- cross-posted to:
- emulation@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- emulation@lemmy.ml
This also includes ceasing development and destroying their copies of the code.
The GitHub repo page for Yuzu now returns a 404, as well. In addition, the repo for the Citra 3DS emulator was also taken down.
As of at least 23:30 UTC, Yuzu’s website and Citra’s website have been replaced with a statement about their discontinuation.
Other sources found by @Daughter3546@lemmy.world:
- https://gbatemp.net/threads/yuzu-emulator-shutting-down-paying-nintendo-2-4-million-in-lawsuit-settlement.650039/
- https://www.gamesindustry.biz/nintendos-yuzu-lawsuit-puts-emulation-in-the-spotlight-opinion
- https://www.ign.com/articles/nintendo-says-tears-of-the-kingdom-was-pirated-1-million-times-pre-release-in-lawsuit-against-emulator-creator
There is also an active Reddit thread about this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1b6gtb5/
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I’m sorry but how is using the actual keys from a legally purchased system circumventing anything? It’s like saying using the actual key to your own front door counts as breaking and entering.
DRM is evil. Laws prohibiting circumventing DRM are also evil.
Nintendo’s angle is more along the lines of:
- We gave our friend Switchy the keys to a lockbox.
- You tricked Switchy into giving you our keys.
- We didn’t authorize you to use those keys.
- Using our keys without our permission is circumventing our DRM.
- Yuzu is a tool that enables you to use our keys.
- It’s illegal to distribute tools to circumvent DRM.
It’s a massive reach, but it’s a plausible argument—or even a good one if the judge is a technologically illiterate luddite. Beyond that, Nintendo is the kind of litigant that will drag out a lawsuit until the other party is forced to settle.
A court in Germany has recently decided that reading the code of a software you legally purchased and finding plain text passwords there is illegal hacking.
The person was hired to do a security audit (by a third party) and disclosed the finding to the software developer, not even to his own employer.
The developer decided to sue him instead of fixing the problem.
At this point I have lost all trust in the technological capacities of judges out there.
There’s a different kind of judge now than the technologically illiterate?
I can’t quite remember the name, but there is actually at least one U.S. judge that takes the time and effort to learn about the technology in depth before making a ruling.
He’s William Alsup, who presided over the Oracle vs Google case about Java API copyrightability.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Alsup#Notable_cases
Thank you. I need to bookmark this glorious man’s Wikipedia page.
Then companies must go out of their way to avoid them.
Not sure it will ever get better. Maybe a single person being allowed to decide a case that requires a technical understanding should be consulted by experts in it. I guess a better lawyer probably should have made that happen (shouldn’t have to). But, as the old geezers die off and the younger “tech savvy” people take over, they will no longer be young or tech savvy, technologywill keep progressing and pass us up too. And you don’t want an actual young person as a judge. So… the system is just broken.
If I’m not authorized to use those keys, how do I use Switchy?
I guess all Nintendo games are illegal to play by that argument, even with their console
Because the dmca says so.
It shouldn’t be illegal, but it is because the law about it was written by the industry 25 years ago because our lawmakers think the internet and indoor plumbing work the same way.
Hey man, IP, you pee, whatever.
Except of course anyone can manufacture and sell plug compatible pipes.
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Yes, but the emulator doesn’t circumvent any copy protection. It utilizes the decryption key from your own hardware (assuming you dumped it yourself) to run ROMs which have already had the DRM circumvented by whatever was used to dump them in the first place (which the emulator doesn’t do).
This is generally the same reason why emulators such as Bleem (which works the same way as Yuzu with the decryption keys but for PS1) have been ruled legal in past court cases.
A good analogy would be that you’re using their keys, on their locks, but put in a different door.
Honestly
It isn’t, but when you are a small project the law is inconsequential if a massive corporation goes after you and you don’t have the money for the legal battle.
I’m pretty sure the keys aren’t a part of the actual game/download, it’s a part of your Switch. So if you have an emulator with one of those keys built in, it’s piracy.
I think what they should have done is prompt the user to put it in themselves and then we could just find keys on the internet and avoid this whole situation. But I’m no expert
I think what they should have done is prompt the user to put it in themselves and then we could just find keys on the internet and avoid this whole situation. But I’m no expert
That’s exactly how it is… Yuzu does not distribute those files. They give you a guide on how to dump it yourself from your own Switch.
Oh… Huh, yeah then I’m with you lol, idk how they ended up winning that battle
Yuzu settled. They basically laid down and died. But I don’t blame them. $2.4m is probably nothing compared to what they would have paid in legal fees to actually go to court. Even if they won.
They’re likely not going to win. Nintendo’s legal team is pretty strong as far as I know.
You didn’t read the article did you?
Because you’re using the system outside of its intended purpose to break the law. That’s basically the definition of hacking.
I’m not sure why it being illegal to sell a tool to do that is a hard concept to grasp for so many people.
I’m not against emulation or pirating, but no shit this was going to happen eventually.
Okay, so no, it’s not hacking. It doesn’t fall under hacking laws. It’s not illegal to sell hacking tools. Basically, everything you said is wrong.
In this case, it’s all about copyright and the DMCA, which made it illegal to break the copyright protection systems companies put in place or to make or distribute tools to break copyright protection systems.
So, nothing to do will selling things or hacking. Everything to do with copyright and draconian dot come era laws.
Circumventing copyright protections by using encryption keys in an unauthorized manner is hacking.
This case might not be explicitly about hacking, but profiting off tools that use IP to circumvent protections is illegal.
It’s not hacking. Sorry.
The electronic key I purchased and collected from my own hardware is “hacking” because Nintendo’s doesn’t intend it? Maybe the legality of selling a tool to get the key is a hard concept to grasp because the premise is objectionable. If a Switch makes a good doorstop then it will be doing it’s “intended purpose” if that’s what I intend for my property.
I’m against companies having unjust control over our own computing.
You might own the hardware, but you don’t own the rights to the OS that runs on it. The encryption key is part of that software.
It’s not a hard concept to grasp. If I was openly selling a tool to break the activation lock on Windows, I could expect the same result.
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That’s a ridiculous idea. If I buy a computer with an OS that has an encryption key to protect the hard drive, and later I need that key to remove my data to another system, I have an entirely reasonable expectation that I’m allowed to do so, regardless of how much the computer manufacturer doesn’t want me to.
Wow. Fuck Nintendo. I own 2 switches and ToTK. Of course I emulate it, so I don’t have to play at 20fps. And I can mod the game. Not buying another nintendo product again. I’m done. I’ll just pirate it since it seems I don’t own it anyways. Can’t play it where I want, how I want, so why play by the rules at all.
I own a launch era Switch. When I run Yuzu, I use the keys that I pulled off of it. When I play games in Yuzu, they are games I have purchased and dumped using the Switch Nintendo sold me. The controller I use is a Nintendo Pro controller. I play on my computer because it is MUCH better at playing Switch games than my overclocked Switch is. Just fuck off with this Nintendo, stop making your games worse.
Your games should stutter just the way Nintendo intends them to or you’re not getting the full experience!
Tell me about your overclocked switch. How
Google “4ifir” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWcMsGa9Kjs
Your Switch needs to be hackable. If yours is any revision beyond the initial release chances are you are out of luck. I set it up a long while ago so I can’t recall the steps, but googling “Nintendo switch overclock” will get you what you’re looking for.
The Switch is based on the Nvidia Shield, whose stock clocks are roughly double the Switch’s. This means you can OC it without exceeding the manufacturer’s specs, which is pretty neat. Bringing the memory clocks up really helps titles like ToTK.
I have a hackable Switch but I’m afraid of bricking it or something. Is that a concern? I’m pretty technically inclined but no genius.
It is dead simple, just make sure you get one of the little jobbies that you slide down the right joycon rail to short the pins that you need shorted - you’ll be doing it often when you’re setting things up and you don’t want to be messing around with a bit of wire. I seriously doubt that you will brick anything, especially if you take your time and read everything through before you get started. These instructions should get you where you want to be.
The fuck? Why? Emulators are entirely legal and they could’ve won
Nintendo went after them for using (not distributing)
prod.keysto decrypt game titles and system firmware under 17 U.S.C. 1201 (2), which sidesteps having to challenge the legality of emulation directly. I guess Yuzu doesn’t have the funds to fight them in court on that.How would they fight it if they had the money? Did they have a significant use case other than piracy?
Easy. Game preservation.
Game preservation is explicitly exclusided from the dmca true, but only only when the game needs online servers which have now been shut down.
So it would not work in this case at all.
On an unrelated note…
Exclusided
Not sure how your device let that one slip but I’m actually kind of sad it’s not a real word.
They settled because they actively endorsed and proliferated illegal piracy.
They couldn’t play that angle with what they were doing.
Well that’s unfortunate, because Nintendo has a terrible track record for game preservation.
Counterpoint: Fuck Nintendo
Is it piracy to play my legally purchased and backed up games on an emulator?
Edit: a lot of people responding to this are accidentally answering the question above. Yes, those are the things they would have fought if they had the money to go up against Nintendo.
To those saying that it is indeed piracy – pretty sure the law has disagreed up to this point. Note that Nintendo didn’t win this suit, Yuzu settled. No legal precedent set (yet).
You likely don’t have any liability but thats why Nintendo sued them and not you
If you circumvent the copyright protection systems to do so, then under American law yes. If you don’t like this, you have to campaign for change.
Do you believe there is a chance of success for campaigning for change?
Every few years, more things are added as exceptions to the DMCAs circumvention clause. There’s a whole host of exceptions, and they are all exceptions in favor of people over companies. Those exceptions came about because people who care fought for them.
Do you have any specific examples and how long it took, or how much it cost? It seems farfetched to think it is feasible to counter the “anti circumvention technology” aspect of the DMCA.
Yes.
Does it matter? I suspect that if that’s what you did, you were one of very few people doing so, and the law doesn’t require the absence of any possible legitimate use. In this case, something is illegal if it
is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
has only limited commercially significant purpose or use
You asked if there was a significant use-case. That’s what it is, and why emulators have remained legal up to this point.
How many people take advantage of that use-case over piracy is a different point.
Also the law has not decided anything here, yet. As far as the law is concerned, emulators are still legal.
It’s a use case, but I would argue that it’s not a significant use case.
Emulators are still legal in theory, but I doubt that it is in practice possible to make an emulator for a modern video game system without violating some other part of the law.
It’s a use case, but I would argue that it’s not a significant use case.
And that’s the answer to your question about what Yuzu would have fought if they had the money to take on Nintendo.
Emulators are still legal in theory, but I doubt that it is in practice possible to make an emulator for a modern video game system without violating some other part of the law.
That’s exactly what hasn’t been determined, since Yuzu settled and it didn’t go to court.
