After Nintendo recently filed a lawsuit against the Yuzu team, it was pretty much inevitable this was going to happen wasn't it.
  • jsomae@lemmy.ml
    1605·
    10 months ago

    Reminder that poor Gary Bowser was jailed for a year and owes 30% of his income to Nintendo for the rest of his life. He uses a wheelchair and has two kids.

    It would be morally wrong to pirate all future Nintendo titles and pay the cover price to Gary’s gofundme. Please don’t do that.

    • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
      3111·
      10 months ago

      Please don’t conflate an open effort to own your own hardware and data with a closed effort to literally sell access to copyrighted content under the table, and try to launder the profits and commit fraud. Yuzu and Bowser are not the same.

      • jsomae@lemmy.ml
        112·
        10 months ago

        you mean the MiGSwitch, a device for dumping and preserving switch ROMs? I would love to have one for personal backups, and it pairs well with yuzu. Team Xecuter is credibly presumed to be the developers, so that’s likely Bowser’s current hobby.

          • macniel@feddit.de
            111·
            10 months ago

            Do you really believe that the last statement by yuzu is their own opinion? It really reads as it was written by a Nintendo lawyer and they just needed to sign it.

            • Perfide@reddthat.com
              43·
              10 months ago

              Yuzu has always expressed that opinion about piracy publicly. Whether they actually believe that is another matter, but it’s nothing new for them to say that.

              • kenopsik@lemm.ee
                61·
                10 months ago

                Basically every emulator developer will say that their platform is not for piracy but for backing up your legally purchased games, but it’s usually just a “wink wink nudge nudge” type of thing for legal reasons.

                • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
                  3·
                  10 months ago

                  This is what Nintendo wants people to think. They want you to think hacking your own hardware is synonymous with copyright infringement. And it’s categorically not. Just like collecting knives isn’t synonymous with committing murder.

                  I agree that Yuzu was toeing a fine line when they should have instead steered far clear of it and only supported playback of homebrew apps without encryption, but that’s not to say they did anything ethically wrong. Backing up your own files shouldn’t be a right we lose just because of criminals walking around “wink wink, nudge nudging” each other. Punish the murderers, not the knife sellers.

          • Encamped@lemmy.ml
            23·
            10 months ago

            Also believe his (proprietary) software would brick switches if it detected other software, though don’t quote me on that.

    • SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip
      8·
      10 months ago

      There’s no way that kind of punishment is allowed by the 8th amendment. This is definitely an unusual punishment.

    • faith@lemmy.mlEnglish
      117·
      10 months ago

      Reminder that “poor Gary” was selling pirated roms.

      • kot [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        23·
        10 months ago

        Reminder that “poor Gary” was selling pirated roms.

        Oh, the horror! I guess that justifies ruining his life forever.

      • Pika@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        10·
        10 months ago

        I disagree with selling pirated roms but, he also wasn’t part of the development team he was closer to a sales associate then anything. the punishment given to him was cruel and unusable and honestly a failure of the legal system.

        I see this on the same level as forcing a sales associate at Walmart to pay the fine of all the wage violations the company as a whole did. It’s rediculous.

        I personally will never be buying a Nintendo product again out of principle.

      • TrudeauCastroson [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        7·
        10 months ago

        I thought he was selling chips that let you do piracy

        Either way, he and his descendants should be indentured servants to Nintendo. His lineage must be shamed.

        • Pika@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          yes that was what he was doing was selling Hardware mod chips that you could hook to it to be able to run custom firmware which allowed you to pirate games, the issue stemmed from how they were advertising the project. They weren’t advertising the project as a run your own custom firmware/ backup solution, they were selling the product with the intent that it was being used to pirate

    • Bilb!@lem.monsterEnglish
      381·
      10 months ago

      The bigger deal is that development by this team has been halted, not that it will be a little harder to find a trustworthy download of the most recent version.

      • nailoC5@lemy.lol
        211·
        10 months ago

        Yep. This is more to stop the emulation of their next console than anything else. Especially considering it’s likely to be a just slightly better Switch.

        • sleepyTonia@programming.dev
          61·
          10 months ago

          Honestly, I’ll think more than twice before buying that thing if it really just is a Switch refresh. Not even taking into account the fact that whether it’s Yuzu or not, it’ll probably be supported by a Switch emulator in a comically short time after coming out. I’m still waiting for some insider leaks ten years from now revealing the Switch was indeed just some rebranded gaming tablet. Too many half-assed features, both on the firmware/OS side of things, but also the controller connectivity and drifting. It’s their worst console up to now. But damn, are their games fun.

      • Fisch@lemmy.ml
        2·
        10 months ago

        That’s only temporary tho. One fork will emerge as the replacement everyone goes to, including the developers who were only working on Yuzu and Citra as volunteers. We know what Nintendo was sueing over, so that can probably be avoided in that fork.

  • macniel@feddit.de
    924·
    10 months ago

    fuck Nintendo, I’ll never support them or buy anything related to them ever again.

    • Fizz@lemmy.nz
      688·
      10 months ago

      I feel like the people saying this now aren’t going to follow through and will buy future Nintendo products. If this behavior was a deal breaker for you then you would already be boycotting Nintendo.

        • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
          71·
          10 months ago

          Yet people keep buying their outdated console and paying for Nintendo online with terrible service.

          • Fisch@lemmy.ml
            2·
            10 months ago

            Because people think that Nintendo deserves that money and pirating is unfair and wrong. In a vacuum, they do make good games that are worth the money but with all the shit they’re pulling, they’re basically abusing the law and their power as a huge company to force people to do what they want. That’s why, in my eyes, it’s only fair to pirate their stuff. If they’re gonna play unfair, so am I. There’s a huge chunk of people who aren’t that well informed on what Nintendo’s doing and why it’s wrong, who don’t want to do something illegal or who just want the convenience tho.

  • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
    521·
    10 months ago

    Where does a FOSS project find $2.4M? They weren’t selling anything were they? They can’t really have that big of a war chest can they?

    • Moonrise2473@lemmy.ml
      431·
      10 months ago

      They don’t have it. It’s a limited liability company so in this way they will pay only the sum of their assets (=bankruptcy) which is lower than legal expenses against a Goliath and definitely lower than 2.4 million. I’m guessing 1000x lower than the settled amount or they wouldn’t have reason to found the LLC in first place or to settle this easy and this fast

    • Fubarberry@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      292·
      10 months ago

      My understanding is they’ve been making 30k a month from their Patreon.

      Which is also the main reason they were vulnerable to a lawsuit, because they’ve been profiting off of the emulator (which why legal by itself, is only popular enough to make money due to piracy).

      • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
        181·
        10 months ago

        $2.4M is 8 years’ worth in that case, assuming they were making that much the entire time. And of course a lot of that money was probably for the devs to afford basic living expenses.

        • Fubarberry@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          51·
          10 months ago

          6 years and 8 months, but yeah I can’t see them having the money, even if they saved everything.

        • Fubarberry@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          61·
          10 months ago

          The most recent version of Yuzu (which theoretically has the best performance) is semi-locked behind their Patreon.

          This was especially important when TotK came out, because they were making a bunch of tweaks to improve performance for that game. So people who wanted to play TotK needed to subscribe to get the best results (or build from source, I’m assuming).

        • willya@lemmyf.ukEnglish
          23·
          10 months ago

          Is this your first time venturing on to Patreon? The YouTube channel cold ones makes $84k a month from Patreon and they just get drunk, smash shit, and play video games.

    • T (they/she)@beehaw.org
      3·
      10 months ago

      Can’t they just file for bankruptcy or something like that and not really pay the money? I think it isn’t about the cash, but just shutting the project down

  • mudle@lemmy.mlM
    512·
    10 months ago

    As of right now, both Citra and Yuzu are available via Flathub!!! Get them now if you don’t have it!!!

    • hakase@lemm.eeEnglish
      141·
      10 months ago

      How do I turn off Yuzu’s auto-update? I don’t want my computer to connect to a website that Nintendo now owns every time I boot up the emulator.

      • mudle@lemmy.mlM
        201·
        10 months ago

        You should be fine. Yuzu checks the Github repo for updates which is now down. If you’re still worried you could download it via Flathub and disable network access via Flatseal or terminal.

      • clearleaf@lemmy.world
        151·
        10 months ago

        I have the opposite question. How do I make sure that Nintendo knows every time I run yuzu?

  • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    482·
    10 months ago

    Holy shit this thing smells so bad. The announcement reads like “Nintendo’s legal team wrote this in exchange for 1 mill smaller settlement”

    • blindsight@beehaw.org
      22·
      10 months ago

      This shouldn’t need to be the case; emulation is legal and has been tried by the courts in several jurisdictions.

      Sucks that laws like the DMCA make it illegal to bypass encryption for the sake of emulation or other fair use, so the legality of emulation isn’t really “enough” in the face of even rudimentary protections.

      The nice thing about loving on a global society is that this can still be legally pursued elsewhere and we can all benefit. (Or coordinated/shared on the dark web, which can be untraceable even for those living in justifications where it might be illegal.)

      In this case, they’ll be fine. They made a LLC and didn’t take any personal liability in the settlement. They can just declare bankruptcy and fold.

      • matcha_addict@lemy.lol
        15·
        10 months ago

        Emulation may be legal on paper, but in the end, we are rarely ever a match for such massive corporations, and a legal system that lets them get away with outspending you on legal fees.

      • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
        3·
        10 months ago

        Sucks that laws like the DMCA make it illegal to bypass encryption for the sake of emulation or other fair use

        IANAL, but there are a bunch of carve outs for these purposes.

        It’s unclear how this would have actually shaken out, but probably just because Nintendo is Nintendo, it would have gone in their favor. And yuzu didn’t want to be the one to set bad precedent for any future endeavors.

  • matcha_addict@lemy.lol
    342·
    10 months ago

    Reminder that paying Nintendo money is morally wrong and should be avoided when possible. Buy the consoles, sure, but pirate if you have to play the games.

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
      221·
      10 months ago

      The consoles are the fucking things I don’t want to buy… I’m sick of Nintendo and their “buy my console or fuck you” motto…

      I haven’t bought an Xbox since the 360 and haven’t bought a PlayStation since PS4 because I’m so sick of dropping hundreds of dollars on a console for one or two games since the parent companies are assholes and won’t have the games ported to PC. At least Sony and Microsoft got the message that you can have your console and sell the games on PC

      • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        12·
        10 months ago

        The Switch runs even first party Nintendo games like dogshit on top of all that. People will say it’s the developer’s fault, to which I say Nintendo owns the fucking developer so it’s still their fault.

        Also, Nintendo is the only console company that doesn’t port to PC. The fuck are all the annoying anti-Epic Store bros when it comes time to yell at Nintendo?

    • Fisch@lemmy.ml
      9·
      10 months ago

      It’s the other way around imo. I don’t want to pay hundreds of euros for a console (which is still just a computer) that is slower than my phone just because Nintendo puts artificial restrictions on what hardware the software they make can run on. I already have a PC that could run those games perfectly fine. Or rather, it can run those games perfectly fine, way better than a Switch actually. Unfortunately, the only way for me to play those games on my PC, without having to buy a console I don’t need, is to pirate them.

      So basically, I can either pirate the games for free to play them on my PC or I pay for a console for no other reason but to get the privilege of being able to pay for the games.

      • SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip
        3·
        10 months ago

        Same here. I’m not gonna pay lots of money for a locked down piece of hardware that makes me pay indefinitely to play online and could take away my purchased games at a moment’s notice.

        I still occasionally buy physical switch games to play on my sibling’s switch. I buy physical because there’s a resale value to the game. I feel like I actually own a copy of the game.

        Anyways, I have a big Steam backlog that I’ll never get to because of 1) Factorio, 2) A personal game I’m programming in HTML/CSS/JS, and 3) riding my motorcycle.

        • Fisch@lemmy.ml
          2·
          10 months ago

          Factorio is the closest thing we have to time travel. Start the game and suddenly it’s 5 hours later and there’s still that one part you could optimize. I fucking love this game.

          • SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip
            2·
            10 months ago

            I have 600h in the game. 80h in my first game, 260h in my bad attempt at a megabase, 25h in a 100% achievements world, and a few random maps. I haven’t even tried doing a deathworld yet.

            Then once you think you are done, then there are the mods. I have 123h in one overhaul modpack, enough to technically beat it but not truly scale up. There are several other similar scale modpacks, and there exists a certain hardcore modpack that people say takes 1000h or more to beat.

      • Omegamint [comrade/them, doe/deer]@hexbear.netEnglish
        4·
        10 months ago

        Very easy if it was an earlier model, although I’ve seen some of the newer modchips make soldering about as simplified as possible (but still kinda hard, it’s a tiny board to be fiddling with). I literally hacked my current switch with some aluminum foil and tape (my jig broke, I guess), and besides all that all you need is a decent microsd card and the willingness to follow directions

    • janAkali@lemmy.oneEnglish
      85·
      10 months ago

      Reminder that paying money is morally wrong and should be avoided when possible. Steal the consoles and pirate if you have to play the games.

    • ursakhiin@beehaw.org
      63·
      10 months ago

      This is a hot take if I’ve ever seen one. I may disagree with this particular action but supporting companies that make games I want to play and are demonstrably fun is never morally wrong.

      The world is more complex than that.

  • Lojcs@lemm.ee
    181·
    10 months ago

    They’re shutting down the website too :( I really liked the in depth update logs. Yuzu (the website, emulator, android app) felt so extraordinarily polished for an emulator too. Shame Nintendo