Two of the most high profile emulator projects were wiped out in an afternoon. In the days since, more have followed. The developer of Pizza Boy, a paid Game Boy emulator for Android, pulled it from the shop, writing “I have chosen to prioritize my family over the development of my apps.” A 3DS homebrew developer pulled their tools from Github. Android DS emulator DraStic went free, will soon go open source, and the developer says they plan to pull it from the Google Play store at some point.
Legally, the Yuzu settlement sets no precedent. But you can sure as hell feel the chill cast over the whole scene.
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If you buy a Switch, you should be able to dump its encryption keys, and you should be able to study it and write software to reproduce its functions if you have the skill it takes to do so. If you buy a game, you should be able to back it up. If you buy a Kindle book or an iTunes MP3, you should be able to strip that DRM and put it on the device of your choice. So it should be, but the law unfortunately doesn’t offer us these clear protections.
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. . . but seeing my own reporting mentioned in the lawsuit reinforced for me how much lawyers will bend any innocuous thing their way to make it sound like proof of guilt. They cited that “in an interview Bunnei game to PC Gamer” ⬆️ he stated Yuzu’s developers were aware people were modding Tears of the Kingdom to get it running in the emulator pre-release. I mean… duh? Of course they were aware! How could they not be aware? What are they guilty of, not doing the ‘see no evil’ pose for two weeks 🙈? The lawyers also claim “thousands of additional paid members of Yuzu’s Patreon signed up so that they could download the early access build and play unlawful copies of Zelda: TotK,” making it sound an awful lot like Yuzu’s developers were updating the emulator to play Tears of the Kingdom pre-release.But they weren’t. That didn’t happen.
Perhaps all the devs had pirated the game in secret and were getting updates ready for day one, I don’t know — but I do know they weren’t releasing builds to support it until the release day, no matter what the slippery legal phrasing implies.
They didn’t read the article. The article does a good job of cutting through the smoke and showing that Nintendo is suing because they think emulators shouldn’t exist at all and any DRM circumvention is defacto illegal. The only reason they don’t sue all emulators is because it’d cost more than they’d benefit suing every NES emulator, etc. Bourgeois propaganda is so pervasive and constant that the first think pseudo-leftists can do is try to nitpick what Yuzu did than look at the actual power relations happening here.
Emulator devs will never be able to go toe to toe with litigious gaming corporations. The only current option is to fly under the radar. Having any paper trail of money being involved is asking for trouble. We aren’t currently living in your fantasy world, we’re living in one driven by capitalism. No one is nitpicking Yuzu devs, I was pointing out a key element that got them sucked into these power relations.
I’ve been involved in this scene since the mid 90s. In 30 years, this game hasn’t changed in the slightest.