Just last week, on Tuesday, February 26th, 2024, news broke out about the Yuzu emulator team being sued by none other than Nintendo themselves, with Nintendo claiming that the emulator apparently allowed users to play certain games early (due to street dates being broken) and also allowing...
  • terry_tibbs@lemmy.mlEnglish
    192·
    9 months ago

    The list of reasons why I refuse to buy Nintendo products is getting pretty hefty at this point.

        • yeehaw@lemmy.caEnglish
          12·
          9 months ago

          If they can they will, it’s how supply and demand works. It wouldn’t work if people stopped paying so much for old games.

          • rbits@lemm.eeEnglish
            13·
            9 months ago

            Is it still supply and demand when the supply is infinite?

            • yeehaw@lemmy.caEnglish
              4·
              9 months ago

              Yes, if there’s no demand there would be no point in making the supply (the game)

              • rbits@lemm.eeEnglish
                7·
                9 months ago

                We’re talking about the prices of games that have already been made though. The supply of those specific games is infinite. We’re talking about the prices of certain games (old ones), not all games that are being released now.

                I do agree that it makes sense to Nintendo to sell the old games at a high price, but I think supply and demand is probably the wrong phrase.

                • yeehaw@lemmy.caEnglish
                  3·
                  9 months ago

                  I’m talking about supply AND demand. If there is infinite supply and zero demand, there would be no point to rerelease these titles. Or they’d bring the price down. This is basic knowledge. If they can get that price for it, they will keep selling it for that price. It’s not rocket science.

                  I’m not defending the price, I’ve bought plenty and felt dirty doing so lol.

          • Kedly@lemm.eeEnglish
            6·
            9 months ago

            Exactly, and OP is saying they’ve decided to not contribute towards demand anymore

    • Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zipEnglish
      6·
      9 months ago

      Tbh in a third world country, Nintendo is a very big luxury. I never imagined buying one at any point in my life. I will buy a steamdeck as soon as it launches in my country.

  • f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@lemmy.worldEnglish
    145·
    9 months ago

    Yuzu fucked up. This is about more than the decryption. Yuzu’s actions (copypasta from a fine redditor):

    • Massive patreon, to the point it has an LLC set to manage the money flow
    • Early access releases are effectively SOLD, they fucked around with manifest/build files, abused GPL to go after some forks back when they were Citra, attacked other forks/emulators then benefitted from their work and even replicated their practices (like CEMU’s patreon), etc
    • Actively targets Switch competitors (Steam Deck, Android), to the point Valve once included it in a marketing reel
    • Its presence on the OFFICIAL Android play store rather than an apk competes with Nintendo’s own Android games (undermining both those and the Switch)
    • Unauthorized use of Nintendo imagery
    • Extensive telemetry, itself juicy data that could be sold for advertisers, on top of Nintendo’s own built-in telemetry that’s also sent
    • Patreon marketing is heavily focused on games that broke street day release date, and even when they show some “restraint” it’s just a release day post how much better the game runs on a platform that’s not the Nintendo Switch, in the same launch period where most sales happen
    • Progress reports timed suspiciously close to major Nintendo first-party releases
    • ATTEMPTED to make a competitor to the Switch Online service, using files from an external preservation group, and it would have been a PAID service, and the subscription MORE EXPENSIVE than Nintendo’s actual service (it was $60 something) despite smaller compatibility, for games still online, as a CLOSED-SOURCE FORK of a GPL PROJECT so that players don’t actually set up their own custom servers to avoid paying Yuzu’s pittance. When there was backlash, they REMOVED all traces of online emulation after they couldn’t profit off it.
    • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.worldEnglish
      42·
      9 months ago

      Yeah their problem was to make it a commercial operation. At that point it’s trivial for Nintendo to show they’ve enriched themselves on the back of ripped ROMs by enabling them.

      Whereas if you do everything for free and don’t even accept donations, they’d have a big problem showing that you have any commercial interest and hence can be sued for damages.

      • madcaesar@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        9 months ago

        The problem is that this shit is a lot of work that we all benefit from… So how do we compensate the devs?

        • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
          11·
          9 months ago

          That’s the neat part, you don’t.

          Same as any other type of internet piracy. I don’t give money to some guy ripping his movies or games.

          The only way to do things like this is anonymously for the shits and giggles. A Patreon to make it their job is one thing, but the fact that they can pay $2.4million shows it went beyond that.

          • Psychodelic@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            9 months ago

            Yeah fuck that. That’s unsustainable and will only result in the end of piracy. We should feel bad for being leechers forever, imo. And we should strive to assist the causes we believe in, however we can.

            On a similar note, I struggle to reconcile my contempt of Russian/Chinese policies with my adoration and support for piracy and the brave souls that maintain all the big projects we enjoy/rely on.

      • trafficnab@lemmy.caEnglish
        3·
        9 months ago

        Reverse engineering software (and even using small bits of proprietary code when required) in order to make it compatible with other hardware is fully legal (tons of precedent, for emulation specifically see Sega v Accolade and Sony v Connectix), and selling emulators commercially is also fully legal (Sega v Connectix was about a commercial Playstation emulator for the Mac, Sony v Bleem was about a commercial emulator for the PC and Dreamcast)

        Nintendo’s legal claims against Yuzu are completely untested and dubious at best, it’s the threat of spending millions of dollars on lawyers that’s very real and effective, they are yet again simply weaponizing the courts and the DMCA like all the other corpo scum before them

    • Samueru@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      9 months ago

      Early access releases are effectively SOLD, they fucked around with manifest/build files, abused GPL to go after some forks back when they were Citra, attacked other forks/emulators then benefitted from their work and even replicated their practices (like CEMU’s patreon), etc

      Source on this?

      Also saying that EA was being sold is false, they were shipping precompiled binaries with the EA branches for the patrons, they were actually using the people that paid them for testing lol.

      If you used linux there was even an Aur package that built yuzu ea for you, which I quickly stopped using because EA was just the equivalent of the testing repo of archlinux, if you ever read their updates on their main discord, half the time the next EA release just removed a PR that broke something after release.

      Progress reports timed suspiciously close to major Nintendo first-party releases

      They only made progress reports once a month lol, and iirc the progress report for totk was several weeks after release even.

      Its presence on the OFFICIAL Android play store rather than an apk competes with Nintendo’s own Android games (undermining both those and the Switch)

      Nothing wrong here, even dolphin has a official apk on the playstore, and yuzu actually even released a non playstore apk for people like me with an ungoogled phone lol.

      Extensive telemetry, itself juicy data that could be sold for advertisers, on top of Nintendo’s own built-in telemetry that’s also sent

      Bullshit, their logs only contain info about the hardware, which is something you need to debug lol, Ryu logs are the same.

      ATTEMPTED to make a competitor to the Switch Online service, using files from an external preservation group, and it would have been a PAID service, and the subscription MORE EXPENSIVE than Nintendo’s actual service (it was $60 something) despite smaller compatibility, for games still online, as a CLOSED-SOURCE FORK of a GPL PROJECT so that players don’t actually set up their own custom servers to avoid paying Yuzu’s pittance. When there was backlash, they REMOVED all traces of online emulation after they couldn’t profit off it.

      I also want a source on this.

    • Natanael@slrpnk.netEnglish
      8·
      9 months ago

      Very few of those are legally problematic, pretty much just the imagery, possibly GPL issues (but Nintendo wouldn’t have standing for those), and due to copyright weirdness 3rd party online services for games which still have active online services (it shouldn’t be, but that’s how it’s been interpreted)

      Not enough for Nintendo to be able to force the project to stop, but they didn’t want to fight it in court I assume

  • samus12345@lemmy.worldEnglish
    141·
    9 months ago

    Oh, and it will surrender the yuzu-emu.org domain name to Nintendo, agree 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 Nintendo hardware” to Nintendo. It also agrees to not delete any other “evidence” that infringes Nintendo’s IP rights.

    Damn, I modded my Switch JUST in time! Thanks for giving me the motivation, Nintendo!

    • pivot_root@lemmy.worldEnglish
      61·
      9 months ago

      The team behind Yuzu is different from ReSwitched and Atmosphere, so you were fine either way.

      This just means Yuzu agrees to delete their copies of the tools they used and send Nintendo their hacked Switch consoles (probably to be destroyed).

      • samus12345@lemmy.worldEnglish
        26·
        9 months ago

        Although the fact that these programs were named means that Nintendo’s Eye of Sauron is on them - the extra attention makes me nervous. I definitely would have modded it this weekend if I hadn’t already decided to last weekend.

        • cley_faye@lemmy.worldEnglish
          26·
          9 months ago

          There is no world where these tools exists and Nintendo does not know them. It’s not some deep darknet secret lore hidden behind seven-VPN. Anything that happens online about emulation, all the company knows it exists and how it works. The threat never goes away.

          • samus12345@lemmy.worldEnglish
            9·
            9 months ago

            I know, but there’s a difference between “knows they exist” and “is naming them in legal documentation”.

        • pivot_root@lemmy.worldEnglish
          8·
          9 months ago

          Good point.

          Of these, I would only really be concerned about nxDumpTool, nxDumpFuse, and Lockpick_RCM as possible to come after using the same strategy, though. And even then, Lockpick_RCM was already taken down and mass redistributed.

          It’s not illegal to modify the hardware you own, and the rest of those aren’t directly interacting with Nintendo’s DRM-protected software. The only one that they could arguably go after is Atmosphère, but SciresM has held a very strong public pro-homebrew and anti-piracy stance which makes it extremely hard for Nintendo to argue that it’s primary purpose is DRM circumvention.

          I plan on making offline archives of Hekate and Atmosphère at some point, in either case.

    • TWeaK@lemm.eeEnglish
      10·
      9 months ago

      Wait Yuzu were behind all the other tools?? Surely that was other people?

      • samus12345@lemmy.worldEnglish
        37·
        9 months ago

        Pretty sure they’re all by other people. Maybe they were hosting copies on their own server or something? Possibly they were just using them for Yuzu development.

      • samus12345@lemmy.worldEnglish
        15·
        9 months ago

        I imagine you’ll still be able to do so for a while, if not forever. But probably worth doing it sooner rather than later if you’re interested, just in case! Modding it has nothing to do with Yuzu, so I’m not sure why these other programs are involved.

  • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    65·
    9 months ago

    If these guys were making money off their emulator then it’s not surprising in the least that Nintendo gutted them.

    Three trick to being a parasite is that you can’t attract the hosts attention in any way. If you start eating the hosts food they goanna swat you.

        • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.mlEnglish
          4·
          9 months ago

          Not really. I run a smaller emulation project (based out of Canada and have paid my fair share in preemptive lawyers who have all told me despite taking literally zero donations, the not for profit I set up can be can be sued for $$$ per player/download I get

          • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
            3·
            9 months ago

            Well yeah but the existence of a not-for-profit means that there’s some kind of benefit being provided to some class of people. If someone elses IP is involved in that and you’re not paying for it then they might give you a cease and desist even if there’s no money.

              • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
                1·
                9 months ago

                I don’t care very much. You’re the one telling the story but not providing any information.

                The existence of a not-for-profit implies there’s some value somewhere. If there’s no value then you don’t need the structure.

                Tell any lawyer or CPA that you have a not-for-profit involved in intellectual property infringement and they will tell you the NFP is liable on that basis.

                • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.mlEnglish
                  1·
                  9 months ago

                  Thanks again for your inaccurate comment. I’m not sure why you insist on telling me to ask lawyers about things I literally said I paid lawyers for in my parent comment.

                  I’ve talked with lawyers who helped me navigate the subject, and spent over 1,000$ in fees to do so. What you said again, is false. Having a not for profit means neither myself nor my contributors can be easily punished directly for our work (excluding some logic about piercing the corporate veil, which is highly unlikely). The whole idea of legal entities is so they can take the legal risk and fall for risky business activities. The not for profit may fold and go bankrupt if sued, but that outcome is hundreds of times better than me being personally sued.

      • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.worldEnglish
        16·
        9 months ago

        It’s how legality in regards to something like emulators works. Emulation is not illegal, but profiteering from games being ripped and played without a legal license is. Which Yuzu did.

        • Natanael@slrpnk.netEnglish
          2·
          9 months ago

          No, that’s also not how it works. Reverse engineering and making a profit from your clone is legal. Breaking DRM for compatibility reasons is in fact exempted and legal too. Nintendos argument is that they broke DRM for piracy, but the tools can still be legal and legal precedence supports that

      • BedInspector@lemmy.worldEnglish
        12·
        9 months ago

        I think it’s pretty accurate. Nintendo is super protective of their IP and they don’t like others profiting from it in any way.

        • sebinspace@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          Bleem was also paid software. I think people are forgetting that, at the time, downloading software over the Internet wasn’t super common. Software was distributed with discs. In a box. At the store. Which sold things. For money.

  • CubitOom@infosec.pubEnglish
    63·
    9 months ago

    In completely unrelated news, I now have a private repo on my private gitea that has a lot of c++ code

    • pivot_root@lemmy.worldEnglish
      22·
      9 months ago

      In even more unrelated news, does anybody know of some good spots to bury random flash drives containing a lot of C++ code?

    • dev_null@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      9 months ago

      Cool, how it’s going with fixing current bugs? Switch 2 support is coming along nicely I assume?

      I jest, but Nintendo didn’t expect the current version of the project to disappear. They just wanted to stop further development, which will over time make it less relevant, and most importantly won’t be a problem for Switch 2 games.

    • Chocrates@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      9 months ago

      I cloned main a few days ago but I heard a lot of tools got hit with this lawsuit so just main may not cut it.

      Also pro move Nintendo. I have a switch and some switch games And wouldn’t have gone through using yuzu but now so many more people know it exists.

  • PlexSheep@feddit.deEnglish
    57·
    9 months ago

    Is yuzu really going to “shut down”? I have it installed on my computer at least. And it’s foss, no? So anyone can clone the repo.

    Damn, the repo is already gone.

    • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      9 months ago

      Teaches you not to donate to commercial companies like Yuzu, they can run their own show. Or couldn’t, I suppose. 😅

  • Underwaterbob@lemm.eeEnglish
    42·
    9 months ago

    You wanna believe I downloaded it as soon as this was announced. Been playing some Metroid Dread on a 32 inch monitor with a controller that doesn’t cramp up my hands the past couple of days. Thanks for giving me the push I needed Nintendo! I might have just been happy with my Steam library instead.

  • redcalcium@lemmy.instituteEnglish
    41·
    9 months ago

    So, are Yuzu developers actually have $2.4M lying around, or will they pay for it in installment like Gary Bowser?

    • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      9 months ago

      The fact that they quickly agreed to this amount tells you all you need to know about how much money they - personally - made from the patreon.

      No wonder Nintendo got this so easily, unlike the other emulators they went after. With that kind of cash, good luck arguing in front of a judge that you’re not running Yuzu as a commercial business.

      • dev_null@lemmy.mlEnglish
        7·
        9 months ago

        Yes it tells me all I need to know: that they don’t care about the amount because they are going to declare bankruptcy anyway, since Yuzu is an LLC.

  • JRaccoon@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    39·
    9 months ago

    Good luck trying to “shut down” a open source software… Still sucks tho, why Nintendo gotta make so good games but be so shitty of a company otherwise

    • GBU_28@lemm.eeEnglish
      20·
      9 months ago

      Unfortunately Nintendo will happily chase anyone that distributes this as aggressively as Metallica chased people around in the Napster days.

      Of course the tools will never be fully scoured.

    • Vlyn@lemmy.zipEnglish
      11·
      9 months ago

      You already didn’t.

      Let’s be real here, they weren’t shut down for being an emulator, they were shut down for charging money and making bank, while also planning a parallel paid online service. All the other emulator projects are trucking along just fine, even if Nintendo hates some of them for decades by now.

      • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        9 months ago

        Exactly. Ryujinx is fine, so if you’re already morally fine pirating you can - happily, I suppose - go ahead. Emulators for Nintendo stuff are a dime a dozen, and Nintendo isn’t doing shit about them.

        Unless they make one for commercial purposes. See also: R4 cards.

  • Xero@lemmy.worldEnglish
    36·
    9 months ago

    Here is the latest stable build of Yuzu that I’ve got from 24 hours ago for anyone who wasn’t able to download it in time.

  • hakase@lemm.eeEnglish
    35·
    9 months ago

    Is there any way to turn off Yuzu auto-update? I don’t want my computer connecting to a website that Nintendo now owns every time I boot up Yuzu.