"NEW: Nintendo is suing the creators of popular Switch emulator Yuzu, saying their tech illegally circumvents Nintendo's software encryption and facilitates piracy. Seeks damages for alleged violations and a shutdown of the emulator.

Notes 1 million copies of Tears of the Kingdom downloaded prior to game's release; says Yuzu's Patreon support doubled during that time. Basically arguing that that is proof that Yuzu's business model helps piracy flourish."

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 9 months ago (4 children)

They didn't expect it to happen because of all of the landmark rulings in the past that emulators are inherently not illegal unless they provide bios to the end user. The only reason why Nintendo is acting now instead of years ago when Yuzu first hit the scene is because it's in basically a fully working state now and they somehow verified that 1,000,000 people downloaded TOTK. I suspect far more copies of BOTW and Mario Odyssey were downloaded prior.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The thing is whatever beef they might rightfully have with 1,000,000 people pirating TotK, it's not the emulator who's to blame. The ones who distributed pirated copies are. They are trying to pin it entirely on the wrong group, out of convenience/intimidation.

This is like suing a motorcycle company because a thief used one as a getaway vehicle.

[–] otp 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I believe the issue is that Yuzu was patched to support TotK before TotK was released, which could suggest having used some proprietary code, or at least stuff that the devs shouldn't have had access to.

They could also make the argument that very few people would've downloaded the game if the emulator didn't exist or at least wasn't being patched to support a game before it releases.

They definitely didn't lose 1,000,000 sales. At the same time, I feel like it kind of crosses a line to be pirating a game before it's even supposed to be sold in stores.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I've heard people saying just the opposite. It couldn't run TotK before official release, and whoever made it run had to modify it independently (because it's an open source project)

Arguing that people wouldn't have downloaded it if not for the emulator, not only once again assigns blame to the wrong party ("if they didn't have motorcycles to get away they might not have stolen it"), but it overlooks that there are modded Switches that can run pirated copies too.

Pirating stuff before it's even out for sale is pretty sketchy, but Yuzu is not the one doing it. It simply lets people play copies they already have, including those they may have dumped themselves. Nintendo is encroaching on customer ownership rights by trying to argue even doing that is infringing.

edit: Maybe my analogy is lacking because one might argue that they rely on the tool to make use of the illicitly acquired thing, which is not necessarily true for a motorcycle. But if we say instead "the bluray player is to blame that people shoplifted" or "the media player is to blame that people downloaded pirated movies", then I believe it should be even more clear that they are accusing the wrong party.

The only way for Nintendo's reasoning to work is if they try to argue that not even someone who dumps their own roms and extracts their own keys from their own console ought to have the right to do it. Which would be disastrous for customer rights and preservation. Nintendo cannot be allowed to get away with that.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I've said this before and I'll say it now: I bet most of those 1,000,000 people would have never bought a copy of the game anyway.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Pretty much, piracy are never lost sales. Either the person is extremely passionate and loving of the product so they'll buy it anyway regardless if they pirated it or not; or they were just tasting the flavor of the week and never intended to buy it under any circumstance; or they are extremely poor/their economy and context doesn't allow them to access the product legitimately, so they wouldn't be capable of buying it even if they wanted; or the product is not legitimately available anymore, so pirating is the only way of accessing it.

Piracy is never a lost sale.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

You were downvoted by a nintendo shill.

[–] otp 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

And some of them probably did buy the game, even

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

And many more who were friends of acquaintances of the downloader.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I bought the game and I still considered emulating it just to run it at higher res.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

This is something that makes the Nintendo numbers bullshit. how many of those 1mill downloads were people who already owned/purchased the game? How many of those people don't even have a switch and would have never purchased the game to begin with?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'm thinking of it so I can play older patches of the game.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Out of interest, at a high level, why?

Did they patch out interesting exploits/speed run things?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

There's some easy duplication glitches.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I wonder if Nintendo released their games outside of their own ecosystem if that number would still be as high

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I haven't yet. Sounds like I should add to that statistic.