Yuzu agrees to pay Nintendo $2.4 million and will entirely shut down (Citra for 3DS too)

My gaming library is too big and time too short to put up with nintendo's cultural piracy.

I.e.: why even bother copying the games in question when there's decades worth of competition that won't give you manure for playing on a device of your choice?


Last edited by emphy on 5 March 2024 at 3:31 am UTC

If Yuzu was able to pay $2.4 million, is it because their Patreon brought in that much? If Nintendo made their catalog of games, old and new, available to other platforms, there wouldn't be as much piracy. But they persist in the model which no longer has a future. The (near) future is to make a catalog of games available to all platforms, on mobile phones, tablets, computers, etc. through the cloud.

If Yuzu was able to pay $2.4 million, is it because their Patreon brought in that much?
...

Either that or some of the devs also added a bit from other sources of income, extra mortgages and/or other loans.


Last edited by emphy on 5 March 2024 at 3:36 am UTC

Without going into too many details my main suspicion here is that Nintendo obtained logs from discord that exposed the development team of some illegal activities

This is what I suspect too, and it make the entire thing make more sense. If it was just them taking down Yuzu I wouldn't think this, but for them to pay that amount of money without fighting is a bit suspicious.

If anyone comes across the technology necessary to punch people through the monitor, but specifically corporate lawyers that deal with copy"""right""", please do inform me. I have great interest on the potential uses of such an advancement, which could likely send us into the next step of our evolution.

im researching exactly this tech right now! but i need help with funding, 2.4 million to be precise.

I would recommend that the next people who take the code and continue developing it under a different name, host it in some place like the EU and have some kind of region lock where they don't allow downloads from places with DMCA-type anti-digital-lock-tampering laws. Of course, since the code is open and all some people will then mirror it in other places and it will become available around the world--but that will not be the core project's fault, as they will be taking due measures to prevent it.

EU is a terrible idea as it is under US jurisdiction being US vassal states. The EU has gone after piracy before (Sweden, Italy, Germany). Russia/Belarus/China are much better about it, especially now

But this isn't about piracy. Oh, sure, they can say they were "enabling" piracy, but the key issue is that they allegedly enabled the piracy by enabling tampering with a "digital lock" (encryption, DRM et cetera). Such tampering is forbidden under the DMCA, and there are similar provisions in other countries. But it's entirely legal in the EU, is if anything a consumer right.

And while the EU is definitely under the US thumb in terms of geopolitics, their regimes in terms of laws around computing and telecommunications are really quite different, whether it's about privacy, competition or "intellectual property", and the EU shows no signs of interest in harmonizing their approach with the US one.

Without going into too many details my main suspicion here is that Nintendo obtained logs from discord that exposed the development team of some illegal activities

This is what I suspect too, and it make the entire thing make more sense. If it was just them taking down Yuzu I wouldn't think this, but for them to pay that amount of money without fighting is a bit suspicious.

I don't think so. I mean, it's not impossible, it's not even implausible exactly. I just don't think this result is evidence of such a thing.

So first, $2.4 million sounds like a lot, but it sounds a lot smaller once you start thinking about the bucks needed to defend a lawsuit against the likes of Nintendo. And second, they're not going to pay $2.4 million. Because, the company is liable not the individuals, the company no longer has a reason to exist, and the company almost certainly does not have $2.4 million on hand. It's going to declare bankruptcy and Nintendo will get some insignificant sum of money, but Nintendo will not care because the point of the exercise was not money but a headline and the people apologizing abjectly. So the $2.4 million is a fiction to impress people like us if we don't think about it too hard.

If Yuzu was able to pay $2.4 million, is it because their Patreon brought in that much?

HOW? With what?

Probably from the millions they hoovered up from Patreon!

Again, they're not going to pay $2.4 million. Just because there's an announcement doesn't mean anyone involved expects it to happen.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 5 March 2024 at 5:16 am UTC

It sucks that Yuzu and Citra had to take the fall to Nintendon't but it's was bound to happen. Good thing I don't give a crap about Nintendon't first party games for the longest time and even if their Switch 2 is more powerful than PS4 Pro, I'll gladly take the Steam Deck and/or other Linux handheld PC over it any day of the week because they ain't getting any money from me for the crap they keep pulling year after year. Too many games to play outside of what Nintendon't make and sadly, too many people still fall for their nostalgic characters enough to keep the floating around for years to come.


Last edited by ToddL on 5 March 2024 at 5:33 am UTC

The thing is, I don't think Nintendo was going after it as an emulator. Sony v. Bleem (a PSX emulator) set a precedent ~24 years ago. Emulation of older systems is not only permissible, it's vital. Even the IRS uses emulators of 60's-era computers, such as the Martinsburg Monster, that still accept their wildly out-of-date programs written mostly in COBOL.

The way they went after Yuzu was by arguing that it is not just an emulator, that it is a tool used primarily for piracy. Because they're still selling the Switch. Cracking encryption on proprietary hardware that is still on the market is legally dubious at best. I believe Nintendo to be incorrect in assuming that the majority pirated games, but the burden of proof against that would be too great, even in civil court.

Just look at what happened to the guy that cracked the Switch firmware in the first place. Modern Vintage Gamer did a whole video series about why he gives the emulation community a bad name.

Things like this are why I only use emulators for discontinued platforms. In that case, it's much harder for a company to say that it affects their bottom line.

Ripping my own cartridges requires a lot of pain on my part (there are a few different pi-based solutions that lessen that pain today), but it's better than risking a $500,000 dollar fine or five years in prison. Ripping floppies or discs is considerably easier in most cases. I tend to use cdrdao or ddrescue.

Outright piracy of a game still commercially available is theft, no matter how you slice it. Backing up your existing games for a discontinued platform isn't.

I have a couple of 90's-00s games that would be expensive as heck to replace, so I keep the physical copies locked up in a fire-resistant safe and play them via emulation.

If you're interested in Sony v. Bleem, Gaming Historian did a video on the whole debacle. Bleem may have run like a piece of garbage, but every emulation project today owes it a debt.

Businesses have been created around protecting game developers against Switch emulation. You don't pay someone to protect you unless you expect to lose sales, which makes obvious that harm has been done.

Say what now? If you think you will lose sales on other platforms, then you make your game available on those platforms, you don't pay for some protection racket. That sounds pretty Mafia?

Moreover, I am skeptical of the "pro-consumer claims" that people have of the EU. I heard that some crack scene groups got sent to prison in Germany for tampering with Denuvo, if anything thats anticonsumer

You surely can provide a source about the Denuvo case?

Besides: Pro-consumer doesn't mean anything goes. Everything is based in the current laws.

Modern Vintage Gamer did a video about this whole thing earlier if anyone's interested.

The thing is, I don't think Nintendo was going after it as an emulator. Sony v. Bleem (a PSX emulator) set a precedent ~24 years ago. Emulation of older systems is not only permissible, it's vital. Even the IRS uses emulators of 60's-era computers, such as the Martinsburg Monster, that still accept their wildly out-of-date programs written mostly in COBOL.

The way they went after Yuzu was by arguing that it is not just an emulator, that it is a tool used primarily for piracy. Because they're still selling the Switch. Cracking encryption on proprietary hardware that is still on the market is legally dubious at best. I believe Nintendo to be incorrect in assuming that the majority pirated games, but the burden of proof against that would be too great, even in civil court.

Just look at what happened to the guy that cracked the Switch firmware in the first place. Modern Vintage Gamer did a whole video series about why he gives the emulation community a bad name.

Things like this are why I only use emulators for discontinued platforms. In that case, it's much harder for a company to say that it affects their bottom line.

Ripping my own cartridges requires a lot of pain on my part (there are a few different pi-based solutions that lessen that pain today), but it's better than risking a $500,000 dollar fine or five years in prison. Ripping floppies or discs is considerably easier in most cases. I tend to use cdrdao or ddrescue.

Outright piracy of a game still commercially available is theft, no matter how you slice it. Backing up your existing games for a discontinued platform isn't.

I have a couple of 90's-00s games that would be expensive as heck to replace, so I keep the physical copies locked up in a fire-resistant safe and play them via emulation.

If you're interested in Sony v. Bleem, Gaming Historian did a video on the whole debacle. Bleem may have run like a piece of garbage, but every emulation project today owes it a debt.

Manufacturing of Nintendo 3DS stopped over 4 years ago. After last year the Nintendo eShop is completely shut down so even customers who have original hardware cannot purchase digital games. So Nintendo makes no money from neither hardware nor software but they still went after Citra. This is a serious blow to game preservation.


Last edited by Brokatt on 5 March 2024 at 8:06 am UTC

Sad news, though I am not playing nintendo games after famicom

in a case like this it doesn't really matter if you would win the case in the courts

I looked it up, and it does seem in the USA even if you're sued in bad faith it's still hard to recoup expenses

That being said it does seem the devs made quite a bit through Patreon. The internet archive shows they earned about $28,970 per month, and it seems they were active for around six years. So assuming they actually ended up getting as an average half of that through the years, they made around one million in six years through Patreon. Then again, it seems they used to have Citra on the Android app store for $4.99 too, and Citra started on 2014. It sounds like they basically are paying around the same amount they earned

For me regarding if this is just or not, it comes down if they would be harbored in fair use. The nature of the copyrighted material, software which is only partially opaque, actually has been considered to have less copyright protections than usual but still against Yuzu because of the commercial nature. As the copyright holders of the emulator itself are the Yuzu team that's something Nintendo can't use against Yuzu. Character of use, emulation, also goes in favor of Yuzu. However the final criteria, effect on the market, is definitely against Yuzu. So there's at least two criteria against Yuzu. More criteria could be added if relevant, but it's not routinely done.

I feel that Yuzu is not fair use because of the effect on the market, more than the commercial nature of the project... but that's not the case for Citra. It's not the same to make an emulator for a console that's not being manufactured anymore. Then again, only a trial would say this for sure.

host it in some place like the EU and have some kind of region lock where they don't allow downloads from places with DMCA-type anti-digital-lock-tampering laws

I don't know about the rest of Europe, but at least here in Austria we have a similar rule. However, typically Austrian, it leaves a loophole, as here it is only illegal to circumvent an "effective copy protection" - and how effective can it be, if it can be circumvented? (IANAL)

Outright piracy of a game still commercially available is theft, no matter how you slice it.

Legally it is, yeah. But ethically... maybe?

In case you download something you'd have bought otherwise, or sell copies of someone else's property, sure it's theft. However, if you weren't going to pay for it anyway, then what? How can it be theft if nobody loses anything? Or if it actually has the effect of increasing sales, as shown by the famous EU studies on the subject of piracy. But never mind, this topic has been discussed to death already.

Update 05/03/24: While "support of Citra" was a bit ambiguous, it's now confirmed Citra is also gone.

Red times we living in

That being said it does seem the devs made quite a bit through Patreon. The internet archive shows they earned about $28,970 per month, and it seems they were active for around six years. So assuming they actually ended up getting as an average half of that through the years, they made around one million in six years through Patreon.

If you're interested in lifetime earnings: https://graphtreon.com/creator/yuzuteam