this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2024
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Nintendo is suing the creators of Switch emulator Yuzu (news.bloomberglaw.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Nintendo's full case filing

https://twitter.com/stephentotilo/status/1762576284817768457/

"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] 23 points 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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.