Nintendo Switch titles, and thus facilitates piracy and infringes copyright under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Nintendo alleges that Tropic Haze’s free Yuzu emulator tool unlawfully allows pirated Switch games to be played on PCs and other devices, bypassing Nintendo’s protection measures.
The official Yuzu website suggests that the tool is to be used with software you yourself own: “You are legally required to dump your games from your Nintendo Switch” — but it’s common knowledge, that this is not how these tools are primarily used.
This is why I will never buy a Nintendo console. I’m about to buy a Steam Deck… call me biased.
Download Yuzu now, sideload later. Just in case.
The problem is with the development ceasing. The source code will remain, but if there’z no dedicated team developing bugs will not be fixed and features will not be added.
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I think @Fake4000@lemmy.world made a solid point here.
Nintendo goes after those that make money. That includes ROM sites too. For example, Nintendo didn’t sue Dolphin developers, they told Valve to take down their software. Please correct me if I am wrong.
I am not saying that Nintendo goes only after those that make money but maybe a money papertrail takes away the anonymousness of the internet. Bank accounts makes finding people a whole lot easier.
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Amorally, probably. Ilegally? No, they are not.
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It is when the product is using their IP to violate copyright laws.
I fully support emulators and pirating, but I don’t lie to myself about it being legal or ethical.
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If you read the lawsuit Nintendo is suing because Yuzu acknowledges their software can’t run without the Switch’s decryption keys. Yuzu also has instructions to extract the decryption keys on their website. So Yuzu is not completely reverse engineering how the Switch runs games.
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because Yuzu acknowledges their software can’t run without the Switch’s decryption keys.
That’s a failure on the DMCA, not on Yuzu.
The law clearly establishes the protection by which you are allowed to make a personal backup copy. Yuzy thus should by design allow you to play this backup copy, as would any other emulator that actually did its job. If you need to break DRM in order to get your own keys to play your personal copy in the first place, it’s not Yuzu’s fault, it’s a DMCA provision that has been put n place without forethought on how it clashes against the use provision.
Oh please, that’s the same argument of, “It’s not a bong, it’s a tobacco pipe.” Yeah, they might call it that to circumvent the law, but everyone knows damn well that 99% of users aren’t using it for that.
They’re profiting off selling a tool that breaks encryption and bypasses copyright protections. The profit is the issue here.
While I support their efforts, I can also realize that Nintendo absolutely has a right to try to stop them, and it’s not unethical for them to do so.
Would your comment be as sarcastic if you replaced cars with guns? Doubt it.
🤦
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And yet cars kill a lot more people than guns.
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Nonironically yes
So what purpose does an emulator server legally speaking? And I don’t think anyone uses their car for accidents.
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So what purpose does an emulator server legally speaking?
They provide compatibility for software made to run on one platform to work on another.
Providing compatibility is one of the most protected use cases of reverse engineering in US law.
And I don’t think anyone uses their car for accidents.
Lots of terrorist groups do.
In addition to “format shifting,” which is a well-recognized use case, and game preservation, which is a huge and under-recognized public interest in emulator development, emulators are also used for the development of homebrew software. E.g., there’s a port of Moonlight for the Switch, which lets you play Steam games streamed from a PC using your Switch, letting it serve many of the purposes of a Steam Deck. That’s huge! It would be way less practical to develop this kind of software if you could only test on real hardware. Testing on real hardware is also essential, of course, but testing on an emulator is vastly faster for rapid iteration.
I don’t see anyone else bringing up that, in the case of the Switch, emulation actually plays better than on original hardware. Higher framerate, resolution, and graphics settings. And no broken JoyCons.
Emulation also opens up save states, speed up/slow mo, romhacks, widescreen mods, ultra widescreen mods, save file editing, cheats, and lots of other legitimate uses. Speed runners often use emulation to practice the hardest sections using save states before doing their line run on OG hardware.
Some of those use cases are also possible on flash carts (romhacks, save file editing, and some forms of cheats), but a lot really on emulation.
Nintendo makes me want to emulate more and more
Sold my switch years ago, I’m not playing switch games atm but I really can’t stand Nintendo’s policies like this!
Might as well set the groundwork to make it easier to shut down any emulators for the new console. Can’t have old steam deck and others taking the handheld market
The official Yuzu website suggests that the tool is to be used with software you yourself own: “You are legally required to dump your games from your Nintendo Switch” — but it’s common knowledge, that this is not how these tools are primarily used.
Yeah, so what?
It’s, legally speaking, not Yuzu’s domain to regulate what I can lawfully do within my own home with hardware I bought , or not. It’s not even Nintendon’t’s domain, and they are literally a Yakuza branch.
Yakuza branch? I want to know more, I hate Nintendo.
I wonder if they’re going after Switch emulators now because the emulation capability is matching the product lifecycle, and that the patreon page makes the Yuzu team legally targetable.
If we’re in for a repeat of GC -> Wii in the sense of the Wii being a more powerful GC, then Yuzu is potentially already close to being able to emulate the next gen Nintendo console out of the gate.
If that is the case, that’s just par for the course when you’re dealing with nearly decade old hardware.
What’s the crowd funding site for Yuzu legal fees?
Don’t mind me if I fork
Don’t fork, they go down if the original goes down. Download and reupload.
Or fork to a different system, e.g. Gogs/Gitea/ForgeJo/GitLab…
Someone sue Nintendo for gatekeeping.
Fuck you Nintendo, nobody should give you a dime
I’m very uninformed here, haven’t gamed in a few years. But I’ve got a question- is yuzu software that is run on a rooted Switch device, or similar like a steam deck? Or do you run it on a computer? Or perhaps, it’s all of the above.
Anyway, thanks in advance if someone could give me a high level overview
Steam Deck is just a Linux computer, but it runs on any computer running Linux, Windows, or apparently Android, with capable hardware. It looks like it isn’t ready for Mac yet, though Ryujinx supposedly is.
It doesn’t run on a rooted Switch as far as I’m aware, but I don’t see the point in that. There’s no need to emulate the hardware if you’re actually using the hardware.
Yuzu, to my knowledge, is PC only.
To get the information you need to use it, you’ll either download it illegally or hack a switch (legally?) To get encryption keys and dump a copy of your game.
PC only implies it’s a windows program, yuzu runs on any x86_64 and ARMv8a or newer device.
It runs on Android now, which might be what’s gotten Nintendo extra annoyed here, since there are some relatively affordable Android handhelds that can run Switch games at close to full speed with some tweaking.
Having said that, I have an Odin 2 handheld, and it would have been cheaper and easier to just buy a Switch and the games I want to play.
I heard about the keys and the other website that serves them, seems an extremely important detail. I imagine the game dumps/copies are available as disk images of some sort online?
Thanks a lot for the info, skankhunt42!
.xci files are physical switch game images and .nsp files are updates or games from the eShop. Everything is online somewhere.
