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.
So what purpose does an emulator server legally speaking? And I don’t think anyone uses their car for accidents.
especially true for when manufacturers stop supporting the console you invested into, stops making replacement parts, issuing security patches, etc. Having the ability to make, repair and use copies of the games you purchase is critical to digital preservation.
But let’s be real though. Getting a car and driving it a crowd on purpose is an extraordinarily small percentage of car users. You can’t say the same about emulation. A torrent site I frequent has 28000 downloads of Smash Bros Ultimate. I don’t believe for a second there are 28000 broken copies people are trying to replace.
Don’t get me wrong, I love emulation. It has huge benefits! Access to out of print games, higher framerates and resolutions. But I’m not going to pretend piracy isn’t a massive component of it, particularly on current gen systems.
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.
Increased user accessibility, backing up and ensuring continued usability of purchased software, democratizing hardware choice, allowing for continued community support for software that has been abandoned, teaching people how software works in relation to different hardware…
Legally, you’re allowed to make copies of games that you own and use them in an emulator. You can download mods, play multiplayer across the Internet when servers get shut down and also take advantage of better hardware and get better resolution and framerates, then there are quality of life improvements like savestates.
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.
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.
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.
Would your comment be as sarcastic if you replaced cars with guns? Doubt it.
🤦
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
“Guns don’t kill people - people kill people. Guns defend people against people with smaller guns.”
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
They should go one step further and ban the programming language as well the emulator was created in. That will show them!
What about a technology permit, so you’re only allowed to develop technologized products if you get a permit from the Ministry of Proprietary Technology.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
This may surprise you but Nintendo no think Industrial Revolution good for humanity.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Someone sue Nintendo for gatekeeping.
This is why I will never buy a Nintendo console. I’m about to buy a Steam Deck… call me biased.
It’s an open source project. It’s always going to be out there. I am gonna go fork the repo just for the hell of it right now.
If Nintendo wins, the Github page and the website page will probably shutdown.
Forking it now is a good idea.
From what I understood, is that the team’s Patreon page is a means of making financial gains of emulating the Switch. This could be the reason why Nintendo is suing.
Vanced NFT memories.
Well Vanced was a lot different, they were actually redistributing code from YouTube. They were asking to be sued and they got off really easy.
Whereas here, no code is being used afaik. They don’t even include the keys for the decryption for the console. So the only thing this can do is: decrypt game files once provided keys and then run an emulated graphics pipeline and logic process for said game.
Now I can see an argument about how Yuzu is specifically built to emulate the Switch which is a current product. Which makes this sketchy. But also it’s an emulator. What’s better is that breaking the law is not required to use the emulator. You can get your own rom rips and keys and use them with the emulator which gives it a legal purpose as a 3rd party application.
This is Nintendo just trying to scare them Id bet. Not a zero chance that Yuzu could lose though.
