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Nintendo sues Switch emulator Yuzu for piracy

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Uncrowned Guard

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Nintendo sues Switch emulator Yuzu for ‘facilitating piracy at a colossal scale’ - The Verge

According to the article, Nintendo claims that Yuzu is “primarily designed” to bypass Nintendo’s encryption and play copyrighted Nintendo games, and that it has no other legitimate use. Nintendo also alleges that Yuzu has tested thousands of official Nintendo games, provided instructions on how to obtain pirated copies, and linked to websites that distribute the prod.keys, which are needed to run the emulator.

Nintendo is asking the court to stop Yuzu from operating, take away its domain names and social media accounts, and even seize and destroy its hard drives. Nintendo also wants a lot of money in damages, of course.

I think this is a very interesting and controversial topic, and I wanted to hear your opinions on it. Do you think Nintendo is right to sue Yuzu? Do you think Yuzu is a legitimate emulator or a piracy tool? Do you think emulators are good or bad for the gaming industry and the gaming community? Do you use Yuzu or any other emulator yourself?
 
Of course theyre in the right, because people are pirating games that are around now, not during the SNES era.
 
Dead2009 said:
Of course theyre in the right, because people are pirating games that are around now, not during the SNES era.
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Emulation is legal though, so long as no ROMs are provided.
 
Demon_Skeith said:
Emulation is legal though, so long as no ROMs are provided.
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If it wasnt a Switch emulator it probably wouldnt be a problem. Its still being actively supported which is why Nintendo is in the right on this. Im sure theyre well aware of all the NES/SNES/N64 etc emulators that are out there too.
 
Dead2009 said:
If it wasnt a Switch emulator it probably wouldnt be a problem. Its still being actively supported which is why Nintendo is in the right on this. Im sure theyre well aware of all the NES/SNES/N64 etc emulators that are out there too.
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Even if they think they are in the right, it is still legal to have an emulator. I believe Nintendo here is trying to bury the emulator people in legal fees to kill them.
 
Demon_Skeith said:
Even if they think they are in the right, it is still legal to have an emulator. I believe Nintendo here is trying to bury the emulator people in legal fees to kill them.
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What’s entirely possible, is that something in the emulator code is directly lifted from the Switch like the bios. Iirc, that’s what got the team behind the Dolphin emulator in trouble with the Wii portion of the emulator.
 
At least Yuzu could give the sentiment their purpose is to help develop Switch games without buying their Switch devkit hardware right?
 
If Nintendo wins this lawsuit, it could set the preservation efforts back years! It would also cause other companies to do the same with other emulators!
 
Demon_Skeith said:
Even if they think they are in the right, it is still legal to have an emulator. I believe Nintendo here is trying to bury the emulator people in legal fees to kill them.
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Tiger21820 said:
If Nintendo wins this lawsuit, it could set the preservation efforts back years! It would also cause other companies to do the same with other emulators!
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Again, it's a Switch emulator. The console is still ACTIVE. Nobody is downloading a Switch emulator to do nothing with it.
 
Dead2009 said:
Again, it's a Switch emulator. The console is still ACTIVE. Nobody is downloading a Switch emulator to do nothing with it.
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Correct, you can do nothing with it without illegal ROMs, which is why courts have ruled that emulators are legal, so long as they are free, contain no stright rip code or include copyrighted games.
 
Dead2009 said:
Again, it's a Switch emulator. The console is still ACTIVE. Nobody is downloading a Switch emulator to do nothing with it.
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People can use it for homebrew, what’s getting Yuzu in trouble is this:

Nintendo also alleges that Yuzu has tested thousands of official Nintendo games, provided instructions on how to obtain pirated copies, and linked to websites that distribute the prod.keys, which are needed to run the emulator.
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If they just made the emulator available (and wasn’t written with Nintendo’s source code), then there isn’t much Ninty can do about the existence of it. Them providing instructions on how to get the games and links to the product keys (must be how the Switch checks if you have a legit game), is shooting themselves in the foot.

Other emulators don’t go “here’s a link to ROM sites”, and ones that require a bios also don’t directly link it. So there’s a whole plausible deniability deal to it. Its like how the existence of torrenting software isn’t illegal, it’s just that most people use it for illegal means, and the official software pages don’t also post links to like Piratebay.
 
Grungie said:
People can use it for homebrew, what’s getting Yuzu in trouble is this:



If they just made the emulator available (and wasn’t written with Nintendo’s source code), then there isn’t much Ninty can do about the existence of it. Them providing instructions on how to get the games and links to the product keys (must be how the Switch checks if you have a legit game), is shooting themselves in the foot.

Other emulators don’t go “here’s a link to ROM sites”, and ones that require a bios also don’t directly link it. So there’s a whole plausible deniability deal to it. Its like how the existence of torrenting software isn’t illegal, it’s just that most people use it for illegal means, and the official software pages don’t also post links to like Piratebay.
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I missed that part, yeah if they are doing that they can get hammered big.
 
Grungie said:
Are they really evil if the Yuzu guys basically did everything wrong?
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Well this is just one case out of many cases, not enough to tip the scales and thus their alignment stat is still Evil lol if it's DnD they are Lawful Evil lol.
 
cm2 said:
Well this is just one case out of many cases, not enough to tip the scales and thus their alignment stat is still Evil lol if it's DnD they are Lawful Evil lol.
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Oh no, I get it. My thought process is like, if you know a company is pretty trigger happy with lawsuits, you'd try to at least cover your ass more. It didn't look like these guys even tried.
 
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