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

Red times we living in

Quoting: cozThat 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

Quoting: tuubiLegally 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.

Wouldn't this argument legitimate all open source license violations?

Nobody would pay for it anyway. True
Nobody loses anything. True
Has a positive effect on sales? It's not sold in the first place. But it gets used more.

USA: 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 America

Quoting: Guesthttps://www.gamesindustry.biz/denuvo-investigation-reportedly-leads-to-arrest-for-games-pirate-voksi

Since the article is behind a paywall: Does it contain any other content than this article? https://www.pcgamer.com/denuvo-sues-voski-the-pirate-who-helped-crack-it/

Since the latter doesn't contain any outcome, just that the cracker was in fact not arrested & would probably face charges.

Quoting: cozThere's no unfairness or injustice here. Nintendo does have deep pockets and throws its weight around but in this case there was no abuse. Even the Electronic Frontier Foundation calls reverse engineering protection systems "legally risky". 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.

The monopolist nintendo might lose some sales to people that make a bit of money by reverse engineering nintendo's product, using their own time and effort and expertise, in order to free users from the hardware prison that nintendo feels is necessary maximize its profits. Then, nintendo uses the state and courts as useful idiots to enforce their hardware-prison business model at gunpoint.

Quoting: BrokattManufacturing 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.

You know why I think this is, and what I think's going to happen?

My guess is that they went after Yuzu now because, if current reports and suggestions from parts-manufacturers are to be believed, the Switch's successor will be revealed sometime within the next year, and will use an SoC in the same Nvidia family as the current hardware uses - had Yuzu continued, we'd probably have seen day-one emulation of it (same as happened with the Game Boy Advance).

I reckon they've gone after Citra as well, and will go after Dolphin again next, because they'll be adding GameCube, Wii, and 3DS games to their online subscription service as part of the hype-cycle for the "Switch 2". (Even though, as always, it'll be a teeny-tiny drip-feed that doesn't even come close to covering what was actually available for all of those machines.)


Last edited by Pengling on 5 March 2024 at 3:17 pm UTC

I do not known English well, so I do not understood everything. As I understood, they emulator allows to play games outside authorized (by Nintendo!) hardware. But, I do not seen anything related to piracy. They mention users use they emulator to piracy, but how? By playing games on PC? Perhaps, Nintendo should not have rights to restrict this. I only reminder, that British government, many years ago, discovered they cannot opens document created in old Office Suite. They decided to switch to OpenOffice, so MS decided to "standardize" (pheff) OOXML. What about case, when you cannot longer play "your" games, because your hardware were broken and cannot buy new?

Quoting: LachuI do not known English well, so I do not understood everything. As I understood, they emulator allows to play games outside authorized (by Nintendo!) hardware. But, I do not seen anything related to piracy. They mention users use they emulator to piracy, but how? By playing games on PC? Perhaps, Nintendo should not have rights to restrict this. I only reminder, that British government, many years ago, discovered they cannot opens document created in old Office Suite. They decided to switch to OpenOffice, so MS decided to "standardize" (pheff) OOXML. What about case, when you cannot longer play "your" games, because your hardware were broken and cannot buy new?

Parts in the DMCA prohibits sale, distribution and manufacturing of software or hardware that circumvents digital protections. So the issue here is that the emulator circumvented Nintendo's DRM that they use to sell licenses for to for companies to allow them to release software for the platform. And this circumventium is more than "ignore to check", it involves using the encryption keys built into the Switch itself.

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: LachuI do not known English well, so I do not understood everything. As I understood, they emulator allows to play games outside authorized (by Nintendo!) hardware. But, I do not seen anything related to piracy. They mention users use they emulator to piracy, but how? By playing games on PC? Perhaps, Nintendo should not have rights to restrict this. I only reminder, that British government, many years ago, discovered they cannot opens document created in old Office Suite. They decided to switch to OpenOffice, so MS decided to "standardize" (pheff) OOXML. What about case, when you cannot longer play "your" games, because your hardware were broken and cannot buy new?

Parts in the DMCA prohibits sale, distribution and manufacturing of software or hardware that circumvents digital protections. So the issue here is that the emulator circumvented Nintendo's DRM that they use to sell licenses for to for companies to allow them to release software for the platform. And this circumventium is more than "ignore to check", it involves using the encryption keys built into the Switch itself.

Ok, so problem was not a way to play games on PC, but release games on Nintendo hardware, without asking Nintendo for it. It is battle with moders. Even MS get money from modding XBox (Linux media player was very popular in early days of XBox).