After Nintendo recently filed a lawsuit against the Yuzu team, it was pretty much inevitable this was going to happen wasn't it. The end of Yuzu is officially here.
Nintendo and Tropic Haze LLC (Yuzu) filed a joint motion for the court to enter Final Judgment and Permanent Injunction, so as I understand it's not quite final until the judge stamps it.
As a result the Yuzu team have announced their intention to shut everything down, and have agreed to pay Nintendo $2.4M USD in damages. As per the other document, Yuzu will also transfer the domain name used over to Nintendo and they have agreed to delete every single thing related to Yuzu that they have.
Writing in the yuzu Discord (and posted on X) the developer bunnei said:
Hello yuz-ers and Citra fans:
We write today to inform you that yuzu and yuzu’s support of Citra are being discontinued, effective immediately.
yuzu and its team have always been against piracy. We started the projects in good faith, out of passion for Nintendo and its consoles and games, and were not intending to cause harm. But we see now that because our projects can circumvent Nintendo’s technological protection measures and allow users to play games outside of authorized hardware, they have led to extensive piracy. In particular, we have been deeply disappointed when users have used our software to leak game content prior to its release and ruin the experience for legitimate purchasers and fans.
We have come to the decision that we cannot continue to allow this to occur. Piracy was never our intention, and we believe that piracy of video games and on video game consoles should end. Effective today, we will be pulling our code repositories offline, discontinuing our Patreon accounts and Discord servers, and, soon, shutting down our websites. We hope our actions will be a small step toward ending piracy of all creators’ works.
Thank you for your years of support and for understanding our decision.
Update 05/03/24: While "support of Citra" was a bit ambiguous, it's now confirmed Citra is also gone. The website is down and replaced with the statement, the GitHub is also gone.
Considering it's open source though, and has been out in the wild for some time now, it's unlikely this is truly the end because it's been so widely circulated. However, it will make it a lot harder for anyone seeking it out, and no doubt put off anyone from doing anything with Yuzu code they might still have.
For now, the Ryujinx project at least still exists and as far as I know hasn't had Nintendo come knocking — yet.
Quoting: doragasuUSA: you can ban the distribution of an emulator because it is used to play unauthorized game copies, but well, you cannot ban guns distribution even when they are unfortunately used from time to time to kill innocent people. God bless AmericaLet me explain: the distribution of an emulator directly enables, facilitates and promotes piracy (at least per nintendo) which leads to the decrease in sales. This means a company is missing out on money it would have made otherwise, we can't have that.
TRIGGER WARNING: Dark sarkasm ahead. Do not read further if you are sensitive. You have been warned.
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I apologize for this blackest of black humor. I will voluntarily quarantine myself now. Be safe and hug your loved ones.
Last edited by benstor214 on 7 March 2024 at 5:29 pm UTC
What if you OWN a legally physical copy of GC/WII/3DS/SWITCH and you want to transfer your backup to your compurter and play it with an emulator for better-native resolution with your monitor screen with higher graphics.
Nintendo should release an emulator that validates ISO legallity somehow and then play it on your computer with no problem
Nintendo is stupid.
Now downloads could take place in torrents instead of direct links.
Quoting: tuxer415This lawsuit is kinda wrong.
What if you OWN a legally physical copy of GC/WII/3DS/SWITCH and you want to transfer your backup to your compurter and play it with an emulator for better-native resolution with your monitor screen with higher graphics.
Nintendo should release an emulator that validates ISO legallity somehow and then play it on your computer with no problem
Nintendo is stupid.
Now downloads could take place in torrents instead of direct links.
It's Yuzu team that is stupid in this case, they made a lot of mistakes that are legally blameworthy.
I'm not talking about the people who own a physical copy or digital license.
Quoting: 14This is anecdotal, but nobody who has told me they play Nintendo games on the Steam Deck also told me they purchased those games. They did not. Nope, they didn't already have a Switch copy. They were willingly ripping Nintendo off because they had a distaste for them, and they "don't need the money." It is thieving out of hatred and an unjustifiable sense of deserving something for nothing. That attitude gets on my nerves really fast. Wanting something doesn't mean you deserve it. Grow up.
I'm not talking about the people who own a physical copy or digital license.
You hit the nail on the head. The main point of emulation should always be preservation.
Unless a physical copy of a game is so rare and expensive that even dumping it is a risk, there's no reason to download a ROM in this day and age. If you can shop somewhere on the internet other than E-bay, you'll usually find a good deal on any widely-released game. As for ripping carts, the Retrode 2 is probably the most cost-effective non-DiY solution these days.
As for DiY solutions, I'll quote the Emulation General Wiki (I won't link them directly because of links on certain pages):
QuoteBear in mind that when trying to dump cartridge games, there's a significant risk of having corrupt sectors in the resulting dump. If you're using your DIY adapters but don't know what you are doing, there's a risk of damaging the original cartridge due to out-of-spec voltages.
Heck, if I recall Sega actually gives you the ROMs for Genesis/Mega Drive games in their collection. They were early supporters of emulation on PCs. They used a commercial version of KGEN (a predecessor of the also discontinued Kega Fusion) for their Smash Packs on Windows.
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