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NocturnalMorning ,

Wow, fuck Nintendo. For well over a decade they didn’t give a shit about emulating old games. In fact, it was and is still the only way to play a lot of old games. Now nintendo is trying to use their shit flimsy online emulator as an excuse to claim IP right to 30 year old games they don’t give a shit about. Granted this is about the emulator itself, but doesn’t matter. Guess I won’t be buying the next switch console.

Alto , (edited )
@Alto@kbin.social avatar

There's a fairly big difference between "you're making an emulator for a console we stopped selling anything for a decade ago" and "you are actively cutting into the sales of everything we are currently doing"

Frankly, Im not quite sure what anyone expected. Of course they were going to go after them harder tan usual, especially when they made it pretty obvious they used proprietary code from TOTK. I'm as pro-piracy as they come, but ya still gotta use some of your brain.

E: sp

NocturnalMorning ,

Eh, I don’t really care. Now that every manufacturer and developer under the sun has decided I don’t own the games I buy. I couldn’t care less about their games getting pirated. I mean, I don’t own the game anyway according to their ToS, I just rent it.

But it’s more than that. I can’t even find old game isos easily anymore. Nintendo went out of their way to threaten legal action against sites that had been up for over a decade so they could do their shitty online emulator store.

They’re going after everyone now. I bought my switch in 2016, won’t be buying another one.

Alto ,
@Alto@kbin.social avatar

I'm not saying they're right for it, just stating what reality is. Anyone with half a brain knew this was coming the second they used proprietary code.

Sethayy ,

used code from totk? What? They implemented patches early using knowledge from it, but including even a single line from the game would be incredibly stupid and contradictory to having to dump your keys in the first place

yamanii ,
@yamanii@lemmy.world avatar

Watching the latest accursed farms video was very eye opening, even services like GOG with no DRM probably still have that legalese where you don’t own the files, but in reality you do since they can’t stop you from playing them, the legal sphere is even more of fantasyland than I thought, it actively denies reality.

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

The precedent that almost everyone cites (because it is some of the only) is Sony vs Bleem.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleem!

Initial release was in 1999 and lawsuits were around the same time. PS2 launched in 2000. So while the bleem marketing was a complete mess, the emulator existing while a console was still “alive” does not matter in the slightest.

Alto ,
@Alto@kbin.social avatar

The main point of that ruling was that they weren't using proprietary code. Yuzu almost certainly did after the TOTK leak, unless they magically just happened to improve that much directly afterwards.

I don't like it, but there's a pretty big chance that Yuzu loses this one.

breakingcups ,

That’s not what using proprietary code means in this case.

Besides, it’s possible they “legitimately” bought a copy of the game from a store that accidentally broke the embargo date. You can’t legally blame customers for that.

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

Yes. I agree and said as much elsewhere in this thread.

My issue was with your statement of

There’s a fairly big difference between “you’re making an emulator for a console we stopped selling anything for a decade ago” and “you are actively cutting into the sales of everything we are currently doing”

Where, no, there is not a difference there.

trafficnab ,

Sega v. Accolade was about using proprietary code, Sega lost and the small snippet of code that was reverse engineered out of the Genesis was deemed fair use because there was no other way to get an unlicensed cartridge to run on the console

Sethayy ,

They didnt use any code from TOTK (such would be piracy); they did however use it to improve the emulator via game specific patches before the release date (hinting some devs got the game less than legally, but not yuzu itself)

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

Gonna be real interesting how this plays out.

IANAL (and am not a lawyer) but the general takeaway of Sony vs Bleem was “emulation fine so long as you aren’t using proprietary code”. Hence why it is generally “find your own BIOS” and all that.

The nonsense about yuzu is facilitating piracy is going to be a mess. But I do wonder if Tears of the Kingdom is not going to be a problem. Because it was not at all hidden as to why Yuzu et al suddenly had a bunch of mysterious compatibility updates a day or two after the leaked roms went online.

Even the argument that the devs who worked on that had totally legit copies they got from Uncle Greg’s Game Store on 2nd street might get into a mess if nintendo argues those weren’t legitimately sold because they broke embargo date. And it is hard to argue those improvements were for people to play their own dumps.

So yeah. Gonna be real interesting (assuming this isn’t just an attempt to legal fee yuzu to death). Because if I were to put on my day job hat: Doing ANYTHING based on pre-release material is a huge no no since they only had access to it because people violated contracts with Nintendo’s distributors.

And… the more I look at this, the more I think the yuzu devs may have fucked it all up for the rest of us and it really depends on if nintendo’s lawyers drill in on that or continue for the broad reaching stuff.

Bookmeat ,

This is a great point and yuzu may get burned for it. Hopefully, it’s not lost on developers of future emulators.

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

The issue is that it is an incredibly dangerous precedent.

There are already a decent number of emulators where the devs have done a good enough job making plausible deniability but it is still VERY obvious they looked at the “leaks”. But if it is decided that “used a pre-release leak to develop code/support” is a no-no, then everyone knows to not do a 0-day update. But they start getting wary of doing day 1 updates because… it is still pretty obvious that they had that ready to go.

Which… could even be nintendo’s plan. The example I always like to use is Mass Effect PC. For those who were likely born well after that, MEPC was INCREDIBLY anticipated because we were all cool and didn’t need Mass Effect because Bioware were traitors who abandoned PC but… motha fugging Mass Effect. It was one of the early activation model Securom games DRM wise. And the warez groups did a bad crack that broke like two hours in (which meant they already “won” the release and fixing it was low priority). Which led to waves of pirates (self included) rushing Best Buy because we needed it NOW.

So if this makes for “okay, we can’t add support for this game until a week after launch”, that does wonders for sales figures. And, in a uniquely nintendo way, it avoids the ever more popular “So… this runs at like 10 FPS on the switch and 120 FPS on a potato laptop” problem.

Bookmeat ,

I know it’s hard to hear because sometimes we are so passionate about these things, but it’s okay to have to wait for support on an unsupported platform. Having to wait a week is, in fact, incredibly fortunate. Consider how long it takes to get mac or Linux support on many PC games. A week? We’re laughing.

And if the sales figures are bumped in the first week? Let’s try to understand why it’s bad that developers, publishers, and those other middle-men get paid for their work. Not all games are wildly successful. Most aren’t. And evil Nintendo making more money… Well, if they don’t make money you don’t get any games. And consider that this is a platform which for the most part has avoided sinking into shady and unethical loot box practices. You can fault Nintendo for a lot, but from their perspective, free 0-day access to their games is an existential crisis.

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

I am all for support of devs. But it has increasingly become clear that playing a nintendo game on a nintendo platform is an objectively worse experience because even nintendo first parties have difficulty utilizing the switch. People love to pretend that “piracy is a service issue” but… it kind of is in this case. Was it Metroid Dread that had significant slowdowns on switch AND lots of qtes and parry windows?

But also? Regardless, I have very serious issues with using lawsuits and the legal system to muscle The Little Guy (even if they were idiots) to protect corporate interests.

brainw0rms ,
@brainw0rms@hexbear.net avatar

IANAL (and am not a lawyer)

volcel-judge

NuraShiny ,

I too do anal

theneverfox ,

Can we just take a second to say what utter bullshit it is that “facilitating piracy” is so allowed to be an argument?

How are we in this wacky world where rights holders get to say “what you built allows piracy, we demand total control over you”

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

I mean, like it or not, piracy is incredibly dark grey (if not outright black) in the eyes of the law. Its one of the reasons there is such a strong focus on “abandonware” and “oh, this is about digital preservation” in the various circles. It doesn’t fool anyone but it is at least a stronger protection than the old “Hey FBI. You aren’t allowed to look at my DC++ share” folder that people had back in the day.

Iapar ,

You can argue that Nintendo facilitates piracy by making games that people want to pirate.

yamanii ,
@yamanii@lemmy.world avatar

Because it was not at all hidden as to why Yuzu et al suddenly had a bunch of mysterious compatibility updates a day or two after the leaked roms went online

No way they were that stupid, Ryujinx always waits for the release date to publish those specific updates.

module ,

TIL: IANAL

Telorand ,

Honestly, I’m surprised this didn’t happen sooner. Emulating old hardware is one thing, but they have a current vested interest in their most recent console.

Still, Nintendo’s lawyers can rub spurge on their eyes, and I hope the Yuzu devs find a great lawyer (or better yet, are safely hidden behind some kind of digital or geopolitical veil).

Tankiedesantski ,

safely hidden behind some kind of digital or geopolitical veil

When will people learn that the safest place to develop a Nintendo emulator is Pyongyang?

dalekcaan ,

I guess that depends on your definition of “safe”

M137 ,
@M137@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, it has always felt like we had something we couldn’t wish for or expect. And it’s a much better experience than using an actual switch.

Sadly the only surprising thing about this is how long it took for Nintendo to do something, I guess they worked on having as good of a chance as they could.

Telorand ,

It would be a waste of time to litigate a case they think they’ll lose, after all. Unfortunately, once the devs included proprietary code in the application, they kind of sealed their fate.

Maybe they got a little too excited over TotK and thought they were under Nintendo’s radar. Maybe they felt like they owed the community an app that could play Nintendo’s highly-anticipated game practically on day one. I dunno. Either way, it was a miscalculated move, and now they’re reaping the consequences.

electricprism ,

youtube.com/watch?v=xZQXdiOdqf8

Kissaki ,

What is that? The linked article, but as a 7-minute video talk?

autotldr Bot ,

This is the best summary I could come up with:

If you’ve ever seen a Steam Deck playing a Legend of Zelda game, chances are you were seeing the Yuzu emulator at work.

It also wants to take away its domain names, URLs, chatrooms, and social media presence; hand yuzu-emu.org over to Nintendo; and even seize and destroy its hard drives to help wipe out the emulator.

While there’s legal precedent that suggests it’s okay to reverse engineer a console and develop an emulator that uses none of the company’s source code, those cases are roughly a quarter of a century old or more — it gets trickier when we’re talking about multiple layers of modern encryption and the copyrighted BIOSes that Yuzu and other modern emulators require to run.

DMCA Section 1201(a)(2) bans products “primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access” to a copyrighted work.

“The important thing is that Nintendo is bringing the case as a DMCA circumvention claim,” says Richard Hoeg, a business attorney who hosts the Virtual Legality podcast.

Many small bands of developers have axed their projects after being approached by Nintendo, and it wouldn’t be surprising if Yuzu settled.

The original article contains 721 words, the summary contains 194 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

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