Yuzu developer pays Nintendo $2.4 million to settle lawsuit, ceases all Switch and 3DS...

[midian182]

What just happened? Nintendo's legal battle with the makers of Yuzu has ended just a week after it began. Tropic Haze, developer of the popular open-source Switch emulator, has agreed to pay Nintendo $2.4 million and cease all operations in a move that will also see support for 3DS emulator Citra discontinued.

Lawsuit-loving Nintendo launched legal action in US federal court against Tropic Haze last week. It alleged that the Yuzu emulator violates the anti-circumvention and anti-trafficking provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and that it is primarily designed to break the several layers of Switch encryption so users can play copyrighted Nintendo games.

Tropic Haze said over the weekend that it would be responding to Nintendo's suit within 60 days. According to a new filing, both parties have now reached an agreement that essentially gives Nintendo the win: Tropic Haze will be paying the Japanese giant $2.4 million – pending the court's final approval – and admitted that Yuzu is "primarily designed to circumvent and play Nintendo Switch games."

Tropic Haze must also permanently cease working on Yuzu, hosting the emulator, and distributing its code or features. Even hosting websites and social media that promote the emulator isn't allowed. The injunction also applies to "other software or devices that circumvent Nintendo's technical protection measures," which means 3DS emulator Citra is suffering the same fate. The source code for both Yuzu and Citra have already been removed from GitHub, and all posts bar one have been deleted from Yuzu's and Citra's X/Twitter accounts.

[yuzu]

The yuzu git repository on GitHub has been deleted, along with all build downloads. pic.twitter.com/Ypn665plCv

– OatmealDome (@OatmealDome) March 4, 2024

Finally, Tropic Haze has to hand over its website domain names to Nintendo, delete its copies of Yuzu and "all circumvention tools used for developing or using Yuzu – such as TegraRcmGUI, Hekate, Atmosphère, Lockpick_RCM, NDDumpTool, nxDumpFuse, and TegraExplorer," and hand over any physical circumvention devices and modified Nintendo hardware to Nintendo, writes The Verge.

Tropic Haze wrote about the filing on the company's Discord channel. "Yuzu and Yuzu's support of Citra are being discontinued, effective immediately. Yuzu and its team have always been against piracy. We started the projects in good faith, out of passion for Nintendo and its consoles and games, and were not intending to cause harm," it explained.

"But we see now that because our projects can circumvent Nintendo's technological protection measures and allow users to play games outside of authorized hardware, they have led to extensive piracy. In particular, we have been deeply disappointed when users have used our software to leak game content prior to its release and ruin the experience for legitimate purchasers and fans."

pic.twitter.com/158RRUi4Un

– yuzu (@yuzuemu) March 4, 2024

The part about leaking game content will undoubtedly refer to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Nintendo highlighted this example in its lawsuit against Tropic Haze. It noted that when the game leaked two weeks before the May 12 release date last year, it was downloaded more than 1 million times, and about 20% of the download links pointed people to Yuzu.

"We have come to the decision that we cannot continue to allow this to occur," Tropic Haze's statement continued. "Piracy was never our intention, and we believe that piracy of video games and on video game consoles should end. Effective today, we will be pulling our code repositories offline, discontinuing our Patreon accounts and Discord servers, and, soon, shutting down our websites. We hope our actions will be a small step toward ending piracy of all creators' works. Thank you for your years of support and for understanding our decision."

It's unclear if the settlement will impact other Nintendo emulators. Yuzu does not contain Nintendo's keys – users need to supply their own "illegally-obtained" copies of prod.keys that decrypt an encrypted Switch game ROM – but Nintendo says this doesn't matter as the software is primarily designed for the purpose of circumventing technological measures.

In May last year, just before its scheduled arrival on Steam, Nintendo's vague legal threat stopped the release of the Wii/GameCube Dolphin emulator on Valve's platform.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/102128-yuzu-developer-pays-nintendo-24-million-settle-lawsuit.html

 

[Disiw]

What about Ryujinx then?

Sadly for Nintendo, the emulators are circulating and games are playable from start to finish. Many torrents include both emulator and game. Ready to play.

If Nintendo did PC releases too, people would probably just buy them instead.

 

[EdmondRC]

Nintendo is not wrong here even if we don't necessarily like it. Totk was being played and all over YouTube before the game even released. I can't blame them for wanting to put a stop to that. That being said, this is not good for future emulation efforts. I wonder if they'll go after Ryujinx next? I really wish Nintendo would just be more open to distributing their games on PC.

By the way I used Yuzu and I own every title that I have on it. Very disappointing that it will see no future updates and support.

 

[WhiteLeaff]

Emulation is not illegal. They were brought down out of sheer fear of facing a multi-billion dollar corporation.

 

[EdmondRC]

Emulation is not illegal. They were brought down out of sheer fear of facing a multi-billion dollar corporation.

They did not come after them for emulation. They came after them for circumventing Nintendo's security and encryption. This probably would never have happened if it wasn't for the Totk leak and the fact people using emulators had already beaten the game by its release date. It's hard to make a case against Nintendo here. They have a right to protect their software from illegal distribution. Tropical Haze obviously had a lawyer look into this and decided to settle quickly because they would likely lose.

 

[WhiteLeaff]

They did not come after them for emulation. They came after them for circumventing Nintendo's security and encryption. This probably would never have happened if it wasn't for the Totk leak and the fact people using emulators had already beaten the game by its release date. It's hard to make a case against Nintendo here. They have a right to protect their software from illegal distribution. Tropical Haze obviously had a lawyer look into this and decided to settle quickly because they would likely lose.

The argument sounds weak. It is equivalent to suing the gun company for the actions of an individual psychopath who committed a crime using the guns.

 

[mAdmAnDingo]

Nintendo had the Yuzu dev team by the balls. There are leaked screenshots on a Reddit thread showing the Yuzu devs openly discussing their "large private illegal switch ROM stash" via pateron and them downloading from it (a google drive). They all shared and downloaded from it and used it to develop Yuzu.
Reddit Thread with Screenshots (a few comments down).

So they where openly committing piracy themselves, despite public claims otherwise. In effect, they were committing piracy to develop Yuzu and receiving large sums of patreon money to do so. So Nintendo could easily have proved that the devs themselves were committing piracy, so why not their customers? If they had gone to trial the discovery process would have exposed all their piracy and whatever other offenses (no doubt discovery would have allowed Nintendo to dig up way more dirt on them), and that would have guaranteed a Nintendo win, even if the Yuzu team had the financial resources to see the case through.

This case is all about facilitating piracy, and the devs themselves were doing it, also very likely with pirated encryption keys themselves just as they used pirated copies of games (and it is what the case is about, facilitating piracy, through mass use of encryption keys provided by their tools that bypass security, and obviously pirated software along with it). The Yuzu team had no legs to stand on, as they were participants in the illegal activities themselves, and many of their customers/users were doing the exact same thing as the devs were.

Nintendo must have had a mole or someone on the inside and was building a case against them for quite some time, very stupid of the devs to openly do such stupid things. Plus there are allegations of them stealing code from the Ryujinx team, and I believe some proof to back it up, although I haven't dug too far into that hole yet. Either way, they are lucky all they got was a settlement of 2.4mil (they wouldn't have won a trial case), although they will likely be paying it off for the rest of their lives in installments.

EDIT: Also, I 100% support game preservation and legal emulation (including Switch emulation via ones own keys and games, despite what Nintendo wants), but I don't support piracy and the Yuzu's team conduct in the slightest. Hopefully the Ryujinx team has kept their nose clean. Yuzu had my backing till their piracy conduct was revealed, now Ryujinx is is our lone emualtor (unless someone starts a fork of Yuzu I suppose, although that would put a target on your back).

 

[mAdmAnDingo]

They did not come after them for emulation. They came after them for circumventing Nintendo's security and encryption. This probably would never have happened if it wasn't for the Totk leak and the fact people using emulators had already beaten the game by its release date. It's hard to make a case against Nintendo here. They have a right to protect their software from illegal distribution. Tropical Haze obviously had a lawyer look into this and decided to settle quickly because they would likely lose.

Indeed. Bypassing the encryption keys was most certainly a large part of it as well.

EDIT: Also, yes, the TOTK leak also made matters much worse for their case.

 

[EdmondRC]

The argument sounds weak. It is equivalent to suing the gun company for the actions of an individual psychopath who committed a crime using the guns.

Listen, feelings aside, Nintendo has a right to protect its property and IP's from being illegally distributed. They have a right to sell their software and pay their creators. The TOTK leak and subsequent millions of downloads before the actual game release prove beyond any doubt that whatever you think about Nintendo and its anti-consumer policies, they have a duty to put a stop to piracy of their assets. As I stated above, I was a Yuz'er, I purchased the games for my NS and I then downloaded them to my PC and played them on the emulator for the better resolution and higher framerates. But, even I see that it would have been irresponsible for Nintendo to do nothing. Honestly, 2.4M is a drop in the bucket compared to the damages that were actually done.

My hope is that Nintendo will come to grips that with the fact that not everyone wants to play games on handheld and relatively weak hardware and come up with a way to distribute games on PC. I'm sure it would be in the most Nintendo way possible if they did, but at least there would be options and preservation.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Thankfully, Yuzu was open source, so somebody will hopefully pick up the bones and keep running. Perhaps someone in russia or china that doesnt care about western legal threats.

Listen, feelings aside, Nintendo has a right to protect its property and IP's from being illegally distributed. They have a right to sell their software and pay their creators. The TOTK leak and subsequent millions of downloads before the actual game release prove beyond any doubt that whatever you think about Nintendo and its anti-consumer policies, they have a duty to put a stop to piracy of their assets. As I stated above, I was a Yuz'er, I purchased the games for my NS and I then downloaded them to my PC and played them on the emulator for the better resolution and higher framerates. But, even I see that it would have been irresponsible for Nintendo to do nothing. Honestly, 2.4M is a drop in the bucket compared to the damages that were actually done.

My hope is that Nintendo will come to grips that with the fact that not everyone wants to play games on handheld and relatively weak hardware and come up with a way to distribute games on PC. I'm sure it would be in the most Nintendo way possible if they did, but at least there would be options and preservation.

"Honestly, 2.4M is a drop in the bucket compared to the damages that were actually done."
Excuse me? TOTK sold over 20 MILLION units ($1.4 BILLION in revenue, the majority going straight to nintendo's pockets via digital sale). What damage? All I see here is a greedy corporation that doesnt underestand why this huge PC market runs emulators for their products, and the huge opportunity they leave hanging on the vine. Having some of the best selling games in history just isnt enough for them.

 

[opckieran]

My hope is that Nintendo will come to grips that with the fact that not everyone wants to play games on handheld and relatively weak hardware and come up with a way to distribute games on PC. I'm sure it would be in the most Nintendo way possible if they did, but at least there would be options and preservation.

While they’ve done this with select titles before, I doubt Nintendo would ever do this full scale. They saw what happened with SEGA. Allowing their IP on other platforms would end their exclusivity and *significantly* increase development and support costs, not to mention hamper sales of their hardware tremendously. It’s just like insisting Apple make MacOS and iOS available to install on any hardware outside of their ecosystem; they have absolutely nothing to gain by doing that.

Like it or not, there is clearly a strong demand for Nintendo IP despite their underpowered consoles. Personally, I’m tired of hearing it. I don’t need to see every follicle on Mario’s face.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

While they’ve done this with select titles before, I doubt Nintendo would ever do this full scale. They saw what happened with SEGA. Allowing their IP on other platforms would end their exclusivity and *significantly* increase development and support costs, not to mention hamper sales of their hardware tremendously. It’s just like insisting Apple make MacOS and iOS available to install on any hardware outside of their ecosystem; they have absolutely nothing to gain by doing that.

Like it or not, there is clearly a strong demand for Nintendo IP despite their underpowered consoles. Personally, I’m tired of hearing it. I don’t need to see every follicle on Mario’s face.

Hmmmm.....if only there was, like, a piece of software you could run switch games on PC with, that you could then use to sell your software with 0 modification to a whole new market.

We could call it Yuzu, or something like that. Weird nobody has made it before.

I cant be the only one seeing the business case here, right? All nintendo has to do is integrate their store through one of these emulators and BOOM! instant market. There's clearly demand.

 

[opckieran]

Hmmmm.....if only there was, like, a piece of software you could run switch games on PC with, that you could then use to sell your software with 0 modification to a whole new market.

We could call it Yuzu, or something like that. Weird nobody has made it before.

I cant be the only one seeing the business case here, right? All nintendo has to do is integrate their store through one of these emulators and BOOM! instant market. There's clearly demand.

I don’t disagree with this at all, in fact I’d love to be able to play my titles on PC. I think Nintendo wants to be like Apple and control the whole ecosystem, and it’s clearly working for them financially. If they go multiplatform, they are essentially sabotaging themselves with lost console and other hardware sales (what’s stopping someone from playing Nintendo games with non-Nintendo hardware on PC?). In fact I’d wager they are probably looking at the comparatively sorry state of SEGA today and noping out of the idea of going multiplatform.


Face it, unless Nintendo starts struggling financially, probably to the point they can no longer develop or sell consoles (Dreamcast anyone?), going multiplatform is just not gonna happen.

 

[EdmondRC]

Thankfully, Yuzu was open source, so somebody will hopefully pick up the bones and keep running. Perhaps someone in russia or china that doesnt care about western legal threats.

"Honestly, 2.4M is a drop in the bucket compared to the damages that were actually done."
Excuse me? TOTK sold over 20 MILLION units ($1.4 BILLION in revenue, the majority going straight to nintendo's pockets via digital sale). What damage? All I see here is a greedy corporation that doesnt underestand why this huge PC market runs emulators for their products, and the huge opportunity they leave hanging on the vine. Having some of the best selling games in history just isnt enough for them.

This is a terrible take to be honest. It assumes that just because a corporation makes a lot of money that they don't deserve the profit from lost sales and revenue due to piracy. It's like saying its okay to knock over a CVS or Target because they're making so much money in the rich communities, that the poor communities are okay just taking what they want.

 

[EdmondRC]

While they’ve done this with select titles before, I doubt Nintendo would ever do this full scale. They saw what happened with SEGA. Allowing their IP on other platforms would end their exclusivity and *significantly* increase development and support costs, not to mention hamper sales of their hardware tremendously. It’s just like insisting Apple make MacOS and iOS available to install on any hardware outside of their ecosystem; they have absolutely nothing to gain by doing that.

Like it or not, there is clearly a strong demand for Nintendo IP despite their underpowered consoles. Personally, I’m tired of hearing it. I don’t need to see every follicle on Mario’s face.

Yes, I agree that its very unlikely. However, Nintendo would not have to release games with cutting edge graphics on PC. All they would really need to do is increase textures, shadows, and lighting so that the games on PC would look good in 4K, and of course make sure the game engine runs smoothly, but given the handheld hardware, that should be easily done.

If Nintendo did do this, they would do so through their own DRM store front for sure and knowing Nintendo, they would probably have the store front only work natively with Nintendo input devices. In other words, you would have to purchase a Nintendo controller to play Nintendo games on Nintendo's store front. So, in essence, you would still be locked to Nintendo hardware and Nintendo's store front even on PC. This would not be like Sega at all.

 

[opckieran]

Yes, I agree that its very unlikely. However, Nintendo would not have to release games with cutting edge graphics on PC. All they would really need to do is increase textures, shadows, and lighting so that the games on PC would look good in 4K, and of course make sure the game engine runs smoothly, but given the handheld hardware, that should be easily done.

If Nintendo did do this, they would do so through their own DRM store front for sure and knowing Nintendo, they would probably have the store front only work natively with Nintendo input devices. In other words, you would have to purchase a Nintendo controller to play Nintendo games on Nintendo's store front. So, in essence, you would still be locked to Nintendo hardware and Nintendo's store front even on PC. This would not be like Sega at all.

Even if Nintendo spun up their own storefront with supposedly minimally enhanced graphics like you suggest, they’d still face the prospect of cannibalizing their console and hardware sales. Add increased developer expenses for porting games and supporting them and the new platform, plus, them losing control over online interactions.

And let’s not kid ourselves here, Nintendo of all companies is well aware of modders’ ability to bypass hardware restrictions; they would not be able to lock users into using only their controllers for long.

And maybe this wouldn’t necessarily turn them into SEGA, but they are definitely cautious of the SEGA approach when it comes to their video games. Again, just look at Apple. Their strategy is clearly working for them.

 

[EdmondRC]

Even if Nintendo spun up their own storefront with supposedly minimally enhanced graphics like you suggest, they’d still face the prospect of cannibalizing their console and hardware sales. Add increased developer expenses for porting games and supporting them and the new platform, plus, them losing control over online interactions.

And let’s not kid ourselves here, Nintendo of all companies is well aware of modders’ ability to bypass hardware restrictions; they would not be able to lock users into using only their controllers for long.

And maybe this wouldn’t necessarily turn them into SEGA, but they are definitely cautious of the SEGA approach when it comes to their video games. Again, just look at Apple. Their strategy is clearly working for them.

Well, it's not worth arguing over because you are right, Nintendo will not do this. However, I don't think that this would actually hurt hardware sales that much because the markets will only have a small overlap. The PC gaming market and the Switch market are not the same, most Switch owners do not have a capable gaming PC. Many households have multiple Switches because they have more than one child, but still no gaming PC. I would be willing to bet that the TOTK leak was mostly downloaded by people that do not even own a Switch. So, the idea would be opening up a new market. Even in my case, I have a gaming PC, but I would still buy Switch 2 because my kids mostly play it and I don't want them always asking to use my gaming PC.

 

[m4a4]

Just another reason for me to never support Nintendo with my wallet.

PS. the ONLY reason they folded is because of the legal costs. Nothing to do with the case itself, or any other conjecture. Just another "the entity with the most money wins in the end" court case. Because even if they won, they'd get buried in costs.

I do wonder what would've happened if they started a crowdfunding for their legal expenses. Would the community have kept them afloat (considering how much we want to see Nintendo lose legally)?

 

[opckieran]

PS. the ONLY reason they folded is because of the legal costs. Nothing to do with the case itself, or any other conjecture. Just another "the entity with the most money wins in the end" court case. Because even if they won, they'd get buried in costs.

I do wonder what would've happened if they started a crowdfunding for their legal expenses. Would the community have kept them afloat (considering how much we want to see Nintendo lose legally)?

I think it’s more along the lines of them having no case so they wisely decided to settle out of court at a reasonable, quickly negotiated sum as opposed to going through a long, drawn out battle with far greater damages potentially up for grabs for Nintendo (think at LEAST 20x in damages compared to $2.4M), because I guarantee you there are PLENTY of attorneys that would fight against Nintendo and other big corps on contingency if they felt there was a case. Just look at Tesla.

 

[m4a4]

I think it’s more along the lines of them having no case so they wisely decided to settle out of court at a reasonable, quickly negotiated sum as opposed to going through a long, drawn out battle with far greater damages potentially up for grabs for Nintendo (think at LEAST 20x in damages compared to $2.4M), because I guarantee you there are PLENTY of attorneys that would fight against Nintendo and other big corps on contingency if they felt there was a case. Just look at Tesla.

I don't think this is a case where they would get money back from Nintendo if they won against them. They're the ones getting sued. Someone would still have to pay legal for their time spent, and Nintendo would make sure they bury them before a verdict could ever be reasonably reached.

And then yeah, it's not a slam dunk against Nintendo. If they lost based on a unfavorable interpretation, they'd have to appeal, which costs more and probably wouldn't happen.

Again, the ONLY reason they folded is because of the legal costs.

 

[opckieran]

I don't think this is a case where they would get money back from Nintendo if they won against them. They're the ones getting sued. Someone would still have to pay legal for their time spent, and Nintendo would make sure they bury them before a verdict could ever be reasonably reached.

And then yeah, it's not a slam dunk against Nintendo. If they lost based on a unfavorable interpretation, they'd have to appeal, which costs more and probably wouldn't happen.

Again, the ONLY reason they folded is because of the legal costs.

Again, it’s becoming increasingly common for the winning side to be awarded attorney’s fees. And in the case of Tesla recently, those fees can potentially be substantial. So I don’t think this has as much to do with Nintendo’s money as you think it does. I think that the attorney(s) that were consulted on this matter looked at everything and decided that it was best to settle quickly and cheaply because Nintendo’s case was strong and the damages were substantially higher than the settlement. I guarantee you there are plenty of corporate attorneys willing to work on a contingency if they think they have a case.

But Yuzu themselves admitted that they understood and sympathized with Nintendo’s argument, thereby admitting they didn’t have much of a leg to stand on.

“But we see now that because our projects can circumvent Nintendo’s technological protection measures and allow users to play games outside of authorized hardware, they have led to extensive piracy.”

This essentially validates Nintendo’s claim against them. It wouldn’t surprise me if their statement was a part of the settlement agreement.

 

[m4a4]

Again, it’s becoming increasingly common for the winning side to be awarded attorney’s fees. And in the case of Tesla recently, those fees can potentially be substantial. So I don’t think this has as much to do with Nintendo’s money as you think it does. I think that the attorney(s) that were consulted on this matter looked at everything and decided that it was best to settle quickly and cheaply because Nintendo’s case was strong and the damages were substantially higher than the settlement. I guarantee you there are plenty of corporate attorneys willing to work on a contingency if they think they have a case.

But Yuzu themselves admitted that they understood and sympathized with Nintendo’s argument, thereby admitting they didn’t have much of a leg to stand on.

“But we see now that because our projects can circumvent Nintendo’s technological protection measures and allow users to play games outside of authorized hardware, they have led to extensive piracy.”

This essentially validates Nintendo’s claim against them. It wouldn’t surprise me if their statement was a part of the settlement agreement.

Yeahhh, "increasingly common" is not a very reassuring when millions are on the line, eh? And you keep bringing up the Tesla case. That was not Tesla suing the stockholders, so it's not even remotely comparable.

Yuzu's statement sounded like a compromise so that Nintendo didn't demand more. I don't see why anyone would believe that they were being sincere. Like, why would they also shut down the 3DS emulator? (Hint: because Nintendo demanded it along with a sympathetic statement)

And then emulation is legal. They themselves didn't get around the protections (up to the user to do it properly). Which, at the end of the day, Yuzu officially did not support piracy. You can find many accounts where users were banned off of their forums when they found out. Just because it could be used for piracy is not a legal case against it (unless it can be proved that it was the main reason).

I'll say it one last time, the ONLY reason they folded is because of the legal costs.

 

[opckieran]

Yeahhh, "increasingly common" is not a very reassuring when millions are on the line, eh? And you keep bringing up the Tesla case. That was not Tesla suing the stockholders, so it's not even remotely comparable.

Yuzu's statement sounded like a compromise so that Nintendo didn't demand more. I don't see why anyone would believe that they were being sincere. Like, why would they also shut down the 3DS emulator? (Hint: because Nintendo demanded it along with a sympathetic statement)

And then emulation is legal. They themselves didn't get around the protections (up to the user to do it properly). Which, at the end of the day, Yuzu officially did not support piracy. You can find many accounts where users were banned off of their forums when they found out. Just because it could be used for piracy is not a legal case against it (unless it can be proved that it was the main reason).

I'll say it one last time, the ONLY reason they folded is because of the legal costs.

I didn’t bring up the Tesla case as a directly comparable situation, I brought it up to demonstrate the existence of contingencies in lawyer’s fees.

It sounds like you didn’t read the filings, because you are clearly ignoring them as well as official statements and admissions made by both parties and instead inserting your own theories about what’s really going on. To insist that Yuzu has a leg to stand on when they clearly don’t by their admission is just insane. It’s not really about whether or not they directly encouraged piracy, it’s that they deliberately made a tool that deliberately circumvented Nintendo’s security and the resulting damages that were caused by the existence of said tool (again, easily greater than $2.4M, so money really isn’t even the motivator here).

If it was “all about the money” there would be lawyers all over this, but there aren’t, because they know there is no case here. If there’s one thing about good lawyers, it’s that they love money! And they always know if and how they will be getting paid before they enter an agreement. If Yuzu had a case, there would be an attorney willing to work on contingency (like with Tesla, again, not the same exact circumstances but proof of concept for contingencies). The fact that they couldn’t plus literally their immediate admission essentially invalidate any argument in their favor. It’s literally conspiratorial hypotheses vs the actual objective statements made in this case.

In spite of public opinion, civil courts are not actually meant to be used as the weapons of the rich and powerful against the little guy. Maybe this is how things happened years ago, but they’ve become wise to those tendencies by cracking down on frivolous lawsuits (as you clearly think this is). One of the ways they do this is by awarding legal fees and other punitive damages to the winning side. So again, if Yuzu really had a leg to stand on, they’d be standing on it instead of immediately capitulating.

 

[EdmondRC]

Yeahhh, "increasingly common" is not a very reassuring when millions are on the line, eh? And you keep bringing up the Tesla case. That was not Tesla suing the stockholders, so it's not even remotely comparable.

Yuzu's statement sounded like a compromise so that Nintendo didn't demand more. I don't see why anyone would believe that they were being sincere. Like, why would they also shut down the 3DS emulator? (Hint: because Nintendo demanded it along with a sympathetic statement)

And then emulation is legal. They themselves didn't get around the protections (up to the user to do it properly). Which, at the end of the day, Yuzu officially did not support piracy. You can find many accounts where users were banned off of their forums when they found out. Just because it could be used for piracy is not a legal case against it (unless it can be proved that it was the main reason).

I'll say it one last time, the ONLY reason they folded is because of the legal costs.

Stating, 'emulation is legal' doesn't get to the heart of the matter. The heart of it is that YUZU along with the YUZU tools and guides, facilitated piracy and that is not legal. Nintendo's complaint is not against emulation, the complaint is against the tools that circumvented Nintendo's security measures and allowed for dumping of keys and software piracy.

You could argue that the keys stand in the way of emulation. You could argue that the owner of those keys has the right to dump them to use for emulation. But, it's hard to argue that Nintendo should just sit back and let it happen when the dumping of those keys and system firmware is what allowed for millions of downloads and millions playing a game that had not even officially released. I believe most people complaining about this would have tried to sue YUZU too if they were in Nintendo's CEO seat. Nintendo has a right to try to prevent piracy of their assets.

 

[m4a4]

I didn’t bring up the Tesla case as a directly comparable situation, I brought it up to demonstrate the existence of contingencies in lawyer’s fees.

It sounds like you didn’t read the filings, because you are clearly ignoring them as well as official statements and admissions made by both parties and instead inserting your own theories about what’s really going on. To insist that Yuzu has a leg to stand on when they clearly don’t by their admission is just insane. It’s not really about whether or not they directly encouraged piracy, it’s that they deliberately made a tool that deliberately circumvented Nintendo’s security and the resulting damages that were caused by the existence of said tool (again, easily greater than $2.4M, so money really isn’t even the motivator here).

If it was “all about the money” there would be lawyers all over this, but there aren’t, because they know there is no case here. If there’s one thing about good lawyers, it’s that they love money! And they always know if and how they will be getting paid before they enter an agreement. If Yuzu had a case, there would be an attorney willing to work on contingency (like with Tesla, again, not the same exact circumstances but proof of concept for contingencies). The fact that they couldn’t plus literally their immediate admission essentially invalidate any argument in their favor. It’s literally conspiratorial hypotheses vs the actual objective statements made in this case.

In spite of public opinion, civil courts are not actually meant to be used as the weapons of the rich and powerful against the little guy. Maybe this is how things happened years ago, but they’ve become wise to those tendencies by cracking down on frivolous lawsuits (as you clearly think this is). One of the ways they do this is by awarding legal fees and other punitive damages to the winning side. So again, if Yuzu really had a leg to stand on, they’d be standing on it instead of immediately capitulating.

Then don't bring up irrelevant cases.

So, first off, making an emulator is not illegal. Just because it can be used for piracy, and had a reverse engineered system that allowed the user to get around the protections does not make it illegal. Just because they were compelled to suggest otherwise, does not make it illegal. Just because Nintendo wants it to be, does not make it illegal. I see why propaganda works.

Second, those damages should be sought out by those providing the illegal roms, not the emulator. What next, will Nintendo sue MS for allowing illegal emulation on their platform?

Third, you seem to have misunderstood, again. It is all about the money because unless the community bands together to help pay the court costs, win or lose they lose and are buried in court fees. They aren't getting their fees paid by Nintendo just because you magically think they will, or that magically an attorney will show up and guarantee it. There still is no precedence for that. Nintendo would've got slapped down ages ago if there was anyone willing to throw money at the problem.

Lastly, that last paragraph takes the cake. Sure, they're not supposed to, and in a perfect world that would happen, but we all know that happens all the time (unless you have the money to fight it). Which Yuzu didn't.

Anyways, thanks. You've reminded me why they didn't want to rely on the community. You'd sooner jump on the "Yuzu was 100% in the wrong bandwagon for taking from poor Nintendo" bandwagon. This community deserves losing another emulator and being painted as being in a "grey legal zone".