A Yuzu Post-Mortem: The Great Emu-War
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- čas přidán 30. 05. 2024
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The Great Emu-War continues. Yuzu, once the leading Nintendo Switch emulator, has been sued out of existence by Nintendo of America. In so doing, Nintendo has revealed its complete hand, and we have, arguably for the first time, a clear look at Nintendo's complete legal strategy against emulation.
In this episode, we'll break down exactly what Nintendo's argument is, and look also at the mistakes Yuzu made which allowed Nintendo to put the squeeze on them.
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/ moonchannelyt
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Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
03:24 - What is Yuzu
04:53 - Intro to the Lawsuit and Reviewing Prior Videos
08:53 - What Did Yuzu Do Wrong? The First Three Criteria
14:03 - Analyzing Nintendo's Complete Argument Against Emulation
22:56 - A Warning to Emulator Devs
25:00 - Q&A
30:25 - Conclusion
31:50 - Credits Gag
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Additional Reading:
The Complaint
news.justia.com/wp-content/up...
The Final Judgment
storage.courtlistener.com/rec...
The Verge
www.theverge.com/24098640/nin...
[They've consistently been a cut above the rest when it comes to reporting on these emulation issues, in my experience: great stuff]
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Music:
I'm going to try including a track list again, and see how it works out! Thank you to Colibiri for the idea!
[SG] stands for SilvaGunner -- it's a parody! The {reference} is underneath it.
1m:0s - Athletic Theme (Alpha Mix), Yoshi's Island [SG]
{We’re Doing a Sequel, Muppets Most Wanted}
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2m:18s - Main Theme (Night), Wii Shop Channel [SG]
{Fly Me to the Moon}
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3m:24s - Gerudo Valley, Smash Bros Brawl [SG]
{Animal Crossing}
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5m:28s - Mind of a Thief, Mother 3
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7m:08s - Mind of a Thief (In-Game Version), Mother 3 [SG]
{World Revolving, Deltarune}
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9m:18s - Yoshi’s Island, Smash Bros [SG]
{Witch Doctor}
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10m:33s - Temmie Village (Alpha Mix), Undertale [SG]
{Beautiful Girls}
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14m:22s - Spookwave, the Napstablook, Undertale
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14m:30s - Spookwave (Extended Version), the Napstablook, Undertale [SG]
{Macintosh Plus}
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23m:10s - Aqua Star Select (Alpha Mix), Kirby 64 [SG]
{It is a Mystery} [no, literally, that’s what it’s called]
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25m:08s - Flower Garden (OST Version), Yoshi’s Island [SG]
{I think it’s Doki Doki Literature Club. Never played it, but I know the premise, and think it fits this section well}
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26m:49s - Overworld Theme (OST Version), Yoshi’s Island [SG]
{Brazil}
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28m:15s - Kamek’s Theme, Yoshi’s Island [SG]
{Sans, Undertale}
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30m:24s - 2 AM (OST Version), Animal Crossing Wild World [SG]
{Breathe, 2AM}
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31m:50s - A Certain Someone’s Memories (OST Version), Mother 3 [SG]
{The Amazing Digital Circus}
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Attributions:
Yuzu Early Access 3599 Footage:
• The Legend Of Zelda Te...
• yuzu Early Access 3599... - Hry
![Why Are Emulators Legal? Dolphin vs. Nintendo, and the Fate of Emulation [Great Emu War Pt. 1]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wROQUZDCIMI/mqdefault.jpg)
![Why Are Emulators Legal? Dolphin vs. Nintendo, and the Fate of Emulation [Great Emu War Pt. 1]](/img/tr.png)
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Hey Moony I discovered more evidence and I hope you’ll update it soon.
a salty fanboy over a requirement of a spyware that’s not on Windows 7.
Here’s what he said you salty yuzu fanboy.
Yuzu Team long spit on Windows 7 hold-outs who refused regressive spyware like 10 or 11 just to use your emulator. You guys didn't just discontinue customer support, like Ryujinx which still works. You went out of your way to sabotage operation of Yuzu on 7, making small changes you knew broke compatibility without leaving former fallbacks in place, silencing discussions around this, and treating paying customers to your Patreon income like rabble or dirt to discard.
In its stubborn commitment to inoperability Yuzu abandoned me, so with nothing to lose from Yuzu I turned against Yuzu. I found 93 somewhat relevant Nintendo emails, and even more social media accounts. I sent many messages to inform them about Yuzu, hoping for a C&D.
I got a question, doesn't this mean Citra is ok? It doesn't use keys... I don't think.
@@gamedestroyer112Citra is gone as part of the settlement; it doesn't really matter whether it's okay or not.
@@innertuber4049 it's not entirely gone. People preserved it and are currently making updates to it. Plus it can already play almost every 3DS game ever made.
I hope I won't be late to be noticed, but I'd like to ask if it's a lost cause. Using your comparison to a meadowland, the question is not only if the emulation wants to expand, but also if it wants to survive. And the capitulation of Yuzu made it survive for now, but as an exchange, one part of that one piece of meadowland was annexed and repurposed for just another factory.
Because this is smart. Emulation itself may be legal, but this argument worthless if in order to emulate, you basically need to break the law. Using cryptographic keys as an example of this, if you make your system to use these so-called illegal numbers, you may try to emulate, but you won't reach far and trying to decipher it may take so long the heat death of the universe will come sooner. Sega tried that, they failed, but no-one said more sophisticated mechanisms won't come after.
So...we have lost before even the battle started? *insert crying Maya*
There's a reason why, for the vast majority of video game emulation's history, the universal unspoken agreement was "SHUT UP AND DON'T TELL ANYBODY WHERE YOU GOT THIS".
Not to mention, “don’t be stupid enough to say that you will emulate a company’s games on their official posts!!!!”. These people were acting like they were invincible or something
@@Echoingsunflowers981Christ, yeah. There's "spreading the word" and then there's "poking the fucking bull".
I don't know who came with the idea of using "game preservation" as an excuse, but it is far and away the worst thing to happen to emulation. Now so many idiots feel morally entitled to scream from the rooftops about how righteous they are by not paying for their games made by that evil corpo that wants people's money. It's just painting a bigger target on their backs and making it worse for everyone. Nobody cares if you want to pirate something, but for the love of God stop bringing attention to it.
@@godlyBlade not to mention that the games made by the evil corporation they hate so much are made by real tired people who deserve to be compensated for their hard work. They probably don’t like the fact that people are pirating their work for “game preservation”. Also people need to stop acting like their saints or doing something so hard by pirating like your pirating Pokémon Janet, it’s not that big of a deal
@@Echoingsunflowers981 If the company is so evil that you don't want to buy their games, you shouldn't even support them by playing their games at all.
Bro the fact that a serious youtube channel is *intentionally* using SiIvagunner music as it's bgm is insane, gotta give props to the little details
Although, it is spelt SiIvagunner, not like Silvagunner
its*
Multiple times per video, I'll think I have siiva playing in the background and I'll get confused before I remember it's Moon Channel
@@MyPupTobi listen only I'm allowed to make spelling nitpicks
I wanna hear the duck hunt theme song with spongebobs hawaiian soundfont
IMO the real tragedy in Nintendo vs Yuzu is the death of Citra, the 3DS emulator. The 3DS eShop is closed, and soon the multiplayer servers will be shut down too. Nintendo isn't losing any sales to Citra, and communities for multiplayer titles like Monster Hunter 4 could have continued to exist using Citra's multiplayer features.
Pretendo exists to emulate these network features, so contribute to that project if you have the means to aid in their preservation too, as they work on actual hardware as well
Lol tragedy. If legal action, threat or actual, had a significant impact on emulation this discussion wouldn't be happening right now. A replacement will be along directly if not already.
I'm not huge into this topic, but hasn't Citra been "dead" for ages now? It's not like new DS games are being released. It's so old and all the main titles are playable, right? Am I thinking of something else?!
@@blad... Looking at the compatibility list, not all of the "main titles" are very playable. And furthermore, the goal of preservation is not to preserve only the main titles, it is to preserve everything properly, so Citra was far from finished
@@AREAlhero Ahh. Had no idea. It's been around so long I figured it'd be finished.
We used to have a solid banner of plausible deniability that we could rally behind in the emulator community... And Yuzu is setting that banner on fire for profit.
Worse, openly so, like had that patreon existed legally coexisting but not giving early acess, you cant prove anything. Its , em donations dah for , stuff,
They were being stupid, not covering themselves properly, but I do not believe it malicious.
I blame the pirates, those who flaunt their piracy and encourage others to do the same especially. They point to emulators, and then those emulators will be in the crossfire for something most explicitly state not to do.
And yet so many people ignore these warnings because the believe themselves entitled to free games because “it isn’t supporting a greedy corporation”
I argue they are just as greedy as they claim these companies to be, if not more so.
They tick me off, and they get emulators killed, making preservation harder. And they only seem to be growing in size.
As much as we rag on Nintendo for being DMCA-heavy, it feels like Yuzu was asking for legal trouble with their blatant statements of how to get around the encryption keys, flaunting the money they made on Patreon, and advertising games for their emulator that were only just released on Nintendo's hardware or even before the official release. They were legally reckless and paid the price for it.
Yeah the narrative changed REAL QUICK when the discord posts started being passed around with people facepalming at the stupidity of doing all if that.
Exactly!
No, you are just a bunch of hypocrites, ryujinx's twitter also flaunted that it could run Metroid Dread day 1, people are entitled to make money from their work just like bleem did, it's why Nintendo had to to use the anti-circumvention clause instead of saying that emulating is illegal.
@@lucasLSDno u
@@lucasLSD People are entitled to make money for their work, unless their work is too heavily based on someone else's work and none of that money is going to the other person, at which point shit is going to hit the fan and it's completely deserved. That's, like, the entire premise of copyright.
P.S. Ryujinx was also stupid about this, they were just stupid quieter and for less time.
When I saw 'great emu war' my mind went straight to when the AUS war vets lost to the local bird population. May need another cup of coffee....
Twice. It happened in two seperate campaigns.
Here is a completely serious, unironic quote from the commanding officer in both campaigns: "They can face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks. They are like Zulus whom even dum-dum bullets could not stop."
Same!
That was the intent of the title, yes, to call back on a more well-known historical event
“On that day, Austrians received a grim reminder. They lived in fear of the Emus and were disgraced to live in these cages we called towns.”
To use one of my favorite lines from The Simpsons: "That's the joke."
Yuzu: shows exactly how much games were used to the public
*Face palm*
Yeah it was not the brightest moment.
Wish videos like this were circulating when this lawsuit first hit.
It goes against the people mad about the lawsuit. Anyone that brought up Yuzu direprofiting off of TOTK were immediately called Nintendo fanboys.
Keep in mind that these videos take more time than the early impression, opinion and discussion videos. Its just what comes with analizing a situation and seeeing all the arguments for and against.
@popmordiscos Yes, but everyone knew Yuzu was ptofiting from the emulator and TOTK before the lawsuit.
@@biggunz29xx That disrespect is normalized still anyway.
It's usually better if they take time. So he can bring a better video
"You can do whatever you want, just don't get caught."
A real thug's a thug that's HUSH!
And dont make a business out of it, otr at least not an obvious one. Tying early acess to a patreon was stupid. It should be seperate enough that you cant , claim you get early acess. Damn that devs need legal experts .
I keep waiting for moonie to talk about Australian big bird and how it relates to current events in video game land only to realize emu means emulation,this took an embarrassing time to realize.
yeah, the OG Emu War
it's a pun
Even he doesent dare to make the emu overlords angry
You know, I'm someone who actually believes wholeheartedly in archiving, but that's for the sake of preservation and not having to spend $600 on the hardware, wires, controller and game I grew up with (GC era) this kinda greedy move I didn't know happened changes my entire opinion about what happened. I think Bintembo was correct in their move here.
PS: i hope you're doing well. I know things will never be exactly the same as they were. Also, i hope you enjoy the eclipse if you go to see it! I know I'm driving further north to be directly in the path.
Thank you for the well wishes, Ash. I almost forgot about the eclipse! I probably won't have the time to travel north for it this time around, but please enjoy it on my behalf!
Good video.
This Yuzu situation reminds me of when Philip DeFranco talked about the thing you can do with airlines where you can buy a flight to wherever that connects through where you actually want to go and just not get on the connection for a potentially lower price than a direct flight to your destination would be. Nobody cared because it was a lot of work to find something like that, but once people made a program to find those opportunities and shared it out the airlines started cracking down on it.
Perhaps more background than necessary... ultimately the relevant quote goes "some of y'all are just too helpful" lol. I think Yuzu's biggest mistake was probably just that they made it too easy to use.
On topic of the Discord channel postings etc. : It is the best thing in any legal conflict to assume that the lawyer of the opposing party will use everything they can use against you.. (When certain developers tried to develop a fan remake of Chrono Trigger, they tried to post a kind of argument/apology and tried to basically reason with Square Enix. Even THAT was used agains them.)
People need to be extremely careful in such situations and need to expect literally anything. Everything needs to be carefully checked if it can be used aginst them.
Especially in an area as legally gray as emulation, ESPECIALLY when you are profiting from said emulation. Anyone who's doing things legally gray that also involve money need to be real careful about what they say.
Wait, was that the 3D remake from years ago? Whatever happened to the devs?
Last I heard they were working on their own game after the Chrono project got shut down.
What the hell, how didnt they try to get a legal expert to have deniability and not be dumb.
“Anything you say can, and will be used against you in a court of law.”
*do people just not fuggin’ listen?!*
anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. the law is not designed to protect citizens, only profits.
They got greedy and cocky, it made them flagrantly reckless, and now they’ve quite possibly put the entire enterprise of emulation at risk.
The fact emulation is now considered an enterprise is probably a part of the problem.
emulation should not be on such shaky ground to begin with where what the Yuzu guys did could seriously threaten all of it. the hunters were already aiming their rifles, maybe *thats* a part of the problem we shouldnt ignore..
same with piracy or fan projects
@@godlyBlade companies tolerating _new_ competition? they can barely tolerate established competition
So I just learn that Moony plays guitar today.
*trying really hard to imagines a lawyer practicing guitar and singing, while playing stardew valley on a steamdeck, stock grinding War Thunder on a labtop, doing daily of Honkai Star Rail or Limbus Company on his phone, flipping through book of copyright laws this thick, researching on German philosophy or Eastern Asia history on his tablet, watching Homestuck on the background, and probably pulling up a sea bass or something while he just finished editing and posting this video.
And I’m pretty sure that I missed a few things here and there.
A true Renaissance man. I'm envious at least.
I mean, we have a Lock Picking Lawyer, why not a Guitar Playing Lawyer?
And Einstein played violin. Honestly, I'd recommend finding a creative hobby on top of whatever 9-5 job you do. It really enriches your life, it doesn't matter if you're world-class succesful or not, it's just such a fun thing to do.
project moon mentioned
Almost like lawyers are people too... almost
Aw man I can't wait to go "oh this makes sense but it still sucks"
I swear it happens every moony video.
Unfortunately, this is a case where the guys on the emulation team are almost _completely_ in the wrong here. Not only on the company side, but on the consumer side of things as well.
Yeah but the only reason it “sucks” is that you can’t get everything for free quite as easily. That dosent really make sense as an argument. Emulators never existed for modern technology and the law needs to adapt. Why is it so hard to only allow emulators for discontinued consoles and call it a day?
@@theremix54 You are aware that the legal precedent that people use to stay under wraps originated from commercial emulators for contemporary plattforms? And that most emulators actually do have their start when the hardware is still rocking?
@@theremix54 how is an emulator supposed to come out after what it emulates is no longer available to the public?
The most valuble lesson this video gave me is: be careful what you say in Discord
Or just on the internet as a whole.
I find it hilarious that Nintendo had to fallback to Discord messages to make their case somewhat strong.
One of the easiest thing against Yuzu is that, Nintendo Switch is still around.
"All" Switch games are on the Eshop Still. Nintendo still gain money out of these Games.
Is like you poking a bear with a stick.
Compare to an older generation of consoles which are old bears in the same scenario of poking a stick to them, they are still bears but not as dangerous as the newer bears.
Yeah... All of my arguments against current IP laws fall on their face with those facts.
Well that's a false statement; there are plenty of games that have been taken off the Switch EShop. Minecraft Switch Edition is a prime example.
@@erc3338 Didn't you see the "all"?
@@daleafdave7847 I see all as all, the correct interpretation of the quotes was unclear. Apologies.
A console that the emulator is emulating being on the market is irrelevant to the legality of the emulator itself.
oh wow... so Yuzu did everything possible to make Nintendo want to go after them.
They literally poked the bear, repeatedly, then wondered why they got attacked by it. The fact they are continuing to poke the bear with suyu shows that they learned absolutely nothing from the experience.
@@godlyBladeCorrect me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure none of the original Yuzu devs are behind Suyu or any of the other derivatives. I think the settlement specifically barred them from ever doing anything even vaguely Nintendo emulation related ever again and the lead dev, Bunnei, announced he was leaving the emulation scene entirely.
These are mostly just random kids jumping on the controversy for e-fame
@@godlyBlade The Yuzu devs are not behind Suyu.
Yuzu actually took steps to deflect ire from the big N, like not including any features to get TotK running until it officially released (Yuzu wouldn't even boot the game pre-release without fanmade mods). And their Patreon early access builds did not include TotK-targeting performance enhancements to my knowledge. But all that is kinda irrelevant in the face of Nintendo's filings.
The fact that Citra, which was also by the Yuzu team, was caught in the crossfire is kinda sad for preservation purposes.
the irony is ryujinx ran totk better than Yuzu before launch
But they didn’t flaunt it, they were actually being smart
As far as I'm concerned, if Yuzu did nothing monetary, they'd still be in trouble due to their public development of pre-game release builds and the fact that Switch emulation inherently requires doing something arguably illegal. Bleem and Connectix had neither of these issues as far as I know, so it always baffled me whenever people insisted that "emulation is legal". Yeah, if the software you're emulating is unequivocally legal, which is more or less restricted to homebrew, old consoles, or research.
Yeah, but the money part probably played a big role into why Nintendo decided to actually go after them. Not all of it, but likely a really big contributing factor.
No, Yuzu did not require doing anything illegal to use.
If you’re referring to the backup of decryption keys that Nintendo’s lawyers claimed was “illegal”, then I should inform you that Dolphin bundles a similar decryption key in every install so users can start encrypted Wii games.
@@UndertakerU2ber sure, but Nintendo doesn't sell the Wii or Gamecube anymore, so there's not nearly as much of a monetary loss from that given how few of those games are still being sold. If you can't see a difference between them going after emulators for dead consoles vs emulators for their current gen console, then you're either being purposefully ignorant or you're just dumb. I'm not a fan of a lot of Nintendo's business practices either, but let's not pretend they don't have the legal grounds to do it if they want to
@@brendangibson8200
The US judiciary has already ruled that it doesn't matter if the emulator in question is for a system that's currently being produced, and that whatever "lost sales" Nintendo can point to are irrelevant.
This is because the emulator software is viewed as being a "legitimate competitor" to the hardware manufacturer, and so too would Yuzu be viewed as a competitor to Nintendo in the same market. Copyright ownership only gives entities a narrow form of protection over their works and isn't as broad as Nintendo wants it to be. If it were as broad as Nintendo wanted it to be, then the author of Sherlock Holmes could've sued the author of Tarzan since both books were made using the same letters, words, font size, type of paper, etc.
Copyright only protects creative, unique ideas in a highly intangible sense, and it doesn't extend towards the function itself of an invention; just the implementation. A much more pertinent example can be found in copyright/trademark ownership of motor vehicles. Nobody can claim exclusive ownership of "the car" industry itself, but the intricate designs of a gas-powered engine can be patented and claimed. This means that someone else can come along and build another car too, but they HAVE to build a different type of engine compared to the one that's already been patented.
@@UndertakerU2ber To be fair, Nintendo Technically did not say that dumping keys is illegal. They said that it was "Unlawful" which is not the same thing as saying its illegal. But anyone with halve a brain understands that they probably want dumping them to be illegal really bad. 😂
Its pretty sad how this system works and how companies are not willing to compromise in anyway. The author of Sherlock Holmes being allowed to sue the author of Tarzan for a using the same font is exactly what these companies want copyright to be. A system to push down other people from making creative works that are even just vaguely based on your work.
I can see why so many emulation projects decided to jump ship after Yuzu 'settled.' I have to wonder how far back into their hardware and software library that their legal theory goes, though.
At least as far back as the GameCube.
I doubt the crypto keys are used in NES-N64.
@@randyrhoades8751for the n64 there is a rom hash but not crypto from what I know (basically, the program code is checked that it's unmodified, but other than that it's not encrypted)
@@randyrhoades8751 I think even the NES had a piracy prevention mechanism.
@@godlyBlade
The NES/Famicom mainly just relied on cartridge design and region lock chips to counter pirated stuff instead of making a series of crypto-keys to make it harder for unapproved hardware to be played. The Famicom Disk System for instance had anti-piracy aspects put into the very design of the disks, the SNES and N64 had different cartridge designs for specific regions and to prevent unlicensed hardware.
Those were mechanical countermeasures more than crypto-keys which is what is being talked about here in the video. The Crypto-Keys are basically a bunch of digital codes that are meant to further prevent piracy of their products.
@@godlyBladeThe patents for the NES’s anti-piracy mechanism expired in 2006.
You can still make an argument in favor of piracy when there is almost no money involved, but damn, its hard to even look at you when you are profiting from It.
I would argue that those mental gymnastics by some people are equally bad for game preservation as greedy company's like Nintendo. It's just sad that people are actively harming ethical piracy by giving those company's legal presedence for all upcoming lawsuits.
I don't think it's unreasonable that people get paid for their work.
@DLCguy unless your "work" is profiting off somebody else's work, while also hindering the return they should have had
@@lorlok623 You're not wrong, but when we're talking about a massive corporation I tend to be much less sympathetic to their plight. I understand though why someone would be against this on principle.
why is monetary gain a factor in this when software development is still larbor who's workers still need money to sustain themselves and hire help to continue in a way that's sustainable?
I support emulation, especially in terms of game preservation- sometimes emulation is literally the only way to play and save old games. But Yuzu was really dumb. They messed around and found out. Specifically, profiting off of their emulator was very very dumb. I'm ultimately very glad that Yuzu capitulated, this majorly saves emulation for the time being.
I’m on the same boat, I prefer to emulate games where the console is no longer officially supported and the devs who originally made those games, have already made profit for their hard work
Game preservation doesn't mean you should get to play any game you want at any time for free.
Yeah... almost any argument about "preservation" breaks down when emulating current gen systems, and even more so if emulating game that are less than a year old or haven't even been released yet. Generally speaking, if it's something you can still buy off the store shelf at your local Walmart, DON'T EMULATE IT.
@@EmeralBookwise facts and if you can’t afford the games, look at places like your local library and see if they have it in place where you can borrow games
I actually expected Cemu to implode from their Patreon way back when BOTW came out. Yet 7 years later they have gone open source and survived.
As soon as the $2.4 mil settlement was announced, my immediate thought was "wow, that's incredibly low". That's ~34,000 copies of Tears of the Kingdom, which isn't a lot of "lost sales" for a game that moved 20 million units. Yuzu got off relatively easy, but it also shows that Nintendo is scared of actually bringing their arguments to trial.
Though it's arguably a slap on the wrist, it does suck to see the chilling effect on the emulation community. 3DS emulation in particular is in shambles now since Citra was the only major player and all official 3DS services are scheduled to shut down this month.
I mean existing Citra versions still work well for the most part and there's already projects like Pretendo to replicate 3ds online services.
Citra master NEVER supported true online. Infact, the fork that does support online and can thus access Pretendo got more popular with the shutdown, so this was ironically a W towards the online multiplayer-community.(Even if it is an L for everyone else, because actual development is logically slowed down considerably with potential contributers being scattered in the wind)
it really doesn't nintendo does not care about the money
It's not that Nintendo is afraid, it's just that it was not about recouping the money from "lost sales". It was about making Yuzu stop what they were doing.
Thanks for including my question in the Q&A segment by the way!
(You can go by just "Superbro" for future reference.)
Very good writeup, research, and reporting
I was always curious what would become of emulators having discord servers where the devs directly talk in. We see what results here.
Bunnei and the Yuzu team certainly made a _comedy_ of errors here, but at least they didn't try and fight the suit, lose, and make emulation worse for everyone else
It seems to me that main reason Nintendo didn't push the red button is because it doesn't want to be the first huge company to stomp on the little guys. The cost of taking a case to court would be large due to both legal costs and the bad PR. However, if a different company (e.g. Microsoft) were to push the red button first and win, Nintendo can reduce their legal costs by relying on the precedent that case set. The PR backlash would probably be less since people would say Nintendo was only crushing emulators because the other company did it first.
In other words, Nintendo doesn't fear losing to the battle with the emulator community; they are hoping someone else will fight that battle for them. Of course, all the other companies are making the same calculations and reaching the same conclusions.
There is no usable emulator for PS4 and PS5, and no emulator for Xbox One at all, so someone else pushing the button is unlikely to happen.
the emulation community got off easy this time. let’s try not to give these companies a reason to pursue legal action… or things could get much much worse in the near future
I honestly think that if Nintendo had gone to court with a target like dolphin, the "best case" outcome for them (a ruling in their favour) would have still been a loss in the court of public opinion, and I'm guessing that's one of the things holding them back from testing this legal theory in courts. Whatever they get out of that court decision has to be worth the very real PR cost of inevitable backlash, and, in a lot of cases especially with older emulators, I just don't think that would be the case.
But, here the situation is different. The games in question are actively available for sale. I think the argument about the games being available to play on emu before their official release is a very strong one.The fact that yuzu was making so much money, essentially selling the ability to play pirated games... they messed up big time
Yeah, that part of selling "actively selling" or "to be active games" was super bad and is the whole reason of IP in the first place. Even I as a massive critic of current iteration IP laws can't endorse that.
@@kliberoNah, Most regular people i know emulate GBA games on their phones, and don't know it's actually iligal, because they assume old games are public
I do not think most of the "court of public opinion" would change either way. People that believe emulation should be fully legal will still believe that even if it gets set in law it is not.
@@jesusramirezromo2037 That is antidotal at best and can vary a lot with the circles you run in. If they know how to emulate at all, they probably aren't the biggest casuals in general. In the grand scheme of things, it probably wouldn't even be that much of a hit. Just like how the Smash stuff never really affects their bottom line in a meaningful way. The majority of their audience just doesn't really care if they know it's happening at all.
@@AfutureV sorry to say, emulation while good for preserving games, shouldn't be misused. The emulation community has misused emulation to play games without paying Nintendo and the developers. I hate to say this, until we the people be more responsible, Nintendo has every right to protect their IP, we could choose not play Nintendo games at all.
It is a poor excuse to boycott Nintendo but playing their platform games not using their platform.
One thing here about the key checking for authenticity of the game: Microsoft uses a similar system, but for a time, people using unity could produce games and ran them on a special developer mode on an XBox if that is unlocked on the console. Even there, users needed to generate a special key in unity to run the game. When they submitted their game to the store, they needed to create a store listing with a special identifier and needed to add the identifier for the game and their company to the game and then submit both to microsoft via a special web page. Microsoft then ran multiple tests. Some done by machines and others done by humans and if the game passes the tests, they generate the file which can be downloaded and the final game file gets linked to the user account of the user who downloads it.
I am repeatedly astounded by the sheer quality and informative capacity of your videos! Thank you for making these! I'm currently trying to work off my youtube binging habit, but you will be one of the few channels that I choose to keep around, I think.
I do think it would be best for emulation in general if developers didn't even consider developing emulators for consoles until they're discontinued, because then they're not competing with a company's main product
Pretty uncool idea given we then have to wait 7 to 10 years to play games at high frame rates. That's why I emulate. As long as we're assigning "shoulds" then Nintendo should release fucking PC versions.
@@lpnp9477 I'd rather that and ensure that games can be preserved than have emulators be completely eradicated thanks to impatient and entitled gamers
@@believeinthenet they'll never go anywhere. Otherwise illegal roms themselves would be gone for good 30 years ago.
@@lpnp9477 but hypothetically, if Nintendo released a piece of hardware that did play Nintendo Switch games at higher framerates, would you buy that piece of hardware when you already have a free version? Even if they did release A PC version of Breath of the Wild right now, would you even buy that?
@@lpnp9477: Way to show off your elitist snobbery. The Switch might not be a graphical powerhouse, but it runs games that are actually optimized for it fine enough for most casual purposes.
What amazes me most about the Yuzu team is that they were stupid enough to think they could get away with it. Emulating a console that is currently the financial backbone of a company, the Switch, and expect to just... be able to keep going on your merry way without retribution?! Like, seriously?! That's just ridiculous on so many levels.
Really shows how techbros, and American techbros in particular, just have no referential for how things actually work in the real world.
By the way, since you care a bunch about asian cultures and make very interesting videos about it, here is a topic for you : the different relationship that the Japanese have with copyright when compared to America. I am no expert, but I lived in Japan for a short while and it was enough to see their relationship to intellectual property is pretty different than ours (and IMHO, healthier, but that's me and/or my relative ignorance speaking). This cultural difference explained, among many things, why Nintendo took much longer to accept stuff like "let's plays" and is overall much more protective than what we expect in the west.
Digging on the reasons for this would be a fascinating subject, and the kind you like to tackle, so I hope you'll, one day, take a look at it!
A deep look into Japanese IP law is on the ideas list for future videos!
the gall to run a patreon page for the emulator itself (as opposed to a nominally-unrelated patreon to support the people directly) is unbelievable to me. these kids have zero opsec
@@ckorp666they bought into their own bs and believed their own lies that what they were doing was TOTALLY LEGAL
Really it looks like the mistake may have been getting games to run before they were released, then on top making you pay money to get access to the build that lets you. Nothing says sue me like a nifty publicly available chart showing how much money you made letting people not pay Nintendo for one of their largest franchises.
@@ckorp666 except the problem with that is that Tropic Haze running under an LLC is the shield that prevents their individual employees from too much legal liability. If the individual devs ran their own Patreons and yet still accepted donos for early builds that emulated new games, each individual employee would be under way more legal trouble than they are now.
Just clicked this video to say that thumbnail is 🔥. What an amazing recreation of an iconic album cover.
Man, as soon as the news about Yuzu dropped, I instantly came over to this channel and came back repeatedly for a while after. I didn't know you were on hiatus (I never see community posts on YT), but I just knew this video was coming at some point.
Thanks again moonie!
I'm super glad to see you include a tracklist in the description, Moony! I've always loved the BGM you use in your videos, and often times I find myself recognizing SiIvaGunner rips, so having direct knowledge of which tracks are played is incredibly appreciated. 👍
"users probably just pirate a yuzu folder with everything" I cannot facepalm hard enough. Why do people think platforms like Discord are safe???
Yeah that was a pretty stupid thing to say.
The decryption point is, arguably, well within reverse engineering protections and I'd be more than happy to testify in court on that (as an expert witness, I have over 15 years of programming experience as my credentials go) **depending on precisely how they are doing it**, figuring out a system to run nintendo's software on another system and dumping decyrption keys (via reverse engineering the software that holds these keys) is, itself, fine. I mean, it has to be or the protection is pretty much irrelevant for anything released this side of the mid 90's since almost all software employs *some kind of encryption*. This is reverse engineering at any rate, as described in the DMCA (for the purposes of interoperability blah blah blah).
Encouraging piracy etc is... definitely not within the scope of reverse engineering. Nor is bragging about making a lot of money, and advertising that it can run unreleased titles. That's just being reckless.
Obligatory: I am not a lawyer, I am not *your* lawyer, this does not constitute legal advice or advice of any kind, this only constitutes my own personal opinions and comes with no guarantees or warranties of accuracy or fitness to any purpose, if you need legal advice you should consult a lawyer blah blah blah.
Crowdfunding sites in general seemed to cause a lot of companies to take a harder stance against emulators and fanworks. For example you might know the whole Axanar Fanfilm Situation which caused paramount to issue rules for fanfilms which were a lot more strict than before (and effectively killing tons of successful fan projects in the process.) One point of concern here was the involvement of crowdfunding as well. (To be honest, I think that was more an excuse to justify their actions, because ironically, although Paramount complained about crowdfunding. THAT was the sole area where their new rules became less restrictive than before.)
I really love the music you use in your videos and that you credit them in the description. Especially the segment at 9:20, IMO the best use of this parody I ever heared~ ^^ Great video as always! Informative and entertaining ❤
Great stuff as usual Moony. To criticize the law itself; it is a bit silly that the anti-circumvention clause is so wide-ranging that it can preempt reverse engineering software for interoperability.
On that topic, there's an ongoing EFF lawsuit, Green v. Department of Justice that tackles whether anti-circumvention provisions are a violation of the first amendment. Wondering if you have any thoughts on that? There's not enough coverage of it for us laymen. :)
Seconded! The anti-circumvention provisions seemed bonkers to me from a general standpoint, only making sense from a "well we are a company who always wants to make more money faster so please make laws benefiting us" standpoint.
EFF hasn't said anything about that lawsuit; I suspect they have just given up because it isn't political like facial recognition cameras or public protests.
On topic of morality etc. You are right. Many parts of how copyright works can also be summarized with the Carl Schmittean Statement of "the sovereign is who controls the state of exception". One example here is definitely Disney and their expired copyright of Steamboat Willie. Yes. Disney lost copyright of Steamboat Willie.. But. Did they tell youtube and others to stop enforcing their copyright. No. They chose to wait till people complained. 😅 In Copyright, apparently, Power is more important than morality or even legality.
That is the whole problem of Copyright. It only matters as much as you already had power in the first place which means in practice, it a tool of the ruling class to force compliance out of commonfolk.
Yes. Copyright also has a strong marxian class component.
Yes the copyright system is extremely broken unfortunately.
Couldn't have said it better myself. You sometimes see the trope of "My OC, donut steal" among smaller artists. Well, it's fair for an independent artist to be possessive of their livelihood considering the fragility of a career based on digital media, but, in practice, copyright is more like this power fantasy where small artists antagonize smaller artists. It's hard to persuade other artists to embrace collaboration, derivative works, etc. even when it ultimately benefits them, because they imagine themselves as more powerful and having more resources than they actually do.
All things considered, Nintendo was being gracious this time around
Agreed. This was a slap on the wrist and not a SMITE.
@@Toonrick12 If it's not a smite why do I have to scour the web to find the emulator again?
@@lucasLSD For the devs, not for you. The devs, as far as the public is aware, are not personally liable for those damages (the corporation is.)
@@lucasLSD oh no, a minor inconviniance in your privilieged life, how awfull... realy fuck nintendo for doing that to you.
@@kevinseraphin5456 We should boycott Nintendo for that. How dare poor lucas be forced to actually buy a game to play it!
anyone who's used yuzu should know that its base functionality required some degree of illegality when the acquisition of prod keys would always be locked behind some Base64 encrypted urls. getting yuzu set up would always feel super sketchy, and it shouldn't be too surprising that this happened.
I always figured Nintendo would find some way to stamp down yuzu. I think the company is generally willing to overlook emus for systems that are no longer active since they make no (or very little) money on the games from those systems. But making an emu for an active system would always make the developers a major target.
This goes doubly for the Switch, considering it is Nintendo's most successful system which brings them in billions. They don't want anything threatening their cash cow. Nintendo also went hard against R4 card manufacturers back in the DS days, pushing them more underground.
Looking at this whole thing from Nintendo's perspective, it makes sense and I can't say I wouldn't do the same thing if I was in the same situation. Companies exist to make money and they really can't allow things that would circumvent their revenue stream. That's just business.
I love to see Moony's vids, specially these law-related ones. They're very educative and many, many people don't seem to understand how things work. They only see a post on reddit and go pro-anarchy-level crazy, attacking whoever disagrees with them. As Thor, from PirateSoftware, says: we need to show people how the process works, so they can understand it and the people under it instead of blindly point fingers.
Thanks for the work, Moony, and I'd love to see a video about why [Ryujinx or anything else] being based in Brazil helps on this topic!
Thats why moony is so great but also why I sort of hate him at the same time.
He manages to completely demolish my perception of how the law in ways that anger my brain.
Also from my understanding (according to a friend from brazil atleast) digital copyright law is basically non-existent in brazil. And Im just ASSUMING its digital copyright law because in their words "it is basically legal to get pirated stuff here" and I'm only assuming they don't mean actual physical pirated goods.
@@mercury5003 you shouldn't hate them for bringing you knowledge and correcting the way you think about how something really works.
Also, I know my country's law and no, we have a copyright law here, in fact we have one law specifically for software copyright, but, as many things in Brazil, it's poorly enforced, thanka to our relaxed culture. But it doesn't mean one can freely do whatever they want here. You should tell your friend to stop believing in everything they see on Reddit, bc the biggest problem about piracy here is that it's "culturally right". And that's exactly why I'd love to have a video on this, not for my own knowledge, but for many people out there who think Brazil has no law on this.
@@BeautyMarkRush To clarify I dont actually hate moony that was just a dumb joke on my end.
Also I sort of figured the copyright situation over in brazil is probably more nuanced than they made it out to be lmao
@@mercury5003 oh, I understood, I didn't mean "hate" literally either, just that you shouldn't feel bad for it. Sry if it sounded rude. I'm not very good with phrasing things.
I feel bad for the yuzu devs but I'm also a little angry at how they acted. It was such a colossal fuck up to start a patreon that directly linked to the emulator. Every fan game creator knows if you make a patreon you do NOT connect it to another IP, ESPECIALLY if it's a Nintendo one. Their carelessness could set a precedent for emulation in the future and game preservation as a whole.
While I'm often baffled by a lot of Nintendo's decisions, this one was surprisingly reasonable given the circumstances. I'm all for emulating older games, especially if they were never released digitally, making them borderline impossible to play today, but giving early access to a game that wasn't released yet was basically Yuzu team handing Nintendo a lawsuit on a silver platter. If only Nintendo was that smart when it comes to supporting their own games, so we wouldn't even need the emulators to begin with.
I love the random Silvagunner rips throughout the video
I'm so glad someone else noticed... I randomly heard the snow halation melody and thought I must be losing my goddamn mind
Great video Moony! I'm a fan of emulation, but the discussions about this story online were pretty wild and emotionally charged. It's very nice to see a more detailed approach to explaining what happened, why them specifically, and why other devs aren't necessarily next on the chopping block. The more I look into the situation, the worse it seemed for Tropic Haze. RIP Citra though.
Coincidentally, a small CZcamsr named Galaxius also uploaded a video talking about Yuzu the same day as you (starts around 9:30 in his video), and your videos both complement each other perfectly: His is more from a business/gaming lens with a touch of case law, but you both have similar conclusions and fill in gaps for each other by expanding on different points. He also made a Pokemon vs Palworld video that would be a good source if you still plan to make one of your own (hopefully it's not "too late" in the new cycle for you to talk about that, because I'd love to hear your take on that)
Sounds interesting I’m going to check him out
Glad to see you cover this! Could you clarify on what exactly the precedence set in the Doug Bowser case is in relation to DRM circumvention (or anything else) and how that has the potential to impact future cases? You said at the time you made the older video, that aspect of the case flew under your radar, so I'd love to hear more now. On the note of seemingly inconsequential precedence becoming important later, while I know you've said you're hesitant to, I'd really still love to see you cover the intersection of Copyright and Generative AI, especially in the context of precedence set in those cases potentially having wider impact on IP law and impacting human artists, authors, etc rather then just AI.
While I personally think AI hurts society a lot more then it helps it, i'm particularly worried about a situation where the courts find that generative AI uses a sufficient amount and substantiality of the works it's trained on, which might impact human artists using references or even borrowing styles (which is not currently a copyright protected thing, but in practice sorta can be in the context of music specifically, and we've seen Adobe in a Senate testimony propose a likeness/personality rights law which would explictly protect an artist's style as a way to combat AI); or that as a way to combat AI, the "Sweat of the Brow" standard for receiving copyright protection may get backing in US law (since currently many artists point to the gap in effort between them making art and AI doing it as a reason for why the two are not comparable), which could further threaten the (fragile and limited, not unlike emulation) precedence that exists around Slavish reproductions of Public Domain art also being Public Domain; or erosion to the precedence set in the Google Books case creating increased liability around scraping not just for AI, but also organizations like the Internet Archive (who is already having legal troubles, and many of the same organizations involved there and in the Google Books case are currently involved in anti AI advocacy...)
To loop back to Yuzu, I also sort of question how important Yuzu being for profit or making money is? Correct me if i'm wrong, but unlike with traditional Copyright Infringement cases and Fair Use defenses (and even then, you can be liable even when not making money; or can win a Fair Use defense even when being for profit), the DMCA's DRM circumvention provisions don't really factor in profitability or commercial status, right? I can get that making a lot of money might make Nintendo or other parties more interested in making an example out of them, but in terms of the actual legalities, is it that relevant? My impression is that it's not, but it's still not a good look and the courts, judges, etc may still factor it in anyways?
Regardless, I agree with you that this would not have been a good test case (well, it would've been for Nintendo...) and i'm glad Yuzu settled rather then fight it out in court.
Lastly, I actually sent you an email, as there's a particular gaming/pop culture-meets-history/sociology topic sorta like your Trans, Brazilian representation and Korean gender videos that I have expertise in and uniquely have a lot of images and visual references for (with valid licenses to use!) that I'd be interested in maybe helping you make a video with... but I've been having issues with people getting my emails lately, so if you see my comment here but DON'T see it in your inbox, let me know! 😅
"Emulators that accept encryption keys are themselves 1201 circumvention devices" would be a significant leap in scope for 17 USC 1201, at least as so much as people who need to know presently understand the law. If that is the case, then I'm not exactly sure where the line is at all. Is the mere existence of a copy-protection scheme enough to make even an emulator totally incompatible with the scheme illegal purely for it not being incompatible *enough*? This would be scary not just for game console emulation, but *all* emulation. e.g. Valve would be violating the law shipping Proton (a Windows reimplementation for Linux) merely because Windows DRM schemes exist that someone *might* add support for in Proton or WINE. Alternatively, if the argument is "you're inducing people to break DRM, you have to remove all the UI for adding keys and people have to just figure it out themselves", then I think that's at least consistent with existing case law.
Not all Nintendo emulators require crypto keys, either. Nintendo didn't start encrypting game data until the N64 and DS. GBA and earlier and SNES and earlier have cleartext data, THOUGH in the Gary Bowser lawsuit Nintendo specifically got the US government to allege that merely *being a cartridge* is a 1201 technological protection measure. As far as I'm aware, that doesn't actually have prescedential weight, but if it WAS law, it would blow out the scope of 1201 so much that basically everything is DRM. This wouldn't just ruin emulation, it'd render every Creative Commons license unusable because CC licenses have a very specific "you cannot use DRM" clause in them.
Related note: some of the RIAA's lawsuits against CZcams rippers might wind up doing the same thing. Everyone uses Incompetech music and Kevin MacLeod could basically rugpull a lot of creators if that was the case.
This is exactly why the argument Nintendo is making is both stupid and dangerous. It could be used to make things that are trivial, potentialy illegal overnight. In my opinion the law should allow the bypass of DRM for personal use as long as you do not distribute anything that the DRM was protecting.
See (a)(2) of 1201:
(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or
(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person’s knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
I think it's pretty obvious that Proton (for example) isn't primarily designed for breaking DRM, has a meaningful legitimate use, and isn't marketed for breaking DRM.
> Is the mere existence of a copy-protection scheme enough to make even an emulator totally incompatible with the scheme illegal purely for it not being incompatible enough?
I think it's fair to say that most emulators have "only limited commercially significant purpose" than to play retail console games, and if said games are encrypted it's hard to see how you could use the emulator without breaking DRM.
If you made an emulator designed specifically for homebrew development - eg having a built-in CPU and GPU debugger and other bits and pieces that are useful for something like that, and intentionally didn't do the very large amount of work required to make retail games work properly - then I think you'd have a much stronger argument.
> THOUGH in the Gary Bowser lawsuit Nintendo specifically got the US government to allege that merely being a cartridge is a 1201 technological protection measure.
Having a quick read through the complaint, it sounds like that's in reference to their 3DS flashcarts?
Legitimate 3DS cartridges (like DS and Switch ones) have custom flash chips that have a bunch of cryptographic stuff inside them. I'm not familiar with how the flashcarts involved in that prosecution worked, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did contain a key.
Even if they didn't involve cryptography, I'm not really sure how it would expand the scope of 1201? Having an intentionally non-standard physical, electrical and protocol interface designed specifically to be tamper-resistant seems pretty rare.
@@znix9695 Team Xecutor sold a device that would copy SNES cartridges onto a SNES Classic Edition. That's the one where the totality of the complaint is "well SNES cartridges aren't a standard memory device ergo it's copy protected ergo selling this is a crime"
@@SuperSmashDolls Yet inside a cartridge are JEDEC-compliant Mask-ROM chips?
Pretty sure Proton doesn't bypass any DRM features built into Windows. For instance it doesn't support any MS Store games. DRM in Windows games (other than MS Store, like in Steam) are self-contained and don't depend on any DRM features in Windows.
YO NEW MOON CHANNEL VIDEO
Moonie W
I just discovered you the other day through someone linking your Korean Gacha Drama video and I've been binging more of your content. I really like your style of video essays, keep up the good work! Also, I'm not sure if the narrator's voice is your own but I like it!
13:01 "To play Tears of the Kingdom, it was gated behind a patreon paywall." Ahhhhhh, that'll do it. There's a lot of nails for this coffin, but that was an entire box of them.
No sympathy here. They got extremely greedy and will hurt the rest of us for it.
That was a misleading statement. The *fan-made* patch also worked with the public build, it was just more stable than the beta patreon build. Yuzu technically did nothing wrong there, other than having a paywalled build in the first place.
Yeah Moony was wrong on this one. It was a fan made build of Yuzu that allowed Tears to be played early Not early Yuzu builds.
I remember when totk launched I bought the game but tried to play it on yuzu for better fps. I ended up pirating yuzu, not liking it and just playing the game on my switch.
@@user-md7er6xe2z No, the official ones pushed updates for totk. Yuzu and Ryugjnx were competing for who would get the best totk emulator and they were pushing three updates a day at one point.
A lot of people get this wrong. The pay walled builds were 1) just builds of the source, and the source is not pay walled, you could build your own EA version and 2) they did not contain any code that allowed totk to be playable. They specifically went out of their way to avoid adding any totk specific code until release. The patches were made by the community.
I literally thought suyu was a meme someone made up to joke about this. Since it's name sounds like "Sue You."
The name is a meme but the emulator itself is real.
It's still a meme.
The Suyu's team has no idea how Yuzu's code work and changing the name was the only thing they did.
Happy Easter Moony and Moonites! Hope yours was a good one!
If you don't celebrate Easter, I hope you had a pleasant day regardless!
Moony, this video was as entertaining as any ❤️ no apology necessary! I was so excited to seen it come out. Welcome back
HONEY WAKE UP, NEW MOONY LAW VIDEO JUST DROPPED
Fantastic video as always Moony!
As someone who recently discovered your content, I just wanna say that I love the idea of you using Maya as your avatar/mascot for these videos. Obviously there's the Phoenix Wright connecton and the fact she's my favorite character in the series, but also, I love that you decided to use the character that is clearly the LEAST qualified to be a lawyer and yes, I am including the literal 8 year old in that assesment.
Always love these deep dives. Keep up the great work.
Thank you for this great video, Moony!
The main foot Nintendo's argument stands on is, if I interpret it correctly, that emulators are circumventing encryption in an unauthorized way by gaining access to encryption keys by dubious means not authorized by Nintendo.
If there was instead something like a Nintendo-provided licensing API, where a user could authenticate with their Nintendo account and receive a title key for decrypting their own purchased games, this would make the rest of the emulator more likely to be legal, right?
Notwithstanding of course that Nintendo is unlikely to ever do this on their own, since providing access to title keys in any way means pirates could then spread around already decrypted ROMs of games.
Would an obligation by law in some state(s) for companies to offer some form of access to decrypted content or keys for owners of titles in some way to facilitate archival and preservation of gaming history (maybe as part of something like EU regulation, similar to the opening of Apple App stores, or charging port standardization) change that stance and make the above idea of a "licensing API" more likely?
Nintendo gains less than nothing, literally NEGATIVE money, by promoting the idea that you can play their first party games on whatever platform you want.
They take a 30% cut of every single game on the Switch E-shop. That's where Valve, MS, Sony, Nintendo, Epic etc make their real money, and its why Google and Apple even sniffed toward the gaming industry at all. If you don't need a Nintendo console, then your NEXT game purchase of Minecraft or Diablo 3 or Hades is unlikely to get Nintendo their cut of all those games.
In the face of these profits, and the NSO subscriptions, Nintendo honestly does not give a crap about the few extra million sales that certain individual first party games might bring in on PC. Going after people who refuse to get a Nintendo system would be shooting their own business in the foot. They are better off making their next system more appealing or unique, to get more marketshare, than just simply trying to get a few of their AAA games in front of a few extra people.
Nintendo are far from a third party, and sales of their games is only a small part of the profit engine. IP rights are core to their business model and worth spending millions on lawyers to protect.
@@EmbassyNerdcore This may be true but the problem I have with Nintendo is that they like to wine and complain about people pirating their games yet they don't provide a service that allows people to play Nintendo games on PC. They have the right to not sell to PC of course, but its shocking that they don't understand that not everyone is willing to buy a 350$ underpowered tablet just to play a few exclusives.
They don't seem to understand that their own actions have consequences and don't even seem to even entertain the possibility that maybe, just maybe, their own choices are encouraging the piracy of their games.
Ahh yes! This is the video that I’ve been waiting for the last month! ❤
21:20 : I can attest of at least one lost sale because of Switch emulation.
I have a friend who played TotK before its release, because it was already available.
And when the game released, well, he already had the game (albeit a pirated version), so it didn't make sense for him to pay 60€ to get something he already had.
There is a lot of people like that, who refuse to pay for a game they could afford, on "principle" that they refuse to pay for something they got for free. They then turn around and bemoan the state of the game industry and underpaid devs, not seeing the irony. The actually number of people who cant afford the games they want is much smaller than the people who just refuse to buy it but believe it to be their God given right to play it.
@@godlyBlade pirates do not believe that games should be worth money, they hide behind claims of "bad service", but when you ask them what a good service is, they point to examples of games being tossed out for pennies, which obviously means the company making the game is the one losing out in that scenario.
For me it was the exact opposite. I was on the fence before the game launched, tried it out when it leaked and played the game on switch.
hate to say it, but I feel like the same thing would happen if Nintendo released that switch pro everyone's been clambering for. They'd see that the specs aren't 4k 196fps and go back to a $3,000 gaming pc and continue to pirate, leaving the hardware to also lose sales due to piracy.
That's nice and all. But many have bought games through piracy due to finding out their purchase is worth enough.
Also used games are basically worse. Piracy can generate sales, used games not. Why buying a new copy if you already have purchased one?
Meanwhile people are okay with that.
In your Friend's case, if he couldn't pirate he would just not buy that game.
Thank you so much Mooney for making this video. You put a lot of effort into it and it is very well informed. I hope every emulator developer watches it so that we can keep emulation under the radar. It was pretty clear that Yuzu was begging for a lawsuit. Before Yuzu gave in, I saw a lot of people saying that Yuzu had the high ground, but as I can see, the people saying that didn’t know the full legal context.
Honestly I feel like emulation is the safest 2 gens back. Even if a modern system can be emulated, it's too much of a risk. I'm happy to pay for my Switch games and support the modern devs. But I would love to have access to Dolphin to play games on the Steam Deck I'm planning to get in a couple weeks. Developing emulators for modern emulators also makes the preservation argument much more difficult to keep holding water.
Oh, nice, I was waiting to see a video on this topic made by you, you're pretty much the only youtuber I trust that'd make a sense of this clustertruck of a situation.
Btw, Regarding that Nerrel video, It's well made imo, I like it, as you know precisely from what point of view he's talking. He's not a trained lawyer, but has done his research and bases his opinion after looked through laws regarding software and hardware emulation, past court cases and precedents, but ultimately talks about how much of a gray area emulation is in, where it's both legal and illegal to preserve your games and emulate them, pointing out what value does emulation bring and why, in his opinion, it's very important to create such laws that'd allow to preserve all games in a legal, and most of all, playable matter. It doesn't really matter or change much in Yuzu's case, but I reckon you'd probably like to watch it, so I highly recommend it.
Yuzu devs annoy me because I genuinely just want to preserve old games and these shady people keep trying to ruin that.
They are the ones that screwed up. People always spew venom at Nintendo when these greedy SOBs are the ones that led Nintendo right to it.
What if I just want to play games for free? A lot of people are like that.
@@bruceknee4941 You're the problem then. I get that gaming is expensive and you can't afford to play every game you want to play, but then you should play the slew of F2P games and not add to the piracy problem.
@@bruceknee4941 I understand that for like... Tom and Jerry on super Nintendo, but doing the same for modern titles that are currently being sold is kind of a dick move. I am all for emulation and I even understand not everyone is going to have a copy of Elf the movie for gba but using emulation to actually just steal currently sold products is where I draw the line. Emulation should be for old games so future generations can experience them for historical reasons. I play old games all the time and THAT is ok especially if you own the games like me and do it all above board, but when you do all of this just to steal you kind of ruin stuff for everyone because you will make even what us normal people do by lumping what we do with you.
@@bruceknee4941 Yeah you should not pirate games that are still being sold.
maybe, nintendo FINALLY publishing games and consoles in the Brazilian market its part of its playing cards agaist Ryujinx.
During the first half of the switch's life it was impossible for brazilians to get nintendo games for switch in a legitimate way, so nintendo's argument that piracy is hurting them was much weaker for Ryujinx.
I feel like problem with the Brazilian market is that the numerous tariffs on imports causes the prices to be out of reach for most Brazilians.
"Impossible" is such a strong word...
I didn't have any trouble getting Switch games on the eshop, even during the early years of the Switch in Brazil, and even during the 3DS era. Yeah, they only reopened the Brazilian eshop in December 2020, but the problem wasn't on Nintendo's side. It was on brazilian law and banks.
Most brazilian banks would prohibit their credit cards from doing international purchases if they were charged in another currency, like USD, while the shop showed the price in BRL, bc, how the law worked before, the client would be charged according to the exchange rate at the time the bill was closed, not in the actual day of the purchase, leading to discrepancies in the final payment - this was changed in March 2020. My bank didn't abide to that at the time, though, so I had no real problem there.
Still, sometimes buying the US gift cards would be a better option, since the price wouldn't fluctuate this way. Many shops sold the US gift cards here, sometimes a little more expensive than their actual value in BRL, or you could buy them in online stores, like I did, and pay the actual BRL price at the time. No discrepancies at the end of the month whatsoever.
Better yet, some games had a cheaper physical copy, since Nintendo never reduces the prices of their digital games but retailers will, bc they need to empty up those shelves and a stopped game on the shelf is stopped, unusable money.
So no, it wasn't impossible, you just needed to know where to look for.
Now, I think it's way worse, bc the price is fixed, it doesn't matter if the BRL to USD exchange rate gets lowered, you will *always* pay 300 BRL for a Nintendo game, no matter how old it is. Unless you buy it during a (rare) sale, which you can get up to 30% off. Sometimes, it's worth more changing your eshop to another region and buying the gift cards from there online...
I"ve been waiting for this video since the news of Nintendo acting on the matter dropped. Amazing content as always!
Nintendo being shown as Sauron's lidless eye was hilarious
Bro really waited for Nintendo to take down something else because he knew they would
This video was not messy! Very happy to hear your analysis and thoughts.
Nintendo like every game console manufacturer is not going to waste time going after a emulator developer until they start publicizing it. Essentially today what you have is emulator devs and their supporters trying to convert paying customers into pirates. I do not care if you are Nintendo all the way down to a "Mom and Pop" operation you are going to take action in that situation and try to create a deterrent to others who might want to do the same.
Exactly. It costs them money to bring a lawsuit. They will only bother if the amount they think they are losing is more than the amount it costs to bring the lawsuit. Keep your head down and stop screaming about the supposed moral righteousness of piracy and Nintendo won't care.
How exactly are emulator developers and supporters trying to "convert" paying customers of Nintendo into supporters of piracy? Emulator developers and people who use emulators legally do not condone piracy and don't necessarily want it to exist. You act like the emulation community is some sort of cult or something.
@@user-md7er6xe2zIf you want to live in a la la land where people do not pick the path of least resistance or sacrifice, go ahead it is no hair off my back. However, if you are honest having the emulation "community" constantly playing Nintendo games prior to release for free on stream and social media is a advertisement for using Switch emulators over purchasing products.
The price of games is a very loud and long standing complaint of gaming "customers," if you think there is not a large converted base of "customers" to "pirates" that were created with Yuzu's and other Switch emulators very visible presence on social media you are naive. Ad minimum they are at least one million total pirates on Yuzu alone, that is not a small number. Some of those are recent converts.
Back in the day emulators like Znes, ePSXe and MAME communities kept emulation activity discreet and if you happened to trip over them so be it. Morality is not as wide spread as people like you think. Low risk theft is tempting for a large percentage of people.
If you want to live in a la la land where people do not pick the path of least resistance or sacrifice, go ahead it is no hair off my back. However, if you are honest having the emulation "community" constantly playing Nintendo games prior to release for free on stream and social media is a advertisement for using Switch emulators over purchasing products.
The price of games is a very loud and long standing complaint of gaming "customers," if you think there is not a large converted base of "customers" to "pirates" that were created with Yuzu's and other Switch emulators very visible presence on social media you are naive. Ad minimum they are at least one million on Yuzu alone, that is not a small number.
Back in the day emulators like Znes, ePSXe and MAME communities kept emulation activity discreet and if you happened to trip over them so be it. Morality is not as wide spread as people like you think. Low risk theft is tempting for a large percentage of people.
@@Shinjiduo Are you responding to me? All I was saying is that emulators themselves are not made because "People want to pirate games" they were made so other people could play their games on other hardware that is not the Switch. This is like trying to say that guns are made by people because the people who made them want to see other people murder people for fun. They don't, and nether do emulator developers want piracy.
"If you want to live in a la la land where people do not pick the path of least resistance or sacrifice, go ahead it is no hair off my back. However, if you are honest having the emulation "community" constantly playing Nintendo games prior to release for free on stream and social media is a advertisement for using Switch emulators over purchasing products."
This dose not represent the entirety of the emulation community though. Why are you groping them all together into the "piracy" box? This is just an extreme generalization.
"The price of games is a very loud and long standing complaint of gaming "customers," if you think there is not a large converted base of "customers" to "pirates" that were created with Yuzu's and other Switch emulators very visible presence on social media you are naive. Ad minimum they are at least one million on Yuzu alone, that is not a small number."
Yes because the price of older games can be very high and Nintendo refuse to resell them. Nintendo also sells there games at 60$ usually but thats not really the problem. The problem many people have is that they never really go on sale that often. This can possibly encourage piracy. What do you define as "Large" exactly. The majority of people who play Nintendo games buy them legally. Pirates only really make up a small fraction of the gaming community. assuming that all one million are all pirates then thats still pathetic in comparison to the over 133 million Switch users.
Its funny how you seem to blame the emulation community for piracy but yet seem to not acknowledge the fact that many of the business choices that Nintendo makes encourages piracy. If Nintendo ported their games to PC Im sure there would be less people pirating their games.
"Back in the day emulators like Znes, ePSXe and MAME communities kept emulation activity discreet and if you happened to trip over them so be it. Morality is not as wide spread as people like you think. Low risk theft is tempting for a large percentage of people."
Its hard to understand what you are trying to say considering how vague your language is. what do you mean by " if you happened to trip over them so be it"? Who's them? There is no significantly large percentage of people being "tempted". No one is "tempting" anyone except for Nintendo as they don't seem to like the idea of discouraging piracy by offering a service to PC players to buy and play their games. Keep in mind, Im not saying that piracy is justified. Im just saying that if Nintendo is not helping their cause of wanting to stop piracy. A lot of people probably pirate out of spite for the company I imagine.
I'm really hoping there are more actual court cases on this eventually. Not because I want to see blood, but just so all of these long-unanswered questions can finally be clarified and so much speculation can be put to rest.
Whew, what a rollercoaster, good video.
I ended up digging through the court complaint myself and noticed the dumping situation with yuzu's head dev, and I was curious if the case went to court, it would have likely made dumping games fully illegal by precedent. IIRC from the nerrel video there was a law permitting dumps but many dumping tools circumvent to dump, so other laws forbid it. is it safe to assume that dumping would've been fully made illegal had a ruling been made?
Also there's the discovery made by ZZAZZ where a fault in the GBA's crash sound can be used to translate sound data into a rom file. I'm unsure if this would technically be legal, because to my knowledge it would not be circumventing anything but mainly it acts similar to homebrew, where you are exploiting a vulnerability in the system.
Your one of my favorite channels right now.
Good to have you back, Moony.
Your music choise is as enjoyable as it is confusing
It is high quality for sure.
i did not expect to hear a video game cover of breathe 2am by anna nalick during the conclusion lol
From what I was reading in the settlement, not only did Nintendo get $2.4 million, but they also got ownership of Yuzu. Including the sites, the trademarks and the code. What are the consequences of this?
Could they sue open source forks because they own the code now?
Would there be any chance of Nintendo actually bringing the code in-house to develop their own emulation technology? Maybe the nextgen Nintendo console will have a Yuzu-powered switch "virtual console".
Could they use acquired telemetry data for nefarious purposes, such as evidence in future "anti-piracy" cases?
i think your videos are getting better. love the siivagunner stuff, keep the good work up
(if you’re ever unsure about a rip’s joke, there’s a siiva wiki out there
excellent video, amazing soundtrack
Thank you, graybee! I'm so glad that you enjoyed the video
I can understand taking down Yuzu from a legal standpoint. It directly competes with their sales if people decide to pirate a game, sure. What I don't understand is that the devs were forced to also take down Citra: an emulator for a console that is no longer supported and has no game or console games that go to Nintendo. There was no competition. It was pure pettiness.
If they ever did want to 'push the red button', this case likely will still be considered, even if they did technically settle. Them allowing Citron to remain could establish legal precedent for them being 'okay' with how it was being used, which in copyright law makes it harder for you to defend yourself. In US copyright law you have to be proactive in protecting your material because of the precedence it creates if you ever do want to go to court.
I'm not a lawyer and I could be wrong, and it could be pure pettiness, just some speculation from my limited understanding of the law.
@@lemoncakeslemonade5430 there was no real legal reason to even take it down other than "we want to make sure we're always in control, even if it having the product up does not affect us whatsoever"
It was taken down because Nintendo told Tropical Haze that they have to destroy anything that they have worked on that may be used to infringe on their copyright or allow anyone to play pirated games. Citra unfortunately can technically do play pirated games so it was destroyed. Effectively its "Guilty by association" since Citra had nothing directly to do with the lawsuit itself. I know its stupid. So much for having a legal system lol. 🙄
thank you for answering my incredibly messy string of words! you absolutely answered all the questions i thought i had and more.
Great video, thanks for the perspective
First of all it is great to see you back Moony!
Second, I would hope this serves as a great lesson for those who champion the emulation scene. A lot of people don't realize why companies have to be somewhat protective of their intellectual properties within the United States. It's all in the copyright laws that were written decades ago (especially the DMCA). The bullet the emulation community just dodged was a silver one- this was a case that could have seen Nintendo push that "big red button" and who knows what the hell could have happened after that.
I neither support nor make use of emulators since my teen years, but I definitely remember it being a lot more low-key back in those days. Anyone remember the Stop Online Piracy Act that was introduced a few years ago??
This is why emulators should never decrypt roms
roms should be already decrypted.
I distinctly remember Near pointing this out as *the* reason why bsnes didn't take ROMs with copier headers in them. SNES ROMs aren't encrypted, but Near didn't want anything in bsnes that would support a piracy device - even a 30 year old UFO copier.
THAT BEING SAID, piracy scenes are very lazy. It'd be very trivial to make a game that breaks if run decrypted - i.e. it can check to make sure it's copy on the Switch filesystem is encrypted, or ask the Switch OS to decrypt some data for it, which would mean either the emulator *has* to have a crypto system with valid prod keys, or the pirate has to modify the game to not challenge the crypto system. If the scene had done the latter, then game developers could put secondary or even tertiary checks in place to make sure the check code hasn't been bypassed or modified. This is an amount of effort that you only really see in PC piracy. If you have the emulator do the cracking, then there's nothing for the game's secondary checks to... well, check for. The game has been rugpulled.
Going back to bsnes, the choice to not take downloaded ROMs directly got Near a *lot* of shit (to put it lightly). If Dolphin or Citra had said "we're not implementing crypto period, decrypt and crack the games yourself", there'd be an even bigger shitstorm, hostile forks everywhere, etc.
@@SuperSmashDollsbecause the convenience and low price of 'free' is the main point of piracy. Jumping more hoops makes it less appealing, and having to track down and perhaps spend money to get cracking tools and even modding hardware are all barriers to entry that prevent game piracy from going too mainstream
Thats actually how Citra worked. The emulator itself did not decrypt the games for you so use to required you to decrypt the games using software first before you can play them on there. Im not sure why a hacked Switch itself could not have just decrypted the games for you like how a hacked 3DS dose now. This makes this situation even more baffling because Citra and Yuzu were made by the same developers. So I don't fully get why they did not just take the same approach as before.
A new format or decrypted files are going to be the basis from now on.
Cemu did that and many other disc based emulators did that as well.
XCI and NSP are direct rips from a Nintendo switch, adding fuel to the fire.
If Yuzu went the unencrypted route, Nintendo wouldn't have a strong case.
Kind of weird the didn't go that route, especially with the knowledge of citra.
If it didn't do that, Nintendo would simply argue that the emulator only functioned with games acquired from illegal circumvention. It would change nothing.
you've become one of my favorite channels. just wanted to say that
Thank you as always Mr. MOONY.
I imagine that some form of emulation and/or piracy will exist for as long as there are some people who can easily (or otherwise) afford to pay for the product while others can not.
Every time I hear arguments about how video game emulators "break copyright law to run illicit software", I have to wonder how those arguments would stand up against Virtual Machine software like Oracle VirtualBox or VMWare.
From a purely functional viewpoint there is no real difference between a VM and an Emulator as both are replicating-within-software a specific hardware environment to run Software Not Intended for the Host system (eg: running a Sun SPARC VM using VirtualBox under X86-64/AMD64/X64 Linux in order to run old SPARC software to keep a business running, or using VMWare on a Linux host to run a Windows XP guest OS to play an old game that doesn't run well under Windows 10/11 or through WINE or Proton under Linux).
Keep in mind I'm an IT tech as it's my passion for the past 30 years since I was a small kid, so I look at things like this from the viewpoint of how it'd affect the IT field if any cases against emulation programs are tried against their VM siblings due to how ubiquitous VM software usage is in industries such as Banking in order to run old software that has no modern replacement with the same functionality (or even software the business was built around that is no longer produced and it'd cripple the business to completely overhaul their systems).
Edit; just from the Wikipedia Page about Oracle VirtualBox release history changes:
7.0
Support for Windows 11 guest: UEFI Secure Boot and *emulation of TPM 1.2 and 2.0 chips[26]* (TPM = Trusted Platform Module. originated from Microsoft's "Project Palladium" (aka: Next-Generation Secure Computing Base) during the early 2000's with Windows XP)
Intel and AMD *IOMMU emulation*
Full VM encryption (in previous VirtualBox releases only VM disks could be encrypted) available via CLI[26]
3D acceleration with DirectX 11 on Windows, and DXVK on other hosts[26]
Dark mode for UI currently implemented only for Windows hosts
Experimental support for Apple ARM64 hosts[26]
I unironically think that Ryujinx making that macOS port to Apple Silicon was what could save their ass, since they can argue that it’s not an “emulator” on the architectural level, but a mere virtualiser of the same ARM64 architecture of Apple Silicon.
As an armchair person, My understanding is that any use of decryption makes one vulnerable under nintendo's argument. Ergo, a TPM implementation would count as circumvention.
Thank you for the informative and enjoyable video
RIP Mooney’s cover of American Idiot. We will never be the same without it, but its memory will always live on in each of us.
19:59 "It's also on the record that lead dev Bunnei often gets new Switch games running the day of, or at times, even the day before a game's release."
The second half of the sentence (and Nintendo's claim on the bottom half of the screen) is technicaly incorrect. By the time Yuzu advertises these games, they are already released in New Zealand (where the time zone is 17 hours ahead of New York's). This isn't the first time NoA made this mistake, either. Multiple times, they had the Twitch accounts of streamers from Australia, NZ, and even Japan suspended for playing "unreleased" games, despite those games already being live in their home countries.
This doesn't really affect their argument (that emulating Switch games on release requires circumventing technological measures), I just think it's funny that Nintendo of America keeps forgetting that other countries exist.
very american of them
it is still the day before the game came out so there point stans
I think their argument was not about getting around time zones, but games that leaked days early
Does anyone actually ask the question of "why does piracy happen"? Or even "why do we even need emulators"? Like seriously, that question never gets asked. At best, it's a preservation argument, but that doesn't work when the platform you're emulating is modern or still up for sale in some offical way. At worst, it's all illegal. Where is the line drawn?
Law and Emulation are certainly finicky in today’s world. All it would take is for one hand to weigh on either side and the gavel is poised to bang on a decision targeted to leave some scars. There’s always a loser in these situations.
Looking forward to the future videos as always. Great job on this one though, Moony! 👍