Law Nintendo is suing the creators of Switch emulator Yuzu - Emulator tools aren't inherently illegal, but the way in which Yuzu is being actively used and promoted is what Nintendo appears to be objecting to here.

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.

The legal document claims that over a million copies of last year's The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom were downloaded prior to the game's official retail release.

Additionally, Nintendo's filing points to the success of Yuzu's Patreon page, highlighting how the project is actively supported by over 7,000 members. At time of writing, the Yuzu Patreon currently brings in close to $30,000 USD per month. Nintendo's filing alludes that this Patreon page has been actively engaged in promoting the emulator, and thus by extension piracy.

Emulator tools aren't inherently illegal, but the way in which Yuzu is being actively used and promoted is what Nintendo appears to be objecting to here.

As a result, Nintendo is now seeking a trial by jury, damages, and is demanding that the Yuzu emulator is shut down.

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[the_hidden_one]

I don't remember them going after Desmume or Citra this hard. Perhaps it's spurred on by the advent of handheld pc's like the steam deck capable of using yuzu to emulate, thus rendering the Switch's 'on the go' selling point null.

I'm sure those videos of people playing Tears of the Kingdom on the Steam Deck had Nintendo's lawyers frothing at the mouth.

 

[0gh]

Piracy happens because the service is shit, because people are poor, because companies literally hate you and want you to die, and for preservation.

Most of the games I love are old as fuck and legally unobtainable unless you pay a hand and a leg on ebay, and even then the only real way to play them is with community patches, most of which actually require copy-protection removal or come with it.

Anyone who seriously thinks emulation is in any way bad or equates it to niggers stealing bikes is absolutely retarded.

If nintendo offered you an emulator, a game file you can download, share with your friends, patch to make silly mods, and a way to play their games without copy protection possibly causing issues, most of the reasons for piracy would be removed. You don't want just 1 copy to go to everyon, so sure, have a year or whatever cooldown before actually offering the emulator and file, but make it available.

They don't even need an emulator, just don't make everything so proprietary so it can be compatible with other things in the first place and there's going to be even less work.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

theroetically, if you made a perfect emulator, it could run games exactly the same as native hardware, though i think only the NES and SNES emulators are anything close to perfect.
im not sure how exactly they can make the games run in higher resolutions.
another close to perfect is hardware emulation. like the OG ps3 having ps2 and ps1 hardware built into it.

I don't know if the reason why the NES and SNES have nearly-perfect emulation is because they're so old or they have fairly standard architecture (which the N64 and PS2 don't).

 

[Grub]

i think they were advertising the fact you could play obviously pirated games and they even encouraged people to get roms and stuff.
that is retarded.

They would bad you for even hinting that you downloaded a rom or mentioning that you don't own a switch.

 

[Quote Cursor]

Link to the yuzu ea pineapple mirror?

https://github.com/pineappleEA/pineapple-src

 

[jxxyy]

Reading this thread gave me nigger aids.
I will continue to use yuzu and I will continue to gib dem games fo free

It allowed Nintendo to clearly see they were making money off it, show that they were making money off leaked games etc etc

The crazy part is that Tears of the kingdom pre-release ran like shit on the early access yuzu. Only after the game came out they pushed performance fixes for it. "Making money off leaked games" is a stretch since there were already legal early access build reuploaders like pineapple-ea on github

I really wish someone had Patreon access to confirm if Yuzu was really offering day 1 DRM cracks for supporters. Cause if true it was literally only a matter of time before Big N shut them down.

Yuzu doesn't provide cracks, the "crack" for switch games is the encryption key that you extract from your hacked switch (or download off the internet). Yuzu never supplied this.

 

[CAPTAIN HAPPY]

Good thing Switch is on its last legs anyway.

 

[6MillionCoofs]

https://github.com/pineappleEA/pineapple-src

Many thanks

 

[Terrifik]

https://twitter.com/PC_Focus_/status/1765005150450487518

GitHubed but still working on

......
filtered in a day bewu would cry he had Minecraft for lifework 1year before 64emulation on the switch

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

the ps2 did run ps1 games a little better and tried to clean them up a bit, same with the ps3 to the 2.

The opening to FF8 is beautiful on the PS3.

 

[Computer Guardian]

https://twitter.com/PC_Focus_/status/1765005150450487518

View attachment 5786547View attachment 5786593
GitHubed but still working on

......
filtered in a day bewu would cry he had Minecraft for lifework 1year before 64emulation on the switch
View attachment 5786549View attachment 5786558View attachment 5786560View attachment 5786563View attachment 5786551

this is going to become the Yandere Simulator fangame saga all over again but instead of a coomer baiting suicide, it's going to be a corporation C&D'ing the shit out of people trying to fork code they now own that are just slapping thier own fancy logo and maybe some minor coding changes (keep in mind to change the code enough to make it completely unrecognizable would take a lot of time and manpower, and they probably could take down older versions.)

 

[Mr Processor]

I mean, to be fair to Nintendo, this thing plays brand new games perfectly, or better than the Switch on many occasions if you have a nice enough computer. That's a lot worse than your typical emulation of older games which doesn't really cost them any profits.

That said, fuck yeah I use Yuzu, it runs games better than the Switch does and I can get them for free. Make a better system, Nintendo.

Nintendo fundamentally disagrees with the premise that "If I buy a game, I should be able to play that game for the rest of my life." When they obsolete old hardware, their idea is that you should pay for their games-as-a-service Switch Online rental service, and play a limited selection of the old games that you own that were for planned obsolescence hardware as rentals only.

This is why they killed Citra for 3DS emulation along with Yuzu. Nintendo no longer produces 3DS console or 3DS cartridges. They shut down the 3DS eShop. So why kill Citra? Because, someone at Nintendo surely said, "Someday we will add 3DS games to Switch Online, and jack up the price of Switch online when we do that. If we aren't vigilant about killing 3DS emulation, people will just use that instead and we'll lose out on profits."

It's better to buy a gaming PC than a Switch, and just buy native ports of games that are on Switch for that PC whenever possible. You'd be surprised at how many Switch games show up on Steam and even GoG. Both Steam and especially GoG will let you continue to play a game you bought on those services 15+ years ago, today.

Compare that to Nintendo, which when they obsoleted the Wii, just told all the people who had bought Virtual Console games on it, "Well, now you can pay a monthly fee to rent those games on the Switch. Well, some of those games. Some will basically be gone for good, so cherish your nostalgic memories of them!"

 

[6MillionCoofs]

this is going to become the Yandere Simulator fangame saga all over again but instead of a coomer baiting suicide, it's going to be a corporation C&D'ing the shit out of people trying to fork code they now own that are just slapping thier own fancy logo and maybe some minor coding changes (keep in mind to change the code enough to make it completely unrecognizable would take a lot of time and manpower, and they probably could take down older versions.)

It’s really not. Yuzu was doing this for years, making 1000s for years with no issue. It was only when they started doing stuff with leak stuff they should not have had legal access to yet and publicising that fact that they fell into issue.

Don’t be retarded and Nintendo does not come after you.

 

[surfingjump]

Ryujinx github issues been partially flooded by white knighting nerds wanting to scrub it clean of references to any erm... "problematic" terms *shudders*
This guy wrote a whole essay just for it to be closed lol. https://github.com/Ryujinx/Ryujinx/issues/6422
Epic reply from dev https://github.com/Ryujinx/Ryujinx/issues/6409#issuecomment-1979184611

I can't imagine the state of their discord server. probs full of mouth breathers.

Ryujinx has a spine.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

This is why they killed Citra for 3DS emulation along with Yuzu. Nintendo no longer produces 3DS console or 3DS cartridges. They shut down the 3DS eShop. So why kill Citra? Because, someone at Nintendo surely said, "Someday we will add 3DS games to Switch Online, and jack up the price of Switch online when we do that. If we aren't vigilant about killing 3DS emulation, people will just use that instead and we'll lose out on profits."

Nintendo saw the chance to kill two birds with one stone and took it. Most of the legal arguments they applied to Yuzu were going to apply to Citra, made by the same team and collecting money for the same LLC.

I think they have already ported 3DS games to Switch, and the Switch 2 could have more performance for better 3DS emulation if they want to go that route.

The Nintendo DS emulator Drastic is now free as Yuzu lawsuit fallout begins (archive)

The fear is spreading that profiting from emulation will make you an easier legal target.

Uh oh:

Yuzu Telemetry Proved How It Was Used to Play Pirated Games; Nintendo Is Now in Possession of Users’ Data (archive)

 

[Terrifik]

Nintendo saw the chance to kill two birds with one stone and took it. Most of the legal arguments they applied to Yuzu were going to apply to Citra, made by the same team and collecting money for the same LLC.

I think they have already ported 3DS games to Switch, and the Switch 2 could have more performance for better 3DS emulation if they want to go that route.

The Nintendo DS emulator Drastic is now free as Yuzu lawsuit fallout begins (archive)

The fear is spreading that profiting from emulation will make you an easier legal target.

Uh oh:

Yuzu Telemetry Proved How It Was Used to Play Pirated Games; Nintendo Is Now in Possession of Users’ Data (archive)

Yuzu Telemetry Proved How It Was Used to Play Pirated Games; Nintendo Is Now in Possession of Users’ Data (archive)

twitter trying to disprove the trust me bro about the data- on what's collected & data is anonymous.
It's a lot of cope.

 

[Yandex Captcha Solver]

twitter trying to disprove the trust me bro about the data- on what's collected & data is anonymous.
It's a lot of cope.

It took me two seconds to find what data they collect. So unless you were logged in or they are lying about the data collected they would have no personal information on users.

You may have also noticed the field titled “Telemetry ID” in the screenshots, this is an identifier generated randomly on install which is used instead of your IP address. This makes data collection entirely anonymous, unless you choose to log in. You can also reset your telemetry ID if you’d like by clicking “Regenerate”. The new ID will also be completely random, and so it would be treated as a wholly new identity.

The telemetry framework will collect information such as:

• Information about the version of yuzu you are using
• Performance data for the games you play
• Your yuzu configuration settings
• Information about your computer hardware (e.g. GPU, CPU, and OS type)
• Emulation errors and crash information

Yuzu Telementry Archive

 

[Resident Knievel]

It's astonishing how fast the pirates went from "HAHAHA I'M PIRATING ON YUZU FUCK YOU NINTENDO I PLAYED ZELDA EARLY WITHOUT PAYING A DIME ZELDA KILLS HERSELF LOLOLOLOLOL" to "Yikes... Nintendo... Yuzu was the beating heart of the community... I don't think I can support you guys after this..."

 

[Slav Power]

Nintendo saw the chance to kill two birds with one stone and took it. Most of the legal arguments they applied to Yuzu were going to apply to Citra, made by the same team and collecting money for the same LLC.

I think they have already ported 3DS games to Switch, and the Switch 2 could have more performance for better 3DS emulation if they want to go that route.

The Nintendo DS emulator Drastic is now free as Yuzu lawsuit fallout begins (archive)

The fear is spreading that profiting from emulation will make you an easier legal target.

Uh oh:

Yuzu Telemetry Proved How It Was Used to Play Pirated Games; Nintendo Is Now in Possession of Users’ Data (archive)

This still doesn't prove that Yuzu devs were the ones actively distributing leaks, this just shows that their emulator was used to play those leaks, but at the same time jailbroken Switch consoles could run those too.

Not that it matters, Nintendo's lawyers came from Hell itself and they will twist every little fact against the smaller guy that'll have no way of defending themselves, because some accountant pulled out an imaginary number out of their asses which led to the C-class executives that they've been losing millions of "potential" income revenue while they've already been getting actual millions of revenue, because it's never enough.

Switch piracy generates zero losses for Nintendo and anyone with half of a brain cell understands it. People who pirate those games would never pay Nintendo in the first place, but gigantic corporations are retarded, and instead of using the carrot to get people to buy their shit, they use the stick to beat them into submission which just doesn't work that way. You haven't offered them anything they'd finally be willing to buy, it's possible they were never willing to buy anything for you, and you're not the government to be entitled to everyone's money. If you didn't have the mobster mentality on profit you'd understand that piracy is a non-issue.

 

[X Prime]

This still doesn't prove that Yuzu devs were the ones actively distributing leaks, this just shows that their emulator was used to play those leaks, but at the same time jailbroken Switch consoles could run those too.

Here's the thing. You don't need proof of Developer X Doing Y Using Software Z.

There is absolutely nothing stopping someone from forking an open source emulator, making a "paid version", and the company decides to go after Developer X for enabling or contributing to the existence of the paid version. What's Developer X going to do, when the legal system is oftentimes about whoever has the bigger war chest?