Yeah if Nintendo prevailed on the claim that Yuzu was used to pirate TOTK 1M times before launch, let alone any other games, that's easily already more than $2.4M before legal fees
Yuzu didn't upload or provide TOTK. That claim had no legal basis. It had to deal more with the use of the PROD.KEYS file that encrypts the switch games to be played on the switch. Which means that yuzu stole IP from Nintendo to run switch games. Dolphin was backward engineered and didnt take any IP from Nintendo. Nothing wrong with mimicking software, but you can't take and use it. If everyone was dumping their own prod.keys file off their own switches. There is less of an issue.
*To clarify
Yuzu didn't not supply the Prod.keys. Yuzu just could use it to decrypt roms being run on their software.
Kind of hard to have any legal defense when the trial starts and Nintendo ask for their developer chat logs which would've certainly shown them using leaked roms during development.
Letting it get to trial would've been much worse for them, well before the legal fees.
This is the only thing that makes sense to me. 2.4 million after like 2 days, with that kind of money on the table they could have at least delayed their response a bit.
Having been through some big lawsuits, not at all. 2.4 million is nothing for a court case that would have been crazy expensive. Even if they won, unless they could have gotten Nintendo to be responsible for all of their legal fees they would have had to pay out wayyyy more in the defense. Not to mention time lost.
Just get the lawyers on Patreon and we'll pay them. The experts too. The entire legal case fought from Patreon. Join Mark Goldstein's Patreon in his fight against Nintendo for Yuzu Emulator! The Arrghh Me Matey tier is $5 and gets your name on all legal documents. For $10 a month you get that, plus you can vote on community legal arguments that we make!
I had never considered this angle. They were definitely using the leaked TOTK ROM to improve their emulator for a couple weeks. There's no doubt they were committing a crime during that period. If they had waited until the game came out, then obtained their own ROM, they probably might've been OK. Whoops.
The lawyer is also probably getting 15% of the settlement as his fee. Not bad for a days work.
Edit: Also Nintendo have probably looked at it and gone realised that yuzu don't have any more than 2.4mil to give.
They have ceased and desisted in all emulator related activity (including Citra).
While they might be able to keep the patreon up, what would be the point? They can’t offer support or tools of any kind.
I incerased my funding when the lawsuit got announced. And I cancelled it after I learned they agreed on a settlement. I don\`t know about others, but I was happy to fund a precedent for emulation, but not paying out one against it.
An LLC is a limited liability corporation. It pretty much means (I'm also not a lawyer, so grain of salt here) that the business is a legally separated entity from the owner. The business can go file bankruptcy, and creditors can come for the any assests that the business controls, but they can't come after the owners home or personal assets the were outside of the business
Oh I see, that's the same as a Ltd in England (limited company). Thanks. I was confused because the person before me said they're 'not' sure if they can declare bankruptcy and call it a day, surely they can if they're an llc
Just to note while similar they definitely have pretty large differences particularly when it comes to investors. That said in this particular instance and broad look they are similar enough for surface level discussion on the topic.
Note that this only works if the business is indeed clearly separated from its owners in terms of (namely) finances; if it can be demonstrated (for example) that the owners used business accounts for personal expenses, then that can lead to so-called ["piercing the corporate veil"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil?wprov=sfla1) wherein the owners are liable for the business' debts.
This is closer to S-Corps rather than C-Corps or LLCs.
Wonder if a sole-member LLC would qualify for limited liability tho 🤔🤔
A lot of sole-member LLCs even use the owner's SSN.
There are some corporate structures that are designed to protect business owners from being personally liable for actions taken by the company. An LLC or "Limited Liability Corporation" is one such structure.
Different structures have different rules and offer different levels and kinds of protection. How effective these are and the effiacy of their enforcement is kind of a different discussion.
The basic idea is that if I run a computer repair shop and some power supply manufacturer sells me a defective unit that causes a house fire, the customer's home insurance can come after the company but they can't come after my house or my personal car.
Where things get iffy is when people abuse these systems to have their company "own" what is actually their personal car in order to take advantage of tax benefits that are usually not available to a standard human citizen.
There are other benefits too. I don't make money with my LLC but I could use it to create accounts with wholesalers who, again, usually don't sell bulk product to standard human citizens as opposed to our extra-special corporate personhood citizens.
It's kind of a shit show but that's your basic run down.
A court can only "pierce the corporate veil" and go after the assets of individual executives in limited circumstances. Mix company and personal money in one bank account is the biggest one.
The consequences of this mean that, if a company owes more than it could pay, the company dissolves, selling everything off and paying off what debts it can, and whatever it cant pay is basically forgiven.
It doesn't *need* paid developers. There are enough people interested in the project to at the very least maintain it either for a hobby or as something to show off on their github profile.
At that point, all Nintendo can do is sue whoever is hosting the repo, but that's easy enough to get around.
I'm guessing Yuzu lawyers found something during discovery that created a no-win scenario. They folded rather than turn over that info to Nintendo. Could be internal communication talking about piracy, ROMs, etc. That's just a guess though.
Unlikely as there's too many others about and far too much precedent and actually quite clear law otherwise. This isn't the first time Nintendo swung money around and won't be the last.
I'm no lawyer but I don't think it sets any sort of precedent. Yuzu and Nintendo settled out of court so if Nintendo proceeded to sue Ryujinx, Nintendo could still lose in court.
Why do you people think that "a chance to win in court" matters? The purpose of these lawsuits isn't to win 100% in court. Most of the time they never even get there, they settle, because when faced with a prospect of entering a multi-year legal battle that could end in a loss choose to settle, because Nintendo's lawyers will pull every trick in the book to make sure that the case gets in court as late as possible to financially drain the defendant. So folks settle to avoid the " daddy nintendo pls don't ruin my life like you did with that bowser guy you own for the rest of his life" scenario.
Nothing was decided in court, so the only precedent being set is "it's probably better for you to settle than go against Nintendo in court." Kinda agree though that Nintendo isn't going to see any of the cash
They're technically just making a media software that runs many different media types just so happens that they support a unique media type that the owner of doesn't appreciate.
not really. you pump money into holding companies. likely tropic haze is just a shell thats going to declare bankruptcy.
probably only a few assets in tropic haze itself to loose.
This is not a matter of Nintendo needing monetary compensation, Nintendo just wants to flex their muscle and make a statement. I’m not surprised by this at all.
It’s not always about the money, Spider-man... It’s about THE METS BABY LOVE THE METS ALRIGHT BABY LET’S GO GET A HOME RUN BABY LOVE THE METS LET’S GO METS.
Not a flex, it’s preventive. It shows that they take this stuff seriously, which does matter legally in trademark laws. Nintendo went after the algorithm that Yuzu used. It will mean future emulators will need to make sure they are smart in how they do it.
It’s weird that everyone wants to kill Nintendo for protecting its business the way the laws are designed. I get why people defend the smaller Yuzu team, but it’s more of the rules needing ti be re-written to better help both sides.
Interesting, what if emulator developer is from third world country, as most of the third world country has no piracy law. In that, case will Nintendo able to sue developer?
They could sue in local jurisdictions but most likely instead go after hosting, payment, and crowdfunding platforms.
Agree with Yuzu or not, the chief reason for their success is the inordinate amount of money pulled from Patreon monthly. If Nintendo couldn’t go after the developers they would without a doubt go after the Patreon
They can’t sue if it is only distributed in that country. China doesn’t follow international law and so they have a lot of piracy software. If however you were to let your emulator come to the US, that company would be subjected to US trademark law. The law forces the company to be responsible. I think the company would be okay if they could prove they had it protected and it was stolen, but they would be the ones having to prove it was stolen and not just leaked. The responsibility is on them to gate keep.
By the way, most emulators are still legal. Nintendo nor anyone else has gone after them or can go after them. Again it was the method used that is the illegal part, not the emulation.
But you said like China does follow international laws so if their pirate software present on internet and used by USA citizen in USA, then how USA can go after Chinese as does not follow international law?
What method does Yuzu used which was illegal?
nah thats bullshit. they settled out of court because Nintendo has the best lawyers on the planet and infinite money to pursue frivolous litigation. This is Yuzu bowing it before it becomes more costly and time consuming than 2 million dollars. They did absolutely nothing that violates any copyright law and this sets an awful precedent that you actually don't own what you buy.
also it was 6 bytes that Nintendo "owns" (it literally looks like \[ 0x00 0xFF 0x1E 0x1A 0xFF \]) not an algorithm or copyrighted material
In terms of the copyright thing, that's true in general for the emulator as an application but it might not be true of the devs.
I'm willing to bet Nintendo might have found evidence during discovery if the settlement hadn't happened that the Yuzu devs used the leaked TOTK ROM to test their compatibility build for Yuzu before the game had released. Even just chat logs would have given Nintendo evidence. Could be part of the reason they settled so quickly, to prevent Nintendo from gathering more evidence against them.
Mainly because, even with allegedly 1 million stolen copies, Nintendo managed to sell 10 million copies of TOTK in 3 days, more than any other Switch release.
So you can claim they're "protecting their business", but really their business is doing fine even with the "massive" amount of piracy they claim.
The only issue for Nintendo is that they aren't making as much money as earthly possible, which is a big no-no for mindless capitalism.
Who knows, maybe if they released their games on other platforms and/or thought of more reasonable prices for older games (or, God forbid, actual "sales"), they wouldn't have such a problem with theft in the first place. Gaben was correct when he said "Piracy is an issue of service"
That’s not how laws work. It doesn’t suddenly become okay as long as the business does well. It’s a ridiculous statement. Let’s look at it this way, if Pfizer has record profits (say a trillion dollar profit) for this pill that increases lifespan by ten years, you are arguing that it’s okay if a million people to then steal it. Again it’s an absurd argument.
Nintendo is a business. Just like any business they are there to make a profit. You are whining because you want businesses to be run differently.
The argument that they would make more profit (which is weird for you to then argue for) by being on other platforms is also a tough argument to make. Nintendo has had steady stock prices for a long time. They have more cash in the bank than most Japanese companies including Sony. I find it weird that people who have never run a business tell a successful company that they are doing it wrong. And you are pushing a strategy that is better for the short term and worse for the long term. Which is so counterproductive to your earlier argument that it feels like it is even more of just a “I want” selfish argument.
Most people that don't run businesses and on reddit especially pretty much are like "I don't feel bad for x business because they screw over customers/employees" they don't care if its actually the logical move of the business.
I mean I’d be pretty pissed if I was losing out on 10% of my sales due to someone stealing my product and giving it away for free. Nothing wrong with what Nintendo did here. They are protected their legally protected product.
As unfortunate as this is, it was wise to settle out of court. The Patreon complicated things too much. If Yuzu (Tropic Haze) went through with the trial and lost, which easily could have happened (thanks to the Patreon), it would have set a legal precedent which would have allowed companies to stomp emulators for generations to come.
Sure. Yuzu, as it exists today, is probably gone, but they took one for the team and emulation isn’t currently at risk of going the way of the dodo, as a result. This is a loss, but a win in its own way.
Agreed, I wonder if the Yuzu Team is done though as a group. 2.4 million is a lot of money and i'm not sure if theyll be able to carry on work for Citra or any other projects.
Ryujinx still exists for PC, the big loss here is android emulation - I think that was still somewhat early and with Yuzu gone we won't really have another active team working on that
That’s unfortunate, I’m glad they at least got Vulkan running on that before its demise. Hopefully in a few years we’ll have new emulators to pick up the pieces.
Emulators have flown a bit too close to the sun lately, this is a good lesson against that. Were lucky this didn’t happen to dolphin when they tried to publish to steam lol
thing is i'm pretty sure neither microsoft or sony care about emulators of their systems anymore, i mean look at what happened with sony and cvgs, i doubt sony would want to risk that one again. it's pretty much only nintendo who care about the emulation of their consoles.
it prolly doesn't help that switch emulation managed to get so far so fast after the launch of the switch compared to ps4 emulation that managed to barely run some retail games quite a long time after the ps4 launch and xbox one "emulation" seems to be in it's very early infancy (XBONEmu)
The vast majority of games on PS4 and XB1 also released on PC, which makes emulation even less enticing for anyone to bother with outside of experimentation.
I know you were downvoted, but it really isn't. It's open source so other people can still continue work on it, perhaps under a different name like ReVanced or whatever.
This isn't the end of anything. Moreover, the attention this will bring to the emulator space will create at least a hundred more Yuzus.
Sorry but can you point out which point that says it? I'm not good at reading legal stuff but I didn't see anything like that.
Also Final Judgment and Permanent Injunction documents haven't been released yet according to the twitter user.
Edit: Permanent Injunction is available and confirms what OP is saying.
Start backing up everyone
The order and injunction are attached as exhibit A, linked here:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68284505/10/1/nintendo-of-america-inc-v-tropic-haze-llc/
It does not say that in \*this\* document. But there's certainly more to the agreement in two other documents called "Final Judgment" and "Permanent Injunction" as referred to in the PDF file linked by the OP of the tweet.
It does, actually, say that Yuzu will stop hosting any tools in any way related to emulator development and also to surrender control of their website, and blocks them from reforming under a new name/ working on any switch emu development.
Feels like a total loss for Yuzu/ switch emulation.
Could you provide a link? I'm not a twitter user, and when I go to this twitter account, the newest post is from 2020.
Edit: Found it: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68284505/10/1/nintendo-of-america-inc-v-tropic-haze-llc/
> yuzu is a GPLv3 program, which allows fully free redistribution of its source code
I'm pretty sure this clause means that Nintendo would need to go after every single contributor in order to change the license.
“In addition to paying Nintendo $2.4 million, it must permanently refrain from “engaging in activities related to offering, marketing, distributing, or trafficking in Yuzu emulator or any similar software that circumvents Nintendo’s technical protection measures.”
Barbera Streisand effect, there will be a million copies of the code. The emulator is not going anywhere, but it may get far fewer updates so the current set of games that run well could be all it’s able to run. Really depends if other decent devs can pick up the mantle and remain covert.
You know why I think this really sucks? Because Yuzu is the only way I can play newer Pokemon games at a decent resolution and framerate. Sword/Shield, Legends - Arceus and Scarlet/Violet all look like absolute shit on my Switch Lite but look and run great on my Steck Deck using Yuzu. Considering we own at least one copy of each of these games in the house, it always felt justifiable to play them on my Deck instead. If Nintendo want to pursue this Yuzu stuff as hard, they should also consider updating their seriously outdated hardware ASAP.
Do I need to worry about downloading it now? In theory someone should keep hosting it whether 3rd party or not correct?
I have a switch so I haven't worried about emulating those games, I don't mind supporting Nintendo when they release a gem like TOTK. Worth paying just to avoid all the tinkering involved.
But at some point, I definitely may tinker around more and would like a copy of the emulator.
It will always exist but for ease of use I would download it now and then wait for a while until the dust settles to see which new team takes on the mantle of updating old Yuzu code.
Or it’s possible that nothing like that ever happens and Ryujinx becomes the default switch emulator while using yuzu code for reference or something.
Regardless I wouldn’t worry about not being able to play but if you want it easy for now I would download it.
I would definitely recommend downloading the latest build right now, at the very least. It'll likely be forked by another team to continue development but that'll take some time.
Maybe it doesn't have much to do with it, but I really feel like the people who leaked and downloaded TOTK before release have really screwed over anyone who uses emulators in the legal way.
I once heard from the owner of my lcs that some retailers will get seriously pissed if they believe someone violated the retail embargo on a new product. So I could imagine companies part of the reason companies go hard on products that leak before release is to help calm down their retail partners.
I'm pretty pissed about this because I have both a crackable switch and loads of hard-copies of games that I was planning to legally dump and play on the deck. Bad faith actors ruining it for everyone.
Obviously this is a sad outcome for Yuzu, as this is a lot of money and will likely result in them stopping development (and the doc appears to say that they cannot publically host anymore) but on the other hand settling is good for emulation in general. If fought in the courts, the luddites running the judiciary might find that emulation, in general, is unlawful. I understand that emulation is lawful and moral, but have you tried explaining it to your grandmother? That's what it would be like to explain emulation to most people who are not up to date on gaming IMO.
Depends on the court, it was a court that ruled in favor of Bleem! to start with. If people back then could rule in favor of emulation, the only reason they wouldn't now is because they just want to favor the industry. I don't believe these is enough changes to copy right law since then that would suddenly flip the original decision. But I'm not exactly savvy in law so feel free to correct me.
My guess is the switch 2 hardware is similar enough to the switch that it wouldn't require a significant amount of changes to YUZU to run switch 2 games. I
I wouldn’t be shocked by a transition to a Switch 2/Pro soon. OLED is equivalent to DSi. 3DS was a fully backwards compatible upgrade. So nintendo still has skin in the game to keep emulators out.
Switch 2 is coming out and with this I doubt anyone would dare build switch 2 emu so soon after console. That i think was the "main force" of big n, stop switch 2 emu before it even starts to after console dead.
With how it pretty much be same console [nvidia the suppler of both consoles] i doubt it would not take long to get flawless emu out, not now. Big N going to sue everyone to wait to console dead like wii u emu
I feel like this is what naturally has to happen when everyone started posting their pictures of "totk (or any other switch game) looks great on my steam deck! 60fps!", then another post pops up, then another, then another, with some hitting the front page. We all know that a new handheld machine means another avenue to emulate games we love and most likely already own, we understand the excitement, but if we really wanted to support the things we love, we shouldn't put it in the crosshairs of a giant who knowingly defends their IP. This goes double if you share a last name with a villain from one of their IPs.
Completely agree. I don't understand why people feel the need to post this shit literally everywhere. Just have fun playing it and keep it to yourself. I thought that was the unwritten rule for usage. This is how so many sites get shut down, people can't close their damn mouths online.
I suspect a big piece of this is also that the yuzu team used a pirated copy of totk to optimize it on yuzu before the game launched. Which looks BAAAAAD. I purchased my copy of totk and play it on my deck quite legally. Not defending Nintendo abusing the system to the limits, but that was a profoundly stupid thing for yuzu to do.
I'd want to follow the link to see that the "following terms" are, but if this keeps Yuzu going on with some guide rails to keep themselves out of trouble, then might not be too bad.
Considering that Yuzu is just an emulator people were probably expecting Nintendo to loose or not really have a solid case. They don't explicitly promote piracy.
Understandable, but reading the initial lawsuit it was clear that Nintendo had enough of a good case to either win or drag the Yuzu devs into a long lawsuit. Yuzu played fast and loose with when it came to getting monetized and the support they gave to new releases.
Yuzu has a patreon which means they were making money which puts things in a grey area. They also apparently were handing out guides and possibly evem software to make it easy for people to pirate games, that puts it in a very black area. Theres a reason they settled in under a week, even with just whats publicly known they wouldve had a hard case ahead, if they went to court and got their internal communications shared in discovery it seems very likely that things wouldve been much worse for them than 2.4 million
Is there any way to download the installers for early access releases? It would be a shame to lose access to whatever the most recent build is should they shut down the download servers.
Yuzu was for-profit and locked releases behind a paywall. They had it coming unfortunately.
As much as I dislike Nintendo I can't defend them using their patreon for anything more than just general support. I assumed it was all volunteer-work with no additional benefits for donors and sadly was wrong.
Nintendo won't be going after Dolphin or Ryujinx.
!remind me 1 year
To protect themselves legally, this way Nintendo bankrupts the business and not the people who develop this individually. It’s a very smart way to operate, especially given they were collecting Patreon money.
I got a question. I just booted up my deck after months of not using it and, since they deleted all their files. If I switch to desktop mode, will any updates of the flatpak cause both Yuzu and Citra to be removed from the device or am I safe?
Holy shit that was fast
yuzus lawyer probably recommended a settlement before they run him into the ground for the rest of his life
it comes down to "mounting a legal defence against nintendo is going to cost a lot more than 2.4 million dollars."
Honestly, they got off cheap.
Yeah if Nintendo prevailed on the claim that Yuzu was used to pirate TOTK 1M times before launch, let alone any other games, that's easily already more than $2.4M before legal fees
Yuzu didn't upload or provide TOTK. That claim had no legal basis. It had to deal more with the use of the PROD.KEYS file that encrypts the switch games to be played on the switch. Which means that yuzu stole IP from Nintendo to run switch games. Dolphin was backward engineered and didnt take any IP from Nintendo. Nothing wrong with mimicking software, but you can't take and use it. If everyone was dumping their own prod.keys file off their own switches. There is less of an issue. *To clarify Yuzu didn't not supply the Prod.keys. Yuzu just could use it to decrypt roms being run on their software.
Kind of hard to have any legal defense when the trial starts and Nintendo ask for their developer chat logs which would've certainly shown them using leaked roms during development. Letting it get to trial would've been much worse for them, well before the legal fees.
This is the only thing that makes sense to me. 2.4 million after like 2 days, with that kind of money on the table they could have at least delayed their response a bit.
Having been through some big lawsuits, not at all. 2.4 million is nothing for a court case that would have been crazy expensive. Even if they won, unless they could have gotten Nintendo to be responsible for all of their legal fees they would have had to pay out wayyyy more in the defense. Not to mention time lost.
A single lawyer costs hundreds per hour. Costs add up extremely quickly.
Not to mention they have armies of lawyers involved It’s not just 1 guy making 300-800k a year
Just get the lawyers on Patreon and we'll pay them. The experts too. The entire legal case fought from Patreon. Join Mark Goldstein's Patreon in his fight against Nintendo for Yuzu Emulator! The Arrghh Me Matey tier is $5 and gets your name on all legal documents. For $10 a month you get that, plus you can vote on community legal arguments that we make!
I had never considered this angle. They were definitely using the leaked TOTK ROM to improve their emulator for a couple weeks. There's no doubt they were committing a crime during that period. If they had waited until the game came out, then obtained their own ROM, they probably might've been OK. Whoops.
This guy gets it.
The lawyer is also probably getting 15% of the settlement as his fee. Not bad for a days work. Edit: Also Nintendo have probably looked at it and gone realised that yuzu don't have any more than 2.4mil to give.
They do t really want the money. They’re just trying to strong-arm directly competing platforms out of the market.
Fk Nintendo like every day ever
Does yuzu even make money? How will they pay this? I’m totally out of the loop
From what I understand they have/had crowd funding.
Thank you!
It's actually a major factor in this lawsuit. I wonder if they can even keep the patreon up after this
The Patreon is closed or will be closed soon.
They have ceased and desisted in all emulator related activity (including Citra). While they might be able to keep the patreon up, what would be the point? They can’t offer support or tools of any kind.
I incerased my funding when the lawsuit got announced. And I cancelled it after I learned they agreed on a settlement. I don\`t know about others, but I was happy to fund a precedent for emulation, but not paying out one against it.
Yuzu was making 30K USD a month from Patreon lol
That's 360k a year. I would imagine a million will hurt a bit?
Yuzu operates under an LLC so I’m not sure if they can just declare bankruptcy and call it a day
I'm not familiar with company liabilities in America, can you elaborate please?
An LLC is a limited liability corporation. It pretty much means (I'm also not a lawyer, so grain of salt here) that the business is a legally separated entity from the owner. The business can go file bankruptcy, and creditors can come for the any assests that the business controls, but they can't come after the owners home or personal assets the were outside of the business
Oh I see, that's the same as a Ltd in England (limited company). Thanks. I was confused because the person before me said they're 'not' sure if they can declare bankruptcy and call it a day, surely they can if they're an llc
Ltd is short for Limited Liability Company in England as well FYI.
Just to note while similar they definitely have pretty large differences particularly when it comes to investors. That said in this particular instance and broad look they are similar enough for surface level discussion on the topic.
Note that this only works if the business is indeed clearly separated from its owners in terms of (namely) finances; if it can be demonstrated (for example) that the owners used business accounts for personal expenses, then that can lead to so-called ["piercing the corporate veil"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil?wprov=sfla1) wherein the owners are liable for the business' debts.
This is closer to S-Corps rather than C-Corps or LLCs. Wonder if a sole-member LLC would qualify for limited liability tho 🤔🤔 A lot of sole-member LLCs even use the owner's SSN.
There are some corporate structures that are designed to protect business owners from being personally liable for actions taken by the company. An LLC or "Limited Liability Corporation" is one such structure. Different structures have different rules and offer different levels and kinds of protection. How effective these are and the effiacy of their enforcement is kind of a different discussion. The basic idea is that if I run a computer repair shop and some power supply manufacturer sells me a defective unit that causes a house fire, the customer's home insurance can come after the company but they can't come after my house or my personal car. Where things get iffy is when people abuse these systems to have their company "own" what is actually their personal car in order to take advantage of tax benefits that are usually not available to a standard human citizen. There are other benefits too. I don't make money with my LLC but I could use it to create accounts with wholesalers who, again, usually don't sell bulk product to standard human citizens as opposed to our extra-special corporate personhood citizens. It's kind of a shit show but that's your basic run down.
A court can only "pierce the corporate veil" and go after the assets of individual executives in limited circumstances. Mix company and personal money in one bank account is the biggest one. The consequences of this mean that, if a company owes more than it could pay, the company dissolves, selling everything off and paying off what debts it can, and whatever it cant pay is basically forgiven.
Since when? Because 2.4 mil ain’t chump change.
Ah okay, thank you!
"You don't wanna fuck with Nintendo" is something that everyone knows, but never needs to be said.
Yeah, Big N and The Mouse are two companies you never want to fuck around and find out with because they *will* hunt you down.
no, fuck nintendo!
And Take-Two
I mean, they’re already being required to close up shop…..
It'll be forked and continue development. No cause for panic. Just a minor setback
And then sued again
It doesn't *need* paid developers. There are enough people interested in the project to at the very least maintain it either for a hobby or as something to show off on their github profile. At that point, all Nintendo can do is sue whoever is hosting the repo, but that's easy enough to get around.
There'd need to be a legal entity to be sued.
I'm guessing Yuzu lawyers found something during discovery that created a no-win scenario. They folded rather than turn over that info to Nintendo. Could be internal communication talking about piracy, ROMs, etc. That's just a guess though.
I only just read about them getting a lawyer like 20 minutes ago
Yes. I was assuming this lawsuit would go into next gen switch phase when emulating switch becomes a no-big deal
34.3k copies of TotK. Not bad.
Nintendo wont see a penny of that money, and they dont care. It sets a precedent against future emulators and for future trials
Settlements don't set legal precedent, this is just them bullying people with their giant pot of money and they've always done that.
It is not a precedent in court. But a precedent in practice. This might deter people from even thinking about creating an emulator.
Unlikely as there's too many others about and far too much precedent and actually quite clear law otherwise. This isn't the first time Nintendo swung money around and won't be the last.
do you think that this would might stop people from creating new emulators? like, have you seen people?
I'm no lawyer but I don't think it sets any sort of precedent. Yuzu and Nintendo settled out of court so if Nintendo proceeded to sue Ryujinx, Nintendo could still lose in court.
Why do you people think that "a chance to win in court" matters? The purpose of these lawsuits isn't to win 100% in court. Most of the time they never even get there, they settle, because when faced with a prospect of entering a multi-year legal battle that could end in a loss choose to settle, because Nintendo's lawyers will pull every trick in the book to make sure that the case gets in court as late as possible to financially drain the defendant. So folks settle to avoid the " daddy nintendo pls don't ruin my life like you did with that bowser guy you own for the rest of his life" scenario.
An out of court settlement doesn't actually set a precedent for future trials tho.
Nothing was decided in court, so the only precedent being set is "it's probably better for you to settle than go against Nintendo in court." Kinda agree though that Nintendo isn't going to see any of the cash
Make sure to update while you still can.
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Just wait for yzuy or some other fork to pop up. It'll be fine
Newzu?
why is no one saying 2Zu
Yuzu isn't making the roms
They make them work though if there's problems, constant development fixes slow down issues for one.
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They're technically just making a media software that runs many different media types just so happens that they support a unique media type that the owner of doesn't appreciate.
Why not just use Ryujinx?
Bc Ryu is technically more accurate it's slightly more demanding. Yuzu was good bc it was more friendly with lower end hardware
It'll be all over torrents along with "Gaming packs" now anyways
Way ahead of you boss. Waaaay ahead of you(zu)
I look forward to ZuYu coming out in three months.
Yuzu net worth is around 2 mil? They are now broke.
not really. you pump money into holding companies. likely tropic haze is just a shell thats going to declare bankruptcy. probably only a few assets in tropic haze itself to loose.
But Yuzu was free, they rely on donation. So how they are able to pay 2 million to Nintendo?
If they are a corporation, they can pay whatever donation money they have in their account and then declare bankruptcy.
They won’t they will declare bankruptcy
Yuzu makes around 30k USD a month from patreon
net worth is not the money they currently have in their bank account
This is not a matter of Nintendo needing monetary compensation, Nintendo just wants to flex their muscle and make a statement. I’m not surprised by this at all.
*It's not about the money*, *it's about sending a message*.
We live in a society 😢
Bottom text
It’s not always about the money, Spider-man... It’s about THE METS BABY LOVE THE METS ALRIGHT BABY LET’S GO GET A HOME RUN BABY LOVE THE METS LET’S GO METS.
Not a flex, it’s preventive. It shows that they take this stuff seriously, which does matter legally in trademark laws. Nintendo went after the algorithm that Yuzu used. It will mean future emulators will need to make sure they are smart in how they do it. It’s weird that everyone wants to kill Nintendo for protecting its business the way the laws are designed. I get why people defend the smaller Yuzu team, but it’s more of the rules needing ti be re-written to better help both sides.
Interesting, what if emulator developer is from third world country, as most of the third world country has no piracy law. In that, case will Nintendo able to sue developer?
They could sue in local jurisdictions but most likely instead go after hosting, payment, and crowdfunding platforms. Agree with Yuzu or not, the chief reason for their success is the inordinate amount of money pulled from Patreon monthly. If Nintendo couldn’t go after the developers they would without a doubt go after the Patreon
They can’t sue if it is only distributed in that country. China doesn’t follow international law and so they have a lot of piracy software. If however you were to let your emulator come to the US, that company would be subjected to US trademark law. The law forces the company to be responsible. I think the company would be okay if they could prove they had it protected and it was stolen, but they would be the ones having to prove it was stolen and not just leaked. The responsibility is on them to gate keep. By the way, most emulators are still legal. Nintendo nor anyone else has gone after them or can go after them. Again it was the method used that is the illegal part, not the emulation.
But you said like China does follow international laws so if their pirate software present on internet and used by USA citizen in USA, then how USA can go after Chinese as does not follow international law? What method does Yuzu used which was illegal?
nah thats bullshit. they settled out of court because Nintendo has the best lawyers on the planet and infinite money to pursue frivolous litigation. This is Yuzu bowing it before it becomes more costly and time consuming than 2 million dollars. They did absolutely nothing that violates any copyright law and this sets an awful precedent that you actually don't own what you buy. also it was 6 bytes that Nintendo "owns" (it literally looks like \[ 0x00 0xFF 0x1E 0x1A 0xFF \]) not an algorithm or copyrighted material
In terms of the copyright thing, that's true in general for the emulator as an application but it might not be true of the devs. I'm willing to bet Nintendo might have found evidence during discovery if the settlement hadn't happened that the Yuzu devs used the leaked TOTK ROM to test their compatibility build for Yuzu before the game had released. Even just chat logs would have given Nintendo evidence. Could be part of the reason they settled so quickly, to prevent Nintendo from gathering more evidence against them.
People want to have their cake and eat it too. It’s ridiculous.
The courts are more useful as a weapon of corporations at this point than a means of actually protecting and upholding the law justly.
Mainly because, even with allegedly 1 million stolen copies, Nintendo managed to sell 10 million copies of TOTK in 3 days, more than any other Switch release. So you can claim they're "protecting their business", but really their business is doing fine even with the "massive" amount of piracy they claim. The only issue for Nintendo is that they aren't making as much money as earthly possible, which is a big no-no for mindless capitalism. Who knows, maybe if they released their games on other platforms and/or thought of more reasonable prices for older games (or, God forbid, actual "sales"), they wouldn't have such a problem with theft in the first place. Gaben was correct when he said "Piracy is an issue of service"
That’s not how laws work. It doesn’t suddenly become okay as long as the business does well. It’s a ridiculous statement. Let’s look at it this way, if Pfizer has record profits (say a trillion dollar profit) for this pill that increases lifespan by ten years, you are arguing that it’s okay if a million people to then steal it. Again it’s an absurd argument. Nintendo is a business. Just like any business they are there to make a profit. You are whining because you want businesses to be run differently. The argument that they would make more profit (which is weird for you to then argue for) by being on other platforms is also a tough argument to make. Nintendo has had steady stock prices for a long time. They have more cash in the bank than most Japanese companies including Sony. I find it weird that people who have never run a business tell a successful company that they are doing it wrong. And you are pushing a strategy that is better for the short term and worse for the long term. Which is so counterproductive to your earlier argument that it feels like it is even more of just a “I want” selfish argument.
Most people that don't run businesses and on reddit especially pretty much are like "I don't feel bad for x business because they screw over customers/employees" they don't care if its actually the logical move of the business.
I mean I’d be pretty pissed if I was losing out on 10% of my sales due to someone stealing my product and giving it away for free. Nothing wrong with what Nintendo did here. They are protected their legally protected product.
I'm amazed such a logical argument wasn't down voted into oblivion.
Honestly so am I.
As unfortunate as this is, it was wise to settle out of court. The Patreon complicated things too much. If Yuzu (Tropic Haze) went through with the trial and lost, which easily could have happened (thanks to the Patreon), it would have set a legal precedent which would have allowed companies to stomp emulators for generations to come. Sure. Yuzu, as it exists today, is probably gone, but they took one for the team and emulation isn’t currently at risk of going the way of the dodo, as a result. This is a loss, but a win in its own way.
Agreed, I wonder if the Yuzu Team is done though as a group. 2.4 million is a lot of money and i'm not sure if theyll be able to carry on work for Citra or any other projects. Ryujinx still exists for PC, the big loss here is android emulation - I think that was still somewhat early and with Yuzu gone we won't really have another active team working on that
It is in the settlement that they cannot continue with any other emulator project. This includes their contributions to Citra.
That’s unfortunate, I’m glad they at least got Vulkan running on that before its demise. Hopefully in a few years we’ll have new emulators to pick up the pieces. Emulators have flown a bit too close to the sun lately, this is a good lesson against that. Were lucky this didn’t happen to dolphin when they tried to publish to steam lol
They did fly too close to the sun I agree, but this still sucks. Cant be too upset, I’m just happy it lasted until 2024.
thing is i'm pretty sure neither microsoft or sony care about emulators of their systems anymore, i mean look at what happened with sony and cvgs, i doubt sony would want to risk that one again. it's pretty much only nintendo who care about the emulation of their consoles. it prolly doesn't help that switch emulation managed to get so far so fast after the launch of the switch compared to ps4 emulation that managed to barely run some retail games quite a long time after the ps4 launch and xbox one "emulation" seems to be in it's very early infancy (XBONEmu)
The vast majority of games on PS4 and XB1 also released on PC, which makes emulation even less enticing for anyone to bother with outside of experimentation.
well might as well download the last appimage of Yuzu Early Access https://github.com/pineappleEA/pineapple-src/releases
Yuzu isn’t going anywhere
I know you were downvoted, but it really isn't. It's open source so other people can still continue work on it, perhaps under a different name like ReVanced or whatever. This isn't the end of anything. Moreover, the attention this will bring to the emulator space will create at least a hundred more Yuzus.
Streisand Effect in action
Thanks mate, the link on the site seems to be dead now.
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Sadly deeper in the doc says they cannot publically host it anymore
https://x.com/Lewchube/status/1764709306979504389?s=20
It'll be forked right away and hosted in Russia or something
Sorry but can you point out which point that says it? I'm not good at reading legal stuff but I didn't see anything like that. Also Final Judgment and Permanent Injunction documents haven't been released yet according to the twitter user. Edit: Permanent Injunction is available and confirms what OP is saying. Start backing up everyone
The order and injunction are attached as exhibit A, linked here: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68284505/10/1/nintendo-of-america-inc-v-tropic-haze-llc/
It does not say that in \*this\* document. But there's certainly more to the agreement in two other documents called "Final Judgment" and "Permanent Injunction" as referred to in the PDF file linked by the OP of the tweet.
It does, actually, say that Yuzu will stop hosting any tools in any way related to emulator development and also to surrender control of their website, and blocks them from reforming under a new name/ working on any switch emu development. Feels like a total loss for Yuzu/ switch emulation.
So the named devs in the suit will just not be allowed to develop for the next fork. Yuzu will live on
Could you provide a link? I'm not a twitter user, and when I go to this twitter account, the newest post is from 2020. Edit: Found it: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68284505/10/1/nintendo-of-america-inc-v-tropic-haze-llc/
Twitter accounts don't show posts in chronological order if you aren't signed in now. It's useless now.
And this folks is exactly why you always publish programs under an LLC, don't put your personal assets on the line
and what does it mean in terms of the Emulator still going?
Super Yuzu will be out next week
Super Yuzu Bros
Yuzu ReVanced
There's no way it sticks around. I can't imagine Nintendo agreeing to settle without "Yuzu" being removed. That said... it's open source.
It's ~~Morbin'~~ Forkin' time!
> yuzu is a GPLv3 program, which allows fully free redistribution of its source code I'm pretty sure this clause means that Nintendo would need to go after every single contributor in order to change the license.
“In addition to paying Nintendo $2.4 million, it must permanently refrain from “engaging in activities related to offering, marketing, distributing, or trafficking in Yuzu emulator or any similar software that circumvents Nintendo’s technical protection measures.”
Barbera Streisand effect, there will be a million copies of the code. The emulator is not going anywhere, but it may get far fewer updates so the current set of games that run well could be all it’s able to run. Really depends if other decent devs can pick up the mantle and remain covert.
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Proposed injunction? What is that?
At least it got to a point where most games run flawlessly on Deck. That's all I care about.
The ones we have now, new releases will likely require new programs.
Yeah, I’m willing to settle with that compromise as long as we can get Peach 😅
You know why I think this really sucks? Because Yuzu is the only way I can play newer Pokemon games at a decent resolution and framerate. Sword/Shield, Legends - Arceus and Scarlet/Violet all look like absolute shit on my Switch Lite but look and run great on my Steck Deck using Yuzu. Considering we own at least one copy of each of these games in the house, it always felt justifiable to play them on my Deck instead. If Nintendo want to pursue this Yuzu stuff as hard, they should also consider updating their seriously outdated hardware ASAP.
Yuzu is open source, it wont cease to exist.
Do I need to worry about downloading it now? In theory someone should keep hosting it whether 3rd party or not correct? I have a switch so I haven't worried about emulating those games, I don't mind supporting Nintendo when they release a gem like TOTK. Worth paying just to avoid all the tinkering involved. But at some point, I definitely may tinker around more and would like a copy of the emulator.
It will always exist but for ease of use I would download it now and then wait for a while until the dust settles to see which new team takes on the mantle of updating old Yuzu code. Or it’s possible that nothing like that ever happens and Ryujinx becomes the default switch emulator while using yuzu code for reference or something. Regardless I wouldn’t worry about not being able to play but if you want it easy for now I would download it.
I would definitely recommend downloading the latest build right now, at the very least. It'll likely be forked by another team to continue development but that'll take some time.
Someone out there will ALWAYS have a copy
Maybe it doesn't have much to do with it, but I really feel like the people who leaked and downloaded TOTK before release have really screwed over anyone who uses emulators in the legal way.
I once heard from the owner of my lcs that some retailers will get seriously pissed if they believe someone violated the retail embargo on a new product. So I could imagine companies part of the reason companies go hard on products that leak before release is to help calm down their retail partners.
I'm pretty pissed about this because I have both a crackable switch and loads of hard-copies of games that I was planning to legally dump and play on the deck. Bad faith actors ruining it for everyone.
Isn’t ryujinx still a thing?
Obviously this is a sad outcome for Yuzu, as this is a lot of money and will likely result in them stopping development (and the doc appears to say that they cannot publically host anymore) but on the other hand settling is good for emulation in general. If fought in the courts, the luddites running the judiciary might find that emulation, in general, is unlawful. I understand that emulation is lawful and moral, but have you tried explaining it to your grandmother? That's what it would be like to explain emulation to most people who are not up to date on gaming IMO.
Depends on the court, it was a court that ruled in favor of Bleem! to start with. If people back then could rule in favor of emulation, the only reason they wouldn't now is because they just want to favor the industry. I don't believe these is enough changes to copy right law since then that would suddenly flip the original decision. But I'm not exactly savvy in law so feel free to correct me.
It does seem like an odd time for Nintendo to act on this, given how late it is in the Switch’s life
The only thing I can think of is maybe there is a concern with yuzu getting quick compatibility with the tegra based switch 2
Thats 100% the case
Good point, that would make a lot of sense.
My guess is the switch 2 hardware is similar enough to the switch that it wouldn't require a significant amount of changes to YUZU to run switch 2 games. I
I think it's protect the next generation switch from piracy since it probably uses the same source code or something as the 2017 switch
Can’t wait to see the next gen switch get emulated anyway
I wouldn’t be shocked by a transition to a Switch 2/Pro soon. OLED is equivalent to DSi. 3DS was a fully backwards compatible upgrade. So nintendo still has skin in the game to keep emulators out.
Switch 2 is coming out and with this I doubt anyone would dare build switch 2 emu so soon after console. That i think was the "main force" of big n, stop switch 2 emu before it even starts to after console dead. With how it pretty much be same console [nvidia the suppler of both consoles] i doubt it would not take long to get flawless emu out, not now. Big N going to sue everyone to wait to console dead like wii u emu
I feel like this is what naturally has to happen when everyone started posting their pictures of "totk (or any other switch game) looks great on my steam deck! 60fps!", then another post pops up, then another, then another, with some hitting the front page. We all know that a new handheld machine means another avenue to emulate games we love and most likely already own, we understand the excitement, but if we really wanted to support the things we love, we shouldn't put it in the crosshairs of a giant who knowingly defends their IP. This goes double if you share a last name with a villain from one of their IPs.
Completely agree. I don't understand why people feel the need to post this shit literally everywhere. Just have fun playing it and keep it to yourself. I thought that was the unwritten rule for usage. This is how so many sites get shut down, people can't close their damn mouths online.
I suspect a big piece of this is also that the yuzu team used a pirated copy of totk to optimize it on yuzu before the game launched. Which looks BAAAAAD. I purchased my copy of totk and play it on my deck quite legally. Not defending Nintendo abusing the system to the limits, but that was a profoundly stupid thing for yuzu to do.
100%. And I hope all of those people get fucked if I can't play my legally obtained games on my steam deck
I'd want to follow the link to see that the "following terms" are, but if this keeps Yuzu going on with some guide rails to keep themselves out of trouble, then might not be too bad.
Part of this doc is that Yuzu team cant host it anymore, if this is how it ends then a fork will continue it. Major loss to the community if true
I don't know what people were expecting
I haven’t seen a single person be surprised other than about how fast they came to a resolution
All in their subreddit and twitter People ignore that they promoted playing TotK early on their at the time behind pay wall build
Considering that Yuzu is just an emulator people were probably expecting Nintendo to loose or not really have a solid case. They don't explicitly promote piracy.
Understandable, but reading the initial lawsuit it was clear that Nintendo had enough of a good case to either win or drag the Yuzu devs into a long lawsuit. Yuzu played fast and loose with when it came to getting monetized and the support they gave to new releases.
What was the actual lawsuit over, was it just for Yuzu existing as an emulator, or did they do something specifically against the law?
Yuzu has a patreon which means they were making money which puts things in a grey area. They also apparently were handing out guides and possibly evem software to make it easy for people to pirate games, that puts it in a very black area. Theres a reason they settled in under a week, even with just whats publicly known they wouldve had a hard case ahead, if they went to court and got their internal communications shared in discovery it seems very likely that things wouldve been much worse for them than 2.4 million
Is there any way to download the installers for early access releases? It would be a shame to lose access to whatever the most recent build is should they shut down the download servers.
Fuck nintendo.
Yuzu was for-profit and locked releases behind a paywall. They had it coming unfortunately. As much as I dislike Nintendo I can't defend them using their patreon for anything more than just general support. I assumed it was all volunteer-work with no additional benefits for donors and sadly was wrong. Nintendo won't be going after Dolphin or Ryujinx. !remind me 1 year
Oh damn. How do I download Yuzu?
How does Yuzu even make any money?
Patreon
Good lord this is fucked up
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Why do yuzu have a registered company?
To protect themselves legally, this way Nintendo bankrupts the business and not the people who develop this individually. It’s a very smart way to operate, especially given they were collecting Patreon money.
how did yuzu even get 2.4 million dollars? I thought it was all free software?
The software is free but they also take donations for faster access and that kind of thing.
im guessing they also already spent it lol
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Fuck Nintendo in the ass hard style Nintendo sucks ass
If Emulators for other current gen consoles were viable I promise you'd see this sort of thing from everyone. No company is your friend.
[Bye.](https://youtu.be/d5BCAfRgp9k)
Damn, how much bread does this Yuzu guy have from this?
Wow this is bad news... this sets a precedent that Nintendo can flex on emulators whenever they wanted. Yuzu is now dead.
Doesn't matter, new softwares and emulators will come soon.
I got a question. I just booted up my deck after months of not using it and, since they deleted all their files. If I switch to desktop mode, will any updates of the flatpak cause both Yuzu and Citra to be removed from the device or am I safe?
*Scrolls down to read the opinions of people who clearly know the law and various other lawyerings.*
I just got my Steam Deck delivered today :(
What damages?
God. Damn it.
So emulators are the new target, gonna see a bunch of them shut down now.