Nintendo is suing the makers of the Switch emulator Yuzu, claims 'There is no lawful way to use Yuzu'

www.pcgamer.com Nintendo is suing the makers of the Switch emulator Yuzu, claims 'There is no lawful way to use Yuzu'

Nintendo says Yuzu played a large role in encouraging piracy of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

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Nintendo is suing the makers of the Switch emulator Yuzu, claims 'There is no lawful way to use Yuzu'

www.pcgamer.com /nintendo-is-suing-the-makers-of-the-switch-emulator-yuzu-claims-there-is-no-lawful-way-to-use-yuzu/

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"No lawful way..."
I just finished saving backups of the games I bought using my (hackable) Switch, and I'm planning on setting it up w/ Yuzu on my Steam Deck.
And no one's going to stop me from fairly using my stuff.
- Amen

Love how the courts are framing this. "ROMs are illegal software." "Emulators are for playing pirated software."
Fuck you, Nintendo. You made $1.6bil in profits last year. I bet the number of pirated copies of Zelda: TotK barely amount to a fraction of a percent of that.
- Love how the courts are framing this. “ROMs are illegal software.” “Emulators are for playing pirated software.”
  Ngl I kinda want them to use this logic and see what happens when they try to apply it to Nintendo’s own Virtual Console, which are emulators playing ROMs basically.
  Hell, the games you can play in Animal Crossing are literal emulators with ROMs since they found iNES data in the headers.
  
  EULA for us not for them.
- The courts aren't. Nintendo is.
  Emulation has already been litigated to hell and back. It's very clearly legal, including relying on users pulling a blob or two from their hardware for the whole thing to function.
  
  Where has pulling proprietary blobs been litigated? I was under the impression it hadn't been.
- I believe Nintendo's argument has more to do with dumping the prod.keys than with using dumped "Roms"
  
  This. This seems to be the argument that Nintendo is hinging on. In order for Yuzu to play the games properly you need a prod.keys file. I guess Nintendo is claiming that the keys in this file are owned by them and it's illegal to have that number much in the same way the number used to represent the C code for decoding DVD copy protection is illegal: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number#Illegal_primes
  I am no lawyer but seems tenuous when you can run a program to get the prod.keys from your own console. Especially when that code is legal and exists on GitHub: https://github.com/Decscots/Lockpick_RCM

Well that is just straight up factually wrong
- It's utterly ridiculous how copyright law has been twisted to erode the very idea of ownership. Does it have software on it? Well then it's not just against the terms of service... It's illegal!

This is insane but why aren’t they going after Ryujinx too?
- Probably cheaper to get one scary settlement and then use that to bully everyone else.

I am legally allowed to make backups of my hardcopies. I can very legally buy TOTK and dump a ROM for Yuzu. In fact, that is precisely what I did to get my copy for Yuzu.

I choose to try not to pirate, and thus this kinda thing absolutely pisses me off because this is so disingenuous, because I dig into the nitty gritty of how to do all this stuff legit.
Randomizers alone make Nintendo games in particular so much more alive, and all but require the use of ripping software and quite often emulators.
These emulators can make even current titles look even more beautiful and play more smoothly than their native platform, too.
Yeah, people are going to pirate using this stuff, but its wrong to treating the tools themselves as being inherently bad. They are quite often used by people who care very much about these games, and do give fair financial support to Nintendo.
- Not to mention archival purposes for games that will be lost to time if not preserved.
  
  Nintendo would rather want games to not be preserved so people can shell out some money to play a remaster on the next gen or 2.

Careful Nintendo. If backing up a game I purchased and playing it any way I want is stealing, then I might as well skip the first step.
- I was genuinely thinking to purchase a Switch to play Captain Toad while traveling because, I like the game on emulation.
  But well they totally fucked it. Never going to purchase anything from them. Greedy shit corporations.
  I rather donate my money to Yuzu than to give a penny to Nintendo.

Surface-level article, Nintendo's main angle of attack here is financial, they're pointing to a lot of evidence on Yuzu's Patreon, such as posting Xenoblade DC running well a day before official release, and subscriber money doubling around TOTK launch. This approach to emulator lawsuits is new territory apparently.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/02/how-strong-is-nintendos-legal-case-against-switch-emulator-yuzu/
- It was fairly quickly demonstrated IIRC that Yuzu could emulate TOTK at higher res and 60fps. So it’s entirely possible to me that Yuzu’s Patreon sub soared because users wanted to play their purchased game on better hardware.
  I hope the courts find in favor of Yuzu and set the legal precedent that it’s legal to dump secret numbers and purchased software from a device you own.

24 comments