Yuzu/Citra emulators - gone!!

[Kiwi]

Holy heck!! I hadn't expected this!!

I thought emulation itself wasn't illegal. Plenty of precedent for that argument.

However, the fact the devs were making $30,000 per month off their endeavours didn't stand them in good stead as far as financial gain from piracy was concerned. The additional argument around the requirement to obtain decryption keys therefore running potentially afoul of the DMCA was probably the nail in the coffin as far as the devs lawyers were concerned.

Still a pretty sad situation though, especially regarding Citra which emulated to all intents and purposes, a defunct console.

[kitsunebi]

Precedent exists, sure, but if we're honest, it's always been a technicality that didn't actually make practical sense.  "Sure, you can emulate the system, just so long as you don't emulate any games on it!"  Because we all use emulators to NOT emulate games, right?

So I understand why they'd want it shut down.  The Switch is obviously still Nintendo's bread and butter, and at this point, any game from any time has the potential to be offered again for newer systems in an official e-shop or wherever, so a system being defunct doesn't mean that its games aren't going to reappear elsewhere at some point.

Shutting down emulators makes a lot more sense than forcing the removal of Nintendo Power scans, considering that mag shut down 12 years ago and will almost definitely never be reprinted or sold again - but that hasn't stopped their lawyers.

**I don't follow games or emulators anymore, so I'd never actually heard of these emulators before, but I have enjoyed quite a few yuzu beers over the years, so if anyone wants to drown out their sorrow over losing the Yuzu emulator, I wholeheartedly endorse seeking out some yuzu beer.  Drink it while reading a scan of a Nintendo mag if you want to live dangerously.

[rygel]

Besides all the legal stuff and ultimately the devs pulling the plug, I find it super sad when literally thousands of hours of coding-work + blood, sweat & tears on the codebase are just flushed down the toilet in such a case, as the complete repository will be shut down as well. 

[Kiwi]

I think was just the speed of the closure that caught me by surprise. Comments came out about "hiring a lawyer and emulation is legal" then "Boom. She's GoneBurger Jim!!"

My concern isn't so much as these guys folded but whether it sets a precedent and all the console companies decide to take the same tack as Nintendo. As kitsunebi pointed out, any old game in their inventory could potentially be used on a new console so why not take all emulation offline completely? Big coffers will always win by the look of it so even if you are sure you could prove no use of the publishers IP was made during the creation of an emulator hiring lawyers would make no sense to someone who has no ability to pay hefty legal bills defending it.

Must see if the local stores have Yuzu beer. Might just take kitsunebi up on having one if they do 

[IloveCats100]

I believe that there isn't too much risk of a big change in policy, as far as I remember Nintendo's behaviour towards emulation and software piracy has always been extreme to the point of taking down fan-games with gusto.There's a storied history of them acting aggressively and while disappointing, Yuzu's high profile nature means this isn't necessarily out of line with the "status quo". I don't think Sony or Microsoft (or arguably Sega) will start being pushier as a result.

[slider1983]

Remember Nintendo are only your friends if you play games THEIR way. What a scumbag company. 

[kitsunebi]

Remember Nintendo are only your friends if you play games THEIR way. What a scumbag company. 

Yeah, I can't believe they actually want people to pay for their games.  What scum.


My opinion on the morality of emulation is that, if the people who own the rights to the games keep them available in some playable form (like GOG, for example), then you should buy them.  If the games are no longer available for sale or not playable on current hardware, then there's no harm in emulating them.  But it's impossible to blame a company in the business of not only making games, but gaming consoles as well, for having a problem with emulators, especially ones that emulate their current hardware and games, since emulators will always go hand-in-hand with piracy.

[Kiwi]

Remember Nintendo are only your friends if you play games THEIR way. What a scumbag company. 

They are no different to an author, or anyone else producing something with a view to earning a living off of it. They have the absolute right to determine how that content is delivered, whether via a console, or e-book, or print etc. Your view is overly extremist in my opinion.

Even the idea that emulators should be for games no longer able to be played because the original hardware is unobtainable is clouded by the fact that companies like Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo have repackaged old games with ironically, emulators, to bring them to their latest consoles. So is any game ever really dead? Just because it may not be available now on your latest gaming box doesn't mean it always won't be so I do get where Nintendo is coming from in that regard. I personally am really thankful that creators of emulators allow us to play older games but I do see both sides of the story here.

Yuzu really did cross a line I think by emulating current hardware. Nintendo did make it easy by using ARM based hardware which is well known/documented so it became an easy target. Sega had the same issues with the Dreamcast when they used Windows CE as the underlying OS and within weeks of release a boot-loader CD emerged allowing the use of copied discs. But regardless of the hardware, with time most any console can be cracked, even the PS3 which I thought would never see an emulator. Amazing stuff!!

[kitsunebi]

Not emulator-related, but within the same theme of publishers trying to stop anything eating into their profits, I was going through the ads of a Dengeki PlayStation from Jan. 2000 and saw an ad placed by the Computer Entertainment Software Association of Japan.  I guess they were pushing legal action at the time to force shops selling used games to give part of their profits back to the publishers.  Apparently this worried/pissed off enough people that they felt the need to take out this ad to try to defend their actions.  Not sure if they were successful in gaining control over used game sales, but I doubt it.

I ran the ad through a translator:

[Kiwi]

Lordy .... that was a longwinded way of saying "we publishers get nothing if you buy secondhand so lets find a way for us to scorch you for even more money for something we've already sold"

That was 2000 you say? I seem to recall something similar on game publishers minds around the release of the Xbox One. Wasn't there some nonsense about Microsoft only wanting to release digital games and they would allow resale to someone else with a fee for doing so? Sounds eerily similar to the above.

[kitsunebi]

Did some more digging after noticing a "no resale" mark on many of the game ads in that issue (similar to this:)

Apparently the "no resale" mark was part of a campaign by the CESA and its affiliated publishers to put a stop to all used game sales in shops (perhaps auctions/person to person was immune.)  Not sure how long it lasted, but at least a couple of years, as I still see that mark on games from certain publishers in issues from late 2001.

Happy ending?  Their campaign to convince people that reselling games was illegal was eventually ruled to be...illegal.  LOL.

[Kiwi]

Hahaha!!! That's funny!!!

Still, publishers found ways around it. Ever tried to install a copy of a game that is secondhand and has a CD-Key?

"Sorry, that key is already in use against another user account. Please login to the proper account"

Or as Maxwell Smart would say "The old encrypted install files trick eh?" where the publisher decides no-one can install an older title anymore so takes down the server that provided the decryption keys to allow the disc setup to continue?
 

[slider1983]

Yeah, I can't believe they actually want people to pay for their games.  What scum.

Yeah it's even more scummy that not only do Nintendo force consumers to rebuy their games but grab other people's emulators to release them. Bunch of morons. I hate that company.

[kitsunebi]

Yeah, I can't believe they actually want people to pay for their games.  What scum.

Yeah it's even more scummy that not only do Nintendo force consumers to rebuy their games but grab other people's emulators to release them. Bunch of morons. I hate that company.

I think you misunderstood my sarcasm.

[slider1983]

I think you misunderstood my sarcasm.

No I got it fine. I was pointing out why they're a problem.