People think emulator protections in the law are stronger than they really are. Sony vs Connectix made emulation legal, but it wasn’t heard by the supreme court. PS1 games weren’t encrypted and relied on other methods like disc wobble to prevent piracy…so without proactively violating any measures you could just not include that check in your competing emulator and play retail discs without breaking any laws.
In steps the DMCA anti-circumvention laws for bypassing video game / console encryption measures, which is an even bigger untested minefield without precedent in favor of emulation. And since games are default encrypted on new consoles and arguably not subject to exemption (at least while still supported) it really might be a disaster to fight it.
Nintendo is a dick but it’s not in our interest or theirs to really push the boundary on the status quo. The get to slap suit whatever they want taken down, we get to play the emulation hydra game where it’s still legally grey.
Personally I don’t give a flying Fuck what the law says, breaking copyright is the only thing preventing the world from being more of a dystopian nightmare with subscription mice and trains that break down if you take them to a mechanic and I can’t wait for someone in china or India to take the Open source code and make a better emulator.
Obligatory fuck Nintendo, but I also blame the selfish dumbfucks who keep posting videos of themselves playing unreleased games on YouTube and Reddit. If you want nice things contingent on having software which exists in a legal gray area, don’t openly poke the litigious hornets’ nest.
There were so many Nintendo apologists when Yuzu was taken down because “Yuzu used actual nintendo source code, so that’s why they were taken down, it won’t happen to Ryujinx.” Yet here we are. Nintendo is by far the shittiest company when it comes to protecting their IP, because it’s all they have. Turns out, Mario is a fucking bootlicker
I don’t understand how people think getting rid of emulators is good. Having emulators is better as a consumer than not having them at all, since it can give gamers more ways to play their games and might incentivize Nintendo to add features to compete with emulators (think better res and fps, mod support, save states, no online requirement).
Because a subset of people are and always will be idiots. Remember: some people think unions exist to steal your money, socialism is communist dictatorship propaganda, and privatization of government services is good for everybody.
Nintendo fanboys are a special breed of stupid, arguing with them about Nintendo’s policies and anti consumer practices is just a wasted effort.
As with Yuzu, I won’t be buying any more switch games. I’ll still be playing switch games, and so will my friends, but we won’t my buying them.
Honestly, I’ve lived watching emulators for decades. They can come and go and there’s always more, even ones that aren’t forks. Just today I was reminiscing on my first emulators, zsnes, no$gmb and nesticle. Y’all remember the peaceful zsnes snowfall? Good times.
Flathub ia still available to whoever needs it
I know it’s not happening, but I’d love it if Nintendo went the way of Sega, and just made games. They’ve always been hit and miss with their consoles anyway, it’s the games people love. Just fuck it, start releasing games for multiple platforms and focus on what you’re actually fucking good. Pipe dream, I know
I imagine Nintendo could make a tonne selling Zelda games for PC for 1.5x what they normally charge, simply for performance and controller compatibility.
Right?
If they hate emulators so much, why aren’t they selling native x86 versions?
Go to hell Nintendo. I will never buy anything from them again and I will advise gamers I know to do the same.
I will always say this in these “Nintendo shuts down beloved fan project” threads: why don’t the people working on these projects operate anonymously and release via torrent? I feel like I’ve been reading the same story for 20 years. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone at this point that Nintendo will come after you.
Because emulation is legal. It shouldn’t have to be hidden. This was taken through the courts in 2001 with the Sony vs Bleem lawsuit.
What appears to be happening is Nintendo is abusing its power and money to make threats of legal action that these groups just can’t afford to fight, even though they haven’t done anything illegal. It should be coming as a surprise that Nintendo is coming for them, because this is completely legal, and not some fan game using Nintendo IP (which is what they normally shut down).
Legal in the US. I think this guy is in Brazil.
Is nintendo the source of the “come to brazil” meme? 🤔
The Sony verdict didn’t establish emulation as legal
At most you find that it established using mods/creating derivatives is illegal
And on the low end it found that using pictures from competitors in advertising as comparison isn’t illegal
Emulation might be legal, but it’s software specifically designed to run illegal copies of the games.
I dislike Nintendo, but I can’t blame them for taking down that kind of software development. They’re still selling many of their old games through their own store for their own emulators. They’re perhaps charging way too much for it and/or lock it behind a subscription wall, even if you ever bought the original copies. Absolute garbage business practice, but from the corporate point of view I can see why they go after emulators. Especially since it’s easier to take those down than trying to go after all digital emulator copies of the games (if not impossible).
They’re probably gonna try and set an example to scare off others trying to make new emulators too.
That may be the main reason why people use or even create emulators, but there are still legitimate uses for emulators. It’s like banning couples from riding the same motorcycle because two people on a bike is usually a robbery.
I can’t blame them for taking down that kind of software development.
Your not being able to blame them is completely irrelevant. Nintendo can not like stuff all it wants. The question is if it is LEGAL. If it is, and it is, your defense of their actions is a defense of the argument that they should be above the law because they don’t like something, and that’s an absolutely TERRIBLE position to take. You don’t need to white knight for Nintendo. They have more money than God and taking up their fights for them against your own rights as a consumer is so far beyond Stockholm Syndrome that I don’t think we even have a word for it yet.
To be fair, it’s software specifically designed to run digital backups of what’s supposed to be personally owned media. It just so happens that it’s very easy to obtain a copy otherwise, but there’s nothing inherently illegal about it or the games.
Strong arming independent projects, and individual developers especially, that are very careful to not endorse that, effectively holding them accountable for others, is morally questionable at best.
From a theoretical point of view, emulators of modern consoles may actually be illegal. Under the DMCA, emulation for preservation is protected as a periodically-renewed exemption list defined by the library of congress. But, (paraphrasing) “creating or distributing any hardware or software device—or component of such—designed to circumvent DRM technology” is still illegal irrespective of any exemptions. A reasonable (and bullshit) interpretation of that means that any emulator which is capable of bypassing any DRM features (such as decrypting ROM using user-provided keys) is a violation under the act.
I say theoretical because it hasn’t ever actually been tested in a court. Nintendo v. Tropic Haze LLC nearly gave us the answer, but the latter chose to settle instead.
Is it illegal to copy your own Nintendo games?
It is not illegal to make backup copies for yourself of games you have purchased and own.
As shitty as it is, yes.
What do you think emulation is?
Copying your own copy of a game and using tools for compatibility is what we’re talking about, is protected, and already has the case law demonstrating so.
It is made for various things like game development. When my company was working on remastering a GameCube game, Nintendo themselves handed us a devkit, and we used the dolphin emulator to play the original game and compare gameplay and performance.
This is like if a pedestrian gets struck by a car while on a crosswalk. Yeah, they were allowed to be there… but they should have looked both ways before crossing the street.
This is a case of people being idealistic rather than practical.
Incidentally, this is a perfect example, because the automotive industry ran a series of ad campaigns to change public sentiment after cars got more common and children and elderly citizens started dying in the streets.
Nintendo is working equally hard to change public sentiment against the innocent.
Source: https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history
You’re talking about blame assignment, but I am instead referring to the fact that in both the Nintendo and the automotive example that somebody got smacked because they weren’t careful enough.
Somebody got smacked because they were told that this was a safe area to be in. Then they get hit, and are blamed for not being careful enough in the area they were told was safe to be in.
Like I said above, everyone coming through here is so obsessed with talking about blame and fault. That’s not what I’m talking about at all. I’m saying that if Ryujinx wanted to avoid this outcome, they should have done things differently.
See, no mention of blame at all. How else do I need to spell things out for the extremely autistic and pedantic crowd here?
if Ryujinx wanted to avoid this outcome, they should have done things differently
How do you not read this as blame? Or, is this not the same as “they had it coming, wouldn’t have happened if they’d been dressed in armour or hadn’t gone down that street alone” which is often known as victim blaming.
Being right and being suddenly under a car are not mutually exclusive.
ITT: people not understanding the difference between BLAME and OUTCOME and downvoting you because of it. Incidentally, I also read a thread earlier today that talked about declining literacy in adults…
And because these are never finished projects. People can rant and rave about cloning the git all day, but without active, knowledgeable developers with the knowledge of the original dev team, these projects are dead. It’s not about using the emulators as they exist today… it’s about continuing to keep them working going forward. Anything that releases in the last year or two of the Switch’s life is now at risk of being lost forever into Nintendo’s archives.
Anything that releases in the last year or two of the Switch’s life is now at risk of being lost forever into Nintendo’s archives.
Somebody will archive it, for two reasons: 1) data hoarders and 2) hacked Switches.
Sure, it will be as playable as it is right now, right as the project shuts down. Any updates or improvements? Any new games? Only if someone else takes up the mantle and risks having world police nintendo suing them
I assume emulator development will continue eventually. Who knows when that will be, though.
The thing that sucks is that I’m in the middle of a couple of games, so if something upgrades and Ryujinx isn’t compatible, I’m hosed.
Nintendo didn’t put legal pressure on emulator devs for decades at this point, which made devs less cautious about preserving their pseudonymity.
Now it’s too late and they can’t stop Nintendo from finding out who they are and which mistakes they did at some point over the years.
Maybe a new generation of emulator developers will be more protective of their identity, by using hosting providers like Njalla or privacy networks like i2p. The latter would limit access (as it requires i2p), which isn’t desirable for most users.
While that’s true, it’s incredibly reductive to a baseline of “nintendo should win because they are powerful and others aren’t”
How many of these emulators were shut down through legal action or threat of legal action? I mean, the list goes on and on
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/PlayStation_emulators
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/PlayStation_2_emulators
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/PlayStation_3_emulators
https://www.ppsspp.org/
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/PlayStation_Vita_emulators
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Xbox_emulators
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Xbox_360_emulatorsOh right, this happened https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment,_Inc._v._Connectix_Corp.
Nintendo is using every action possible to stop switch emulation, because, unlike other console companies, they don’t produce any advanced or specific hardware anymore, and they purely survive through their IP.
This is the first time they’ve been suing emulator developers.
Yeah! And they’ve been so cool and supportive of the gaming community thus far, <3 nintendo https://www.thegamer.com/a-snapshot-of-nintendos-convoluted-legal-history/
Fuck Nintendo. All they have done is ensure I never buy one of their products again.
I own a Nintendo, and I haven’t used it in years. I bought some games which were ridiculously priced compared to what I was used to on steam. I’m rather annoyed they keep their games console exclusive for this reason, they have like a monopoly of a market they control, it feels.
I was gonna get some more games to put on it, but with then shutting down these emulators, I think I’ll use one of those instead. Fuck Nintendo.
Yeah I haven’t used my switch in a long time. I think I might have power surged it, but I don’t really care enough to even double check.
I have a switch emulator on my external HD along with a bunch of other emulators. When I get my next PC I’ll just play whatever switch games I want on that.
Just hack it
It’s supported by LineageOS lol. You could repurpose it as a tablet to stream steam games.
Never give Nintendo money.
And then nobody ever made another emulator for Nintendo products again and this definitely does not foreshadow an endless game of whack-a-mole powered by spite.
Surely not.
‘offered an agreement’
So bribed them?
Probably more of a “Do x, y, and z and we agree not to sue you about it”
Make good sense
They sent people to his house
I’m Brazil
motherfucker had goons sicced on him
FWIW Brazil has the largest population of Japanese people outside of Japan.
I’m Brazil
hi Brazil, I’m Dad!
Hi dad, I’m Brazil 💪😟💪
Still on Flathub though.
Yuzu was like that soon after being taken down. I assume Flathub has some sort of delay.
What do they think they achieve with this?
Forcing people to purchase the Switch 2 for their handheld needs, obviously </sarcasm>
@nichtburningturtle @mr_MADAFAKA not sure, there’s already like 500 forks up, may the one with the coolest name win.
it’s in the repo for basically any linux distribution too so the source and executables are mirrored on literally thousands of servers and easily downloadable, so absolute worst case scenario it’s version froze at 1.1.1388 for the time being.
all that happened to yuzu is a slight name change so i don’t expect much more here.
all that happened to yuzu is a slight name change so i don’t expect much more here.
All of the commits for Suyu, the most active yuzu “fork” this year is like 20 different readme/URL changes, lol. Nintendo 100% succeeded in killing it.
@nichtburningturtle @mr_MADAFAKA confirmed, the full git history up to yesterday is preserved and already mirrored all over, so it’s all good 👍
What kinda question is that? Mobbing the developers out of switch emulation.
The only two options where you and ryujinx and they are both taken out, all the forks are jokes because the developers that had real abilities worked on the main projects.
