https://twitter.com/stephentotilo/status/1762576284817768457/
"NEW: Nintendo is suing the creators of popular Switch emulator Yuzu, saying their tech illegally circumvents Nintendo’s software encryption and facilitates piracy. Seeks damages for alleged violations and a shutdown of the emulator.
Notes 1 million copies of Tears of the Kingdom downloaded prior to game’s release; says Yuzu’s Patreon support doubled during that time. Basically arguing that that is proof that Yuzu’s business model helps piracy flourish."
Typical Nintendo move. So sad to see Yuzu possibly going down this way. Even looks like Nintendo might win this one. I’m just gonna download the entire source from GitHub just in case.
I wish this would just go full hydra mode if it goes down though. Start popping up new anonymous accounts releasing the source code everywhere.
Yuzu may go down, but Nintendo hasn’t learned the lessons of the Streisand effect and the hydra effect. The code is open source. 10 more projects will pop up the day after Yuzu goes down (IF it goes down.)
There’s also still Ryujinx
Shhh. The community always seems to forget this one.
Let’s keep it like that so Nintendo lawyers don’t pay as much attention to it.
18 million copies sold and they’re pulling this bullshit. Fuck Nintendo at this point.
Copies of what
Tears of the kingdom.
They could have sold 19 million copies though. Won’t someone think of the billion dollar corporations?
Surely people downloaded BOTW more times than TOTK over the 5+ years Yuzu has been around.
I wouldn’t have bought the stuff I pirated If I couldn’t have pirate it.
I feel like a large number of the people pirating wouldn’t have bought the game even if it was their only option. Then there’s people who pirated and bought the game both. Unrealized profit is not the same as losing money.
Yeah I don’t have a switch, and I’m not about to start it when the second one is near us.
But the IP lobby sucessfully got that idea to the courts. In my country if you are caught torrenting a series episode just for 10 seconds, the courts accept the idea, that you spread like a hundred copies of the IP to people who would have definetely bought it otherwise, so you now owe the IP holder 1000 €.
It is complete horseshit
I think the majority of these is people just downloading it to see if it works for 2 hours and never touch it again lol
The vast majority of people pirating TOTK are just stealing it.
Shit like this is why I moved away from Nintendo for my gaming platform of choice.
But take heart, Nintendo, I’ll try to make time to enjoy Nintendo first party games later on a pre-loaded cheap Chinese knock-off device.
Except, I definitely won’t because Nintendo will definitely succeed in stuffing the genie back into the bottle, and preventing their games from being enjoyed on un-approved platforms in un-approved ways. /s
Fuck you, Nintendo.
God I hate Nintendo, I hate them so goddamn much it’s impossible to find words to express myself.
Why?
This is an excellent comment! All these haters up in here but seldom few list why. I think it’s because their arguments wouldn’t hold up, so they don’t voice them. Just pure rage (useless)
Funny how OP just explained above you, and id wager a good chunk of us feel the way he does. The real question is, why would you condone their actions?
OP of the comment I replied to explained nothing. So I don’t know what you’re talking about, unless you’re just making stuff up. Their comment was nothing but pure rage, and it got a lot of support, much of which couldn’t explain their rage either.
Edit: I see a comment above mine, but when I made my reply there were no other comments. Same time.
If you have more than a couple of neurons you don’t need me to explain why I hate Nintendo, unless you’re a corporate bootlicker who thinks Nintendo can do no wrong. If you really can’t fathom why anyone would hate them, then all you gotta do is Google “Nintendo anticonsumer” and you’ll have reading material for the whole week.
I don’t condone anything necessary. What I do do is I buy their games, play them on their systems, and have fun. I see you guys in here talking about pirating their games, not having fun, and not buying shit. What, I should condone that?! Get out of here.
This is a thread about Nintendo suing a completely legal Emulator. I do believe you’re the one who should “get out of here”, if you’re going to say Nintendo has every right to do this, when everyone else here disagrees.
Coz they’re assholes.
sues emulator-devs - but puts old roms onto their own products (mini nintendo etc. contained roms that “pirates” had distributed online for years)
never lowers the prices of their games
sues everyone left and right - like Palworld-developers
They issue takedowns on youtube channels for including nintendo game-music or gameplay
and probably more reasons
They didn’t sue Palworld’s creators, but that’s the exception to the norm.
I will never not acquire Nintendo products on the open ocean.
I feel the same. They are really disgusting , greedy and shitty company. I would not spend a single cent on their products.
Notes. Thanks.
There are so many things that add up over time. I wouldn’t say I hate them just yet, but I‘be stopped buying their products. The way they go about their business just rubs me the wrong way. If the only way to try to communicate that is disengaging from any of their offerings, be it games or the new switch. Yea, I’m out.
Don’t know how good a case Nintendo has here unless it can prove that Yuzu itself contains proprietary code that allows the ROMs to be played. If the decryption is being done on the ROMs’ end, then that’s just another reason to go after the ones dumping and distributing the ROMs. Nintendo couldn’t even substantially stop Dolphin, and Dolphin actually had a decryption key straight from Wii firmware in it. Good luck to them, but they’re likely going for the wrong legal target. Taking down what ROM sites they can (which would legally be a lot easier than the emulator makers) is just getting rid of drops in the ocean of the ROMs’ spread, but they’re the target Nintendo should be going after.
Somebody correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Yuzu has any proprietary code. Folks have to go to other websites to download the Switch firmware and keys needed to play games.
That’s not really enough to be not in violation. For example, vlc can’t natively decrypt blurays. This is because both its not bundled with the decryption library nor the decryption keys. Vlc out of the box can not decrypt blurays.
If yuzu can, if you provide some keys, eh that might be enough for them to win. It’s certainly not enough to push nintendo away. You unfortunately need to be extremely careful around the dmca stuff.
It really depends on the kind of encryption being used. I’m pretty sure if it’s a common algorithm that logic does not stand.
You don’t just need to provide keys, but an entire firmware dump. Yuzu contains no executable Switch code AFAIK
Not claiming it does. It seems like it might have the tooling to break copyright enforcement if you give it the right keys is the problem.
Nope, you have to obtain the decryption keys yourself - I spent hours hunting around online for a set of console keys and firmware dump to get the emulator working on my steam deck.
If you own a moddable switch you can dump the keys legally, but I don’t plan on doing that any time soon.
They don’t, they just want legal money drain u til they cave. Nintendo is abusive af.
DMCA § 1201 is the anti-circumvention clause. It makes it illegal to circumvent DRM, no copyrighted content reproduction needed.
Yuzu may have defenses if they clean-room broke the encryption, but it’s a fight that will be difficult because the statute itself is unreasonable - essentially outlawing using knowledge to circumvent access controls. To those of us who know about this statute and its history in attempt to lock-down content, it’s a serious scumbag move because they may actually win. The statute is terrible and has been since it was enacted in 1998.
There are two things in conflict that apply to Dolphin, and in general to post-DRM console emulators:
- It’s illegal to create or distribute a device which circumvents DRM.
- It’s legal to ignore DMCA restrictions for the sole purpose of making things interoperable, like running software on machines it wasn’t originally created for when you’d be able to run it on the machine it was created for.
The wording in the legislation is sufficiently vague that it’s not obvious whether it’s illegal to create or distribute a device that circumvents DRM for the sole purpose of interoperability. If a case goes to court, it could set a precedent that has to be applied in the future, or it could be settled out of court to avoid setting a precedent, and so far, there’s no case law setting a precedent.
When Nintendo asked Valve not to allow Dolphin onto Steam, despite what some people were saying, the decryption key was known to be there, and the Dolphin team had legal advice that it was reasonable to expect that the interoperability exceptions had more power than the DRM circumvention restriction. The decryption key is a so-called illegal number, but these are probably not actually illegal, and you can see several examples on the Wikipedia page about them. Nintendo ended up taking no action against Dolphin, and it wouldn’t have been a good case to try and set a precedent with as there weren’t obvious damages now it’s been so long since the Wii stopped being sold, and because the Dolphin team have historically been so diligent about stamping out discussion of piracy in their official communities, making it hard to argue that it’s intended as a DRM circumvention device rather than an interoperability tool. Also, Dolphin’s never taken donations, easily covering all their costs with just basic ads on their site.
Yuzu’s a bit of an easier target. For a start, it’s got a Patreon, and that makes it easier to paint its developers in a bad light as they’re getting money (as well as meaning there’s actual money to recover). They’ve also got data to back up the suggestion that lots and lots of Yuzu users are pirating games instead of just playing games they’ve already got a disk copy of. In a sensible world where laws are applied fairly, there’s an easy argument that hoops to jump through like requiring the user to provide Switch firmware show they’re not trying to make piracy easy, but it’s not like Yuzu will be able to muster up enough money for lawyers to match what Nintendo will be spending.
The worst thing that could come out of this is a decision that interoperability isn’t an excuse for circumventing DRM under any circumstances, as that’ll have serious consequences for a bunch of other projects, and Nintendo are likely to want to push for this precedent to be set rather than accepting an out-of-court settlement. On the other hand, Nintendo could mess up and get the opposite precedent set, although if it looks like that’s going to happen, they’re likely to drop the suit.
they basically have a weak argument because they claim yuzu gives you links to the tools to get the keys to enable piracy.
indeed. they should sue fitgirl instead, who distributes an emulator, with an included rom and keys etc. ready to play
maybe if their games went on sale more…
“Fuck you, here’s a switch port for a Wii U game. It’s $15 more expensive than the original release because fuck you that’s why.”
-Nintendo
Maybe if emulating the game wasn’t often better than playing it on the only hardware the game is made for…
Yup. I was in a second hand game shop (cex) a month or so ago and most switch games were only 10 quid cheaper than the e shop. Mario and legend of Zelda where something like 50 pounds. That’s because those games don’t actually drop in price either psychically or on the eShop much.
Maybe they should have named it Ryujinx or something else that sounds less phonetically like “you sue”
I sincerely hope that Yuzu developers don’t end up like Gary Bowser and have their income garnished for life by Nintendo.
As much as I dislike Nintendo and wish Yuzu devs all the best I’d like to point out that Bowser wasn’t some innocent guy who was caught by big bad company - Moonie has a video that goes into specifics about his involvement with a pirate enterprise worth a shitton of money.
Other than that yeah, I hope they can survive this situation. I wonder if Ryujinx devs are next.
He’s not innocent and went to jail for it, but does it warrant garnishing his income for life? I think they went too far with that.
Oh no, I completely agree no one should be completely screwed over piracy. Just wanted to add some context as I saw a lot of discussion about him ending with “poor innocent dude” without digging into details. That’s all.
Nintendo has a lot of problems that should absolutely be called out. I hope me trying to add more details didn’t imply otherwise.
They are taking his income for life, that’s an insane overreach specially for a big successful company like Nintendo, and it didn’t matter since the actual team behind it is back selling flashcarts that are even better than having to solder a chip.
Yes, it is insane. That case is also a great showcase of how trying to make example out of a single guy doesn’t really work since, as you mentioned, rest of the team is still doing their thing.
I’d like to think (well, hope anyway) that no one looks at Bowser’s story and thinks “yeah, that’s a reasonable conclusion”.
Isn’t moonie the dude who shit talked Karl Jobst and ended up deleting his video because Jobst called him out on how wrong he was on pretty much everything and how terrible his research was. Like literally just watched a couple YouTube videos level research? Don’t know if I can trust someone who would fuck up THAT bad. I get people make mistakes sometimes but that’s just complete negligence especially for someone with an audience that big.
No idea, I’m only familiar with some of his videos so can’t say one way or another. Is there any place I could read about it?
Edit: Also, I believe the video I mentioned has links to specific legal documents surrounding this case so it should be easy to fact check. Still, I’m not trying to whitewash the situation you wrote about would love to learn more if it happened.
Edit 2: A’ight, while I didn’t have time for a deep dive I did manage to confirm that situation happened.
I sucks since the videos I’ve seen seemed reasonably researched and now I’m wondering whether that was a one-time screw up or a normal thing that simply wasn’t caught more often. Guess I’ll try to look into it more when I’m free.
The video by Karl Jobst himself on the matter is pretty informative and has proof to back up all of his claims. Iirc moonie also quoted legal statue and stuff on his video but was rebuked my Karl as well, don’t quote me on this though, I’ll have to rewatch that video to confirm. Here’s the link. Moonie did end up apologizing in the end and Karl did tell his viewers right off the back to not harass Moonie.
If you like LONG form reasonably researched videos about all sorts of topics check out Hbomberguy. He’s great.
the funniest shit about the paperowrk is that nintendo indirectly says nintendo is doing illegal work because they claim a video game emulator is a piece of software that allows users to unlawfully play pirated video games that were published for a specific console on a general purpose device.
they either have to say NSO/Nes/Snes classic are not emulation, or admit their definition of emulators is not the universally accepted definition of it, else Nintendo just Claimed Nintendo is serving up and charging for an unlawful service that is NSO.
I really want a real explanation on how I’ve caused Nintendo financial harm by format shifting my legally owned games. Especially considering I pay for NSO. At some point there has to be precedent that a pirated download does not equal a lost sale and that the individuals are responsible for the infringement and not the tools.
FWIW you can lawfully play pirated games, so that means nothing.
Case in point there is some evidence that Nintendo might have used a dumped and illegally distributed version of Super Mario Bros. in their Wii Virtual Console
That’s a funny one too me, because they are the original source when you dig your way down, so how are they doing anything wrong there?
Yeah it’s someone else’s work… which isn’t there’s anyways… so isn’t it always nintendos then?
Removed by mod
It’s illegal if you don’t own the rom or decoded it with their keys. If you have the physical copy of the game, and a way to decrypt it, it’s not illegal to play the rom on an emulator.
So it’s not illegal, it becomes illegal when you don’t have the physical copy, or decode it with their stuff.
That’s rather clear evidence that they dumped their own ROM and distributed that. Since they own the rights to that ROM, they’re not distributing it illegally though. They can dump and distribute their ROMs all they want; they own the rights to them.
I’m no legal expert but Nintendo’s argument seems to surround a video game emulator being a tool whose primary use is to facilitate illegal circumvention of DRM and piracy. Nintendo’s use of emulation for a legal means to resell their games on another platform, could suggest otherwise. The possible use of a ROM illegally distributed by a 3rd party as inputs in a legitimate Nintendo emulator (though Nintendo denies this) could help separate the issues between ROMs and emulation, because Nintendo’s emulator isn’t used for piracy.
Nintendo could use a copy of the freely available Yuzu to emulate Switch games on their rumored Switch 2, if they were so inclined, and it would be a legitimate use case.
I cannot even come up with a way to express how goddamn hilarious that is!!
Thats funny considering they included emulators in official games. https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/03/nerd_explains_the_challenge_of_bringing_super_mario_sunshine_to_switch
Looks like they’re about to find out.
nintendo-insider.com link for an article that works.
They might have a case if yuzu is actually decrypting switch software. That would be stupid of the developers, though. I would assume that they require you to provide decrypted games.
That’s basically the only leg nintendo has to stand on here, but nintendo can out lawyer you into the poor house regardless.
AFAIK rooted Switch consoles are used to decrypt the games and Yuzu just tries to execute whatever nonencrypted Switch binary. Unless Nintendo can prove that either the Yuzu developers themselves are behind ripping commercial Switch games or directly colluded with the rippers, they’d have a hard time to actually win. That said, regular people with normal income levels will probably just sign everything because a prolonged lawsuit is about just bankrupting them, not being ruled the win by the judge.
From their own guide
yuzu starts with the error “Missing Derivation Components”
yuzu requires console keys to play your games. Please follow our Quickstart Guide to dump these keys and system files from your Nintendo Switch.
Their guide also talks about dumping games from your console so I’m not sure how far it goes, but if they want console keys they are likely decrypting something
Yuzu doesn’t do any encryption breaking. The user is meant to use their Switch to dump their keys, which are legally owned by the user. Then it uses those legal keys to decrypt the ROMs by the exact normal method that the Switch itself uses. They were going based on precedent legal rulings about console emulation. Copying the decryption keys and making copies of the software for archival purposes have both been previously ruled to be perfectly legal for the enduser and don’t constitute piracy. This suit will challenge that notion.
If it isn’t already open source, Yuzu team needs to get that shiz open source post-haste. Let’s get that code absolutely everywhere.
When that popular manga app Tachiyomi got legal bonked, the bajillion forks of it kept some semblance of the original going.
I know there’s money to be made and something like an emulator is considerably more complex than a book reading app/scraper, but it would at least give the project a chance of not dying forever.
there are already 3rd party repositories that come from yuzu. e.g Yuzu Pineapple is a repository that autocompiles the source code that yuzu puts out so that you dont have to sub to get early access builds prebuilt.
What’s more, is that from these passages, it sounds like Nintendo even wants backups of games you have lawfully purchased to constitute copyright violation and made illegal (because they have to bypass encryption, therefore violating DMCA). I’m not fluent in legalese though, so correct me if I’m misinterpreting:
Ah corporate Lawyer BS, pointing out what they want to be true and not pointing out the other. ROMs are legal under existing Copywrite laws under archival laws in the USA (117) and backup laws in Canada (29.24). The Americans have a bit more of a restricted way of using their archives, but that’s not needs to be argued here, as it appears that Nintendo is blaming Yuzu for actions of the general consumer. It’ll be like blaming your Network provider for allowing a user to download a movie, both legally and illegally, thus they should be punished for both actions.
I also love that Nintendo isn’t not stating it’s illegal here, just that it’s infringing because it’s not authorized.
It’ll be like blaming your Network provider for allowing a user to download a movie
Which, by the way it was recently ruled in the US that ISPs can’t be punished for that. article source
Nintendo is blaming Yuzu for actions of the general consumer
If you read the dmca, that’s something you can do. Making tools that enable others to break copyright protection is specifically disallowed. Which is why it’s one of the more insidious copyright laws
However, the thing is that Yuzu doesn’t do that. Yuzu doesn’t include any form of tooling that breaks encryption, facilitates ROM dumping or offer downloads of Nintendo Copyrighted software. They aren’t facilitating it, the user has to provide all of that chain of the emulation on their own. Hopefully this would be obvious to a judge.
it decrypts games using your console keys though? i’ve seen mention of that in their docs so i’m not sure, but yeah if it does that, it’s similar to things that decrypt blurays. feasibly against the dmca because of how broad the dmca is.
Yuzu doesn’t include any form of tooling that breaks encryption
You cannot state that with certainty. That’s the problem.
Yuzu does indeed include a method to use the Switch’s production keys (which you must dump yourself) to decrypt the games. Whether this constitutes effective DRM is not a question that can easily be answered and must be decided by a court on a case-by-case basis.
This will be what the case will hinge on: Is Ninty’s scheme effective DRM?I would say no because symmetric encryption with a publicly known key may aswell be no encryption at all but that’s not my decision to make.
They aren’t facilitating it, the user has to provide all of that chain of the emulation on their own.
Um, no. The emulator is doing the decryption on its own. All the user does is provide the prod keys and unmodified ROM.
Yuzu itself doesn’t provide tools to dump keys and Roms from the Switch. The user has to procure them, or the means to dump them, themselves. Thus Yuzu doesn’t facilitates DRM circumvention. The user has to solve that part on their own. They do provide guides for how to do it on their website. But Yuzu themselves don’t make or distribute the tooling, and Yuzu the software is incapable of doing it.
The dumps are just that: Dumps; 1:1 copies.
The tools don’t decrypt anything; that happens within Yuzu. Why else would users need to provide the prod keys to Yuzu?
These passages imply the writers of them lack basic computer literacy and don’t even understand Nintendo’s own systems.
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“copied the game ROMs into Yuzu” Yuzu is not a VM or other container and the ROMs are simply stored on disk in their original dumped form… Yuzu doesn’t “store” or “contain” any games.
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“any copy not on an authorized cartridge” LOL! What about games downloaded from your own digital marketplace, then?
What about a game you downloaded from Nintendo eShop and stored on an external SD card, which is a standard and well supported storage method on Switch? Is that SD card an “authorized cartridge”?
It says “not on an authorized cartridge or console”, the latter would cover legitimately downloaded games. Agree on the other points though.
“copied the game ROMs into Yuzu” Yuzu is not a VM or other container and the ROMs are simply stored on disk in their original dumped form… Yuzu doesn’t “store” or “contain” any games.
ROMs are indeed copied “into Yuzu”. They must be loaded into Yuzu’s memory in order for Yuzu to execute their code or render their assets. In copyright law, even loading something to memory constitutes a “copy”.
Also, almost every emulator is a VM; do you think those ARM instructions are running on your x86 processor and its desktop OS kernel natively?
I thought Yuzu was actually a dynamic recompiler? I remember this practice started in the days of N64 emulation, and these tools are more like debuggers than like VMs. So in this case, ROMs may only be copied “into Yuzu” byte by byte, not stored as a block in memory. At this point it’s really semantics, but that’s what the lawyers are supposed to figure out, right?
Unlike older emulators, Switch emulators don’t even support saving the emulator state, and their savegame data is stored right on the native filesystem. I believe they are actually more like Wine, and remember, Wine Is Not an Emulator.
Yuzu does recompile some parts during runtime by using a JIT, but the rest is still emulated.
You can’t compare them to Wine, since Wine acts as a compatibility layer by translating OS specific calls, but it does not translate between instruction sets.
The authorized cartridge thing would hopefully be ignored due to several other times Nintendo tried to stop developers like Tengen from bypassing their licensing system and developing their own carts for the NES (you know those weird ones that were usually blue or black? Those were “illegal” in Nintendo’s eyes but they lost every single case they took against them to try and stop them from being made).
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I remember a video of SomeOrdinaryGamers talking about a case where a company (I think it was Nintendo) was arguing that making a copy of games you own yourself should be illegal. The whole case was just that. Probably something from the last 4 months or so.
Anyway, regarding 124, a judge with a working brain would say “There’s nothing here stating that it was Yuzu who allowed, or facilitated, anyone to obtain said reproductions.”
- The copies were not obtained through Yuzu. Yuzu is not a site where the roms are, or even links to any of them. Sure, it exists solely to emulate nintendo’s current hardware, but that’s not the problem.
Sigh. If only law and justice worked based on factual evidence and logic, instead of interpretative contortionism…
