Jokes on Nintendo, my next handheld is most likely still going to be a steam deck (clone?). The only difference now is I won’t buy a physical game and emulate their games on it by (downloading) a backup.
I’m not proud of it but I’ve pirated games when I was a kid, but I bought every game I pirated if I could get it on modern hardware. Even the mediocre games like Minecraft.
It’s tempting as a kid when your parents gets you an Xbox but never got any games for it, eventually you wanna play more than demos. They got duke nukem forever with the xbox and as a kid I preferred the pack in game of Kinect adventures over it.
Definitely get a Deck, it’s shocking how powerful the hardware is. If price is an issue you can wait until the refurbished ones go on sale again and pick up the cheapest model for $280.
One day when I don’t feel as poor. I got more important things like going into debt for a piece of paper.
While it’s weird that they waited so long, emulating Nintendo systems is nothing new. We used to emulate SNES in the late 90s. Nintendo has generally always been the first and last name in quality single player gaming experiences, and their games are always in high demand. There will always be a contingent of people dedicated to emulating Nintendo systems, no matter what Barbara Streisand has to say about the matter.
We used to emulate SNES in the late 90s
And NES as well. Thanks Shitman!
Ah yes. I remember. 1997, I was 12, I had my own computer, and I’d be in my room all day just playing with my NESticle. And then, a little later, pNES.
Is that last line a Duck sauce reference?
No, it’s referring to the Streisand Effect.
Huh. Thanks for teaching me something.
One of today’s lucky 10,000!
That song slaps tho.
Please elaborate while I find some popcorn.
Not the content I deserve, but the content I needed.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=wWhtcU4-xAM&t=1
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
It wasn’t so much a “wait” as that the reliability of emulation has now caught up with products they’re currently selling. But now I’m curious if this ever happened with the GBA or other handheld consoles that were a bit easier to emulate.
The GBA was emulated before the console was even out in North America.
While it’s weird that they waited so long,
I think they are afraid emulation on steam deck gains traction.
Since it runs Linux, you could install and run Nintendo games on a competitor portable console that has a lot more games and a more powerful hardware
That’s not the reason, you have been able to do so for a while. Even longer if you count Breath of the Wild (which ran with the Wii U emulator). The only reason they got their shit kicked in by Nintendo is greed. Patreon + extra money for early access + wanting to create their own paid copy of Nintendo’s online service + timing their press releases with Nintendo releases…
Emulators are legal. Fully intending to profit from creating a competing product isn’t. That’s why they also gave in so quickly when the lawyers showed up, despite having plenty of money to afford defense.
Emulators are legal
In general yes, but Yuzu itself probably never was legal in the first place.
At least in the EU and US there are anti-circumvention laws that make circumventing anti-piracy/copy-protection measures illegal in itself even if its done on games you own. Since Yuzu used the prod.keys to decrypt the games, it most likely already broke these laws.
People are playing Zelda at high frame rates?! NOT ON MY WATCH - Nintendo
“while it’s weird that they waited so long”
My conspiracy theory is that the Switch 2 is going to operate on the same architecture, but have better hardware. My guess is for backwards compatabiliy. This means that on launch day, Yuzu was likely still going to be the best way to play Switch 2 games. Basically it’s a threat to a console that isn’t even out yet. Just a theory.
I figure there’s enough differences that they want to scare protentional devs from making the changes needed for it to work on Switch 2. They knew that getting rid of an existing open source emulator wasn’t really possible, but is a new one is not made, then its not just a matter of sharing copies.
But given that consoles are becoming more and more PC-like, I wonder how hard it will be to make an emulator anyways.
What stops the yuzu devs from working on ryujinx?
Fear. The settlement agreement included promising to never do anything related to violating Nintendo’s IP rights again.
If any of the developers want to grab a VPN and new username, they absolutely could. Whether they want to risk getting sued for multiple millions as an individual is another story, however.
If I were Ryujinx I would immediately not let encrypted games play with future updates.
But…a random program online not affiliated with Ryujinx would crop up online and would… mysteriously decrypt games
… Huh how coincidental
Yuzu is written in c++ and can run on android, which seems like a major advantage over ryujinx.
Switch 2s architecture will probably be very similar, so Nintendo might have done it to protect the next gen.
Yeah like that is going to work. There are forks left and right.
Of course it’s not gonna work. But that’s just how lawyers think I suppose.
More like Nintendo thinks they can deal with their costumers, but the outcome stays the same so it doesn’t really matter
Are there any that actually have a new team behind them that would presumably add Switch 2 support?
Dunno, but it will come
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.
Yes there are forks, but having a fork and maintaining it are 2 completely different things.
Absolutely.
Although i think the need and the drive to use emulators is higher then ever. So the next project without direct responsibility will come eventually I think.
Forks are meaningless.
Unless a team steps up to continue development, the project is as good as dead.
I can still play emulated games right now, so its alive and well for my purpose (playing games that I fucking paid for without stutter at 60fps)
This time it won’t be based in Jersey either good luck closing down a project hosted in China or San Marino. The Yuzu team has done a great service closing the case as quickly as possible
I don’t understand why people who work on these things don’t project their identity and location any better…
Host in a random country, accept crypto donations and make them untraceable by switching them to monero, always use a VPN…
Right? It seems the official discord also had links to where to get ROMs, as in pirated ROMs. I can’t believe they got complacent knowing Nintendo could come after them at any second.
This made me wonder if blockchain tech could, hypothetically, be used as a sort of distributed SCM platform, where each commit is stored as data appended to a transaction, not unlike git. Blockchain’s polycentric structure would solve the issue of resilience and integrity, and Monero’s technology could be used to anonymize the commits.
This would of course come with all of the disadvantages of blockchain, and the project would still need a central authority to accept or reject commits, to manage branches, and to define which transactions represent the HEAD of each branch. I think it’s at least an interesting concept.
But we can already mirror a git repository, and you can already sign your commits. The weak point here was the developers’ identities, not the platform on which the data was hosted.
Yes but they are debt slaves to Nintendo for life
Nah they Incorporated specifically to protect themselves. The company will go bankrupt, but the people will be protected.
Oh that’s good to know
Not necessarily. The LLC will pay out as much as it can and then filler for bankruptcy. The individuals will likely get off scott free since they’ve not actually been convicted of any wrongdoing.
I imagine that developing Yuzu and Citra would be a huge item on their CVs, too. Honestly, if Nintendo were smart, they would have tried to buy the project somehow and hire the developers to work on backwards compatibility for whatever the console that comes after the Switch 2 is…
How do I hack the shit out of my oled switch
With a cleaver and buy a steam deck instead
I wish, my pc is no longer capable of running games and I still need it for utilities and such (porn). The switch was a gift but I would probably have bought one anyway to be honest, but now I see the light
You’re allowed a pc and a steam deck. There’s no law against both.
Maybe I dont know how a steam deck works lol I am woefully illiterate when it comes to some tech things. My understanding was that a steam deck still needed a pc to be streaming games from to some extent, is that not the case?
One thing of note with the Steam Deck is that it CAN stream games from your PC, allowing you access to your whole library. You get access to fewer games in SteamOS (there’s still a ton). You can always look up what games are natively compatible with Steam Deck before you buy. The big ticket games are usually compatible nowadays (Starfield was markedly absent, but BG3 is there all-the-way).
That is not the case. It’s a standalone device that you can play pc games on. It is very similar to the switch in design, but able to play a whole lot more. You should definitely look into it.
ohsnap
I think you’re thinking of the Steam Link.
The Steam Deck can stream games from your PC, but it is a perfectly capable standalone gaming device.
am dumb, that’s sick, will get
Also, the steam deck has a desktop mode that allows it to act like a PC
We will help you.
You might be thinking of the Steam Link
You get a steamdeck.
Alas, the only easily hackable Switch’s were made until about a year after release. To hack modern ones requires a special mod chip that isn’t easily soldered on.
Nintendo unfortunately did a good job on hack proofing the Switch.But you say its still possible?
Yes, and with literally every other console over time it will get easier and easier
Get a hammer and smash the fuck out of it.
And even their worst accusations are ‘It cost five percent of our biggest game’s revenue! It was only a record-breaking success!’
That right let’s teach them a lesson by enjoying their hard work and artistic expression without paying them because that makes them the assholes!
Seriously, when did the entire emulator scene turn into a bunch of whiny simps crying foul every time Nintendo, a company of hard working and creative artists ,tries to protect its art. Seriously, at what point of success are you allowed to labor without being exploited by shitty people who refuse to pay for art. Video games are art, the makers are artist, and people who emulate for the purpose of piracy are shit. You’re not kewl and edgy because you refuse to pay for something. It makes you a useless freeloader. Your actions ensure the continued enshitification of gaming. You’re the reason everything is a live service hell of micro transactions and $20 horse skins. Buy the games, support the artist, quit trying to justify your actions, and if you like me enjoy emulation legally, stop standing up for and supporting the useless freeloaders.
Is that a copypasta
Yep, straight from the script the George soros space laser society of America gave me. Can’t wait til my $20 check clears so I can buy a new keffiyeh.
Do… do you think the people who actually make the game get royalties or something? Bc once the game is made that’s it for them lol
Do… do you believe the people who actually make the game don’t continue to work for the company, work on sequels and other projects, and generally rely on the financial success of their artwork for their continued livelihood? BC once the game is made, they usually don’t quit their jobs and stop making art. lol
I’m pretty sure that people pirating games have little to do with the current surge micro transaction filled games. It’s the opposite, the people who buy all that shit and let companies get away with it are to blame.
Politely disagree, as live service and micro transactions are part of the greater push by the industry to take away physical and/or perpetual ownership of the games we buy. The people who pay aren’t perpetuating the push, they are simply victims of it.
Congrats! You’re part of the problem!
i’ve been known to be a bit of a naughty boy
You’ve got a little shoe polish on your teeth, boot licker.
Oh please, do me a favor and come up with something more biting and critical than accusing me of not being able to make salient points about piracy without the assistance of my corporate masters leather clad encouragements.
The very beginning. The emulator scene has existed since the 80s. The emulator scene has fought against Nintendo since literally the NES. And they have frequently won.
But for what purpose other than to circumvent honest and responsible commerce? I have not seen a single reasonable explanation for why emulation and piracy are intrinsically linked and therefore require support for one in order to substantiate the other.
I’m anti capitalist and explicitly anti commerce, especially with regards to large corporations, so. Whether it’s for piracy or not doesn’t matter. When I buy a game, I should have a legal right to do whatever I want with the data comprising that game. Including creating software to play it on other devices. It, therefore, should absolutely be legal to create and use emulators. Whether a particular end user is using it on legitimately purchased copies is beyond the scope of control of the creator of the emulator. This was already settled in courts in the 90s.
Piracy is also moral. It’s always moral to pirate content created and/or distributed my international corporations with income in the billions.
So morality of crime is defined by the success of the victim? So if you become incredibly successful for what you created there becomes a point where it’s moral for you to lose all rights and control over your art? So then the moral of the lesson is art is worthless and creating new things serves no useful purpose? Almost like the game companies learned that same lesson from people like you and just started making shittier games to accommodate their shittier fans. Thank you!
So morality of crime is defined by the success of the victim?
Close, the morality of a crime is defined by the impact that committing the crime has on the lives and rights of others. Killing someone is a vile crime. You’ve taken away someone’s inaliable right to life. Stealing from the poor is a vile crime. You have taken the means of survival from someone who struggles to survive. Stalking is a vile crime. You’ve interceded on someone’s inaliable right to privacy and safety.
How does downloading a cracked video game or a TV show impact others? Who is being victimized, and how are they being victimized? Say, for instance, that today I download a game for free. What tangible impact does this have on others?
So if our ‘victim’ is a multi billion dollar corporation that is one of the fastest growing game companies in the world and is quickly approaching income levels rivaling some small nations, the tangible impact that me downloading their game for free has is literally none. There is no impact. They will never even know that I did it, and I do not consider the “right to commerce” as a fundamental human right. I do not think that me taking potential profits from billionaire investors is in any way interceding on their human rights and also do not believe that the action causes any harm to them.
So if you become incredibly successful for what you created there becomes a point where it’s moral for you to lose all rights and control over your art?
Corporations are not people. The designers artists and programmers at Nintendo do not direcy profit from game sales. They are paid a salary by their company. Again, it’s relative. There is no such thing as a moral absolute, we have to consider the context in which actions happen and the effects those actions cause. Stealing from the poor is vile. Stealing from Walmart isn’t.
So then the moral of the lesson is that art is worthless and creating new things serves no useful purpose?
I do not consider the primary purpose of art to be profit for shareholders, if that’s what you consider “useful purpose”. Art is useful in that it communicates human emotions and experiences. It’s useful in that it delights us, it inspires us, and we take great enjoyment in it. Even if all art was free, this would still be true. Free games are fun. Free books are worth reading. Free music is worth listening to. Paintings don’t lose value because I can see them without paying. Your view of art and your view of capital are so intertwined that you are ignorant of the reality that art is not capital.
Almost like the game companies learned that same lesson from people like you and just started making shittier games to accomodate their shittier fans.
Every single corporation on Earth will cut as many corners as possible to generate the maximum possible revenue for the minimal possible cost. Shitty games still sell exceedingly well. They have a profit incentive to invest as little money into their games as possible. Games as products are less enjoyable than games as art. We love games whose creators felt passion in creating them. We love games whose designers believed in what they were making, and felt connected to their product. Faceless corporations lose this entirely. Games are how Nintendo makes money. Therefore, even if no one wants to make this game, it must be made. For Nintendo must turn profit. This is part of the reason some games are amazing experiences and others are clear, transparent cash grabs.
Oh no, one faceless corporation won’t pay another faceless corporation for a sale they wouldn’t have made anyway.
Gunpei Yokoi, Shigeru Miyamoto, Satora Iwata, and Reggie Fils-Aimé…Faceless? Of all the gaming companies Nintendo is literally the least “faceless”.
Nintendo refuses to fix the joycon drift issue and still charges full price for a 7 years old device. We will call it a moral draw.
Funny how people use that term moral victory when what they mean is that they have no “moral” qualms with stealing. Especially if they can convince themselves the company deserves it. Thats what you’ve said. Rules and laws don’t apply as long as you have your “moral victory” Congrats, winner!
Look at this corporate slave handing down life lesson. Get off your high horse bitch.
Corporate slave? Life lessons? I don’t remember inviting you to my ted talk.
Nintendo basically sent out a press release saying “Its super easy to pirate our games!”. This is really only positive for them if no other projects show up.
And if ryujinx didn’t also exist
Shhh
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.
this doesn’t apply to hundreds of their contributors tho right
What if I told you that throwing more developers at a problem != that problem getting solved faster?
there are hundreds of open issues on ryujinx.
so there are hundreds of problems with zero developers to solve them.
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?
Nintendo would stop them. If yuzu devs want to go to court, they can continue development.
Yuzu devs could do it anonymously, but that’s gl on not doxxing yourself, at risk of lawsuit.
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.
I mean, I guess it can happen through private web communities of course. It would just enter the region of game cracks.
Also marginally possible someone reverse engineers, and puts up something unrecognizable compared to the original.
it’s most likely part of the cease and desist order
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.
Can’t they just create pseudonyms?
Okay then what? Unless the devs try real hard to stay hidden, Nintendo’s lawyers will do a little bit of digging, they will find out who those pseudonyms are, and sue again. And this time the devs will be extremely lucky if they can get away with just paying out 2.4m because the law generally does not appreciate it very much when you try to ignore and avoid its previous rulings. A console emulator is absolutely not worth the potentially devastating legal consequences.
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.
This is similar to how Tachiyomi forks can still exist. Even though tachiyomi never had a real case go to court, they’ve separated the extensions library from the reader so nothing comes “preloaded” with any potential copywrite infringing parts.
to keep it working on new operating systems
That’s really easier said than done
Yeah, of all the forks and mirrors I’ve checked out, none of them even have the Android builds. Obviously I’ve not checked them all, but still…
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.
Maybe they know this banger and think she’s a song? 🤷
Lol people born after 9/11 were <9 when this song came out.
Fair, but they still could have heard it on the radio while their parents were driving them to hockey practice or welding seminars or whatever 9yos did back then 🤷
Yeah, but no one knows who Bob is and we keep calling him people’s uncles.
Which adds to the point: even though no one knows who she is anymore or about her giant beachfront mansion she tried to have removed from the Internet, her name lives on in infamy
Damn. Nevermind, you just appealed to my petty side. I can clearly see now that I was wrong haha.
Historians will look back one day and be like “this woman was so renowned for her terribleness, we can trace the entymology of this modern word back to her name”.
If gameboy games are anything to go by, prices almost never drop. I remember getting a GBA game for 20 euros back when the Nintendo SD was already ending its end of life.
There is a copy/fork of it already called nuzu
It’s not the distribution that they wanted to stop. It was future updates
Yeah that’s not gonna stop either.
Turns out it was just a 14 year old who cloned everything and hadn’t commited any code to GitHub in the past year. Suyu is the new wave now.
And if they kill that, it’s miizu. Then wezu. Then nouzu.
Not anymore
Looks like it’s still available through a mirror.
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
So they’ll stop giving frequent updates to the software huh? That’ll make it easier to pirate.
My speculation is that their main goal was to thwart the teams potential efforts emulating the next Nintendo console. It is likely going to be close enough to the switch that the same team will have an easy time emulating it. Not anymore.
Fuck Nintendo, first year I won’t be celebrating March 10th #FreeBowser
Tbh, is it really pirating if I bought the game and wanted to play it on a different unofficial platform?
I understand the main thing was Yuzu was apparently offering builds that work with unreleased games (which how tf does that work) via Patreon, but if the game’s been released and I bought it, I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to download a ROM or even dump my own and play it on an emulator that offers better performance.
