Wait what, there is a Nintendo switch emulator out there called Yuzu? Thanks Nintendo!
It’d be pretty great if an entire generation referred to this phenomenon as the Nintendo Yuzu Effect instead of the Streisand Effect. Or maybe the YouTube Adblock Effect? These companies keep accidentally telling everybody about shit that is relatively unknown yet universally desired in order to not have to pay exploitative prices. Even early Switch games are still fucking impossible to find for less than their launch price. And actually, now that I think about it, the MSRP of the Switch itself still hasn’t dropped either. It costs just as much today as it did 7 goddamn years ago to legally buy a Switch, BotW, and Mario Odyssey. Nintendo’s greed is the reason Switch piracy was ever big enough to be worth chasing, and now chasing it will cause an even bigger boom in it. Well, that and their shitty controllers. I don’t blame anybody for wanting to play BotW with an Xbox controller on their last-gen PC.
Nah keep it Streisand effect, as that’s where the term originated, if we changed phrases every single time a company did this, we’d be changing it every hour.
True, but nobody born after 9/11 knows who the fuck Barbra Streisand even is, so they definitely don’t know the story.
It’s not the distribution that they wanted to stop. It was future updates
It’s getting pulled down basically everywhere so you’re going to have to find some smaller communities or individuals to get your hands on it now. That’s the real annoying part here lol
Yeah, there’s totally not Mirrors around with the original source code that got pulled, and the entire internet having collectively archived it before Yuzu itself pulled the plug
Also it was the only Switch emulator in existence, there totally isn’t another emulator going around
Also you totally should not follow what I said here, y’know, emulation is wrong after all according to Nintendo
Imma just put this here, totally unrelated thing
Also, in a totally unrelated note, y’all should check out this project, I find it really cool
If there’s one thing I know about the situation, a LOT of people who otherwise haven’t bothered are scrambling to download yuzu, if for any other reason to say fuck Nintendo.
It’s me, I’m people.
Me too. I’ve never cared for Switch games, I don’t even have a console, but now I’m discovering many gems on my computer.
Open source projects do not grow by themselves. It requires serious effort from dedicated developers to develop and maintain applications as complicated as an emulator. Yuzu’s developers are banned from doing so and I don’t see how this incident could help bringing more developers.
I’m sure there will be developers capable enough to keep it working on new operating systems. Games that worked with it until now will keep on working, and that’s what matters to most people anyways. No need for major changes to the codebase.
I truly admire the optimism but I think it’s also important to understand the hard work and dedication that the Yuzu developers put in.
You’re correct that someone probably will fork it and development will continue but it is not simple and it requires a very specialized skill set.
I just think it’s important to never take for granted the people who take time out of their lives to give the community something so wonderful.
I don’t think it’s diminishing the work of the Yuzu devs, but more so a strong belief in the capabilities of the open source community. They worked their asses off and are extremely talented, and I’m sure there are others who will hop in and carry the torch.
I’m also curious if there’s a programmatic way to circumvent the argument Nintendo made about bypassing DMCA by separating the emulator from the code that utilizes the keys such that you can use tool A to bypass DMCA, and tool B (Yuzu with game decryption removed) to run the circumvented game. In this case tool A already exists, and tool B could be a fork of Yuzu.
to keep it working on new operating systems
That’s really easier said than done
What do you mean with they are banned? Who’s gonna stop them from contributing to one of the many Yuzu forks? What are they gonna do about it?
A permanent injunction is entered against Defendant enjoining it and its members, agents, servants, employees, independent contractors, successors, assigns, and all those acting in privity or under its control from:
a. Offering to the public, providing, marketing, advertising, promoting, selling, testing, hosting, cloning, distributing, or otherwise trafficking in Yuzu or any source code or features of Yuzu
IANAL but that sounds like the court is banning those developers from working on Yuzu. I mean, you can still try to work on project that is 90% Yuzu but with another name but I feel like your lawyer would advise against that.
Who’s gonna stop them from contributing to one of the many Yuzu forks? What are they gonna do about it?
The answers are “the court system” and “have the police arrest them for defying a court order” respectively.
What if I told you that throwing more developers at a problem != that problem getting solved faster?
Switch 2s architecture will probably be very similar, so Nintendo might have done it to protect the next gen.
Forks are meaningless.
Unless a team steps up to continue development, the project is as good as dead.
Are there any that actually have a new team behind them that would presumably add Switch 2 support?
It is working. It buys them enough time to sell enough new hardware and games. It will take a really long time until development picks up again, since basically every developer associated (not necessarily every one who has contributed to the project) with the yuzu group can no longer legally work on that project. So basically a lot of expertise is lost.
There are literally working forks right now. Switch 2 support is different though. We’ll have to wait and see how that turns out.
Of course it’s not gonna work. But that’s just how lawyers think I suppose.
It’s a shame about Yuzu. Have you heard about this new emulator called Nuzu?
