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I am all for there being emulators for past consoles as a form of preservation as the hardware gets harder and harder to get. Has Nintendo ever gone after Dolph

I am all for there being emulators for past consoles as a form of preservation as the hardware gets harder and harder to get. Has Nintendo ever gone after Dolphin except for the Steam thing? But, emulating a current console is not about preservation. It just isn't. You can try to say it is, but no. Maybe, maybe you could argue that you are putting in the work now so it's ready when it's needed. But then be careful about putting it out there. Just go look at the steam deck subreddit and how often Switch games are talked about, I can't imagine Nintendo was very happy about that. This wasn't just some small project that people did not really know about or served a niche purpose. This as asking for trouble and I am surprised it took so long honestly. Edit: Don't get me wrong, I hate exclusives and I wish the practice would end. But that is the current state of things and the choices leading up to this were questionable at best. Edit Again: Hold up, Yuzu was an actual company and had a Patreon bringing in over $29k a month? Yeah um, Nintendo has been bad but that's a choice for a current console. It is no surprise Nintendo went after them.

aaomidi 3y ago
Folks. This is not about piracy at all. It is also not about copyrights or whatever. It's about the shitty part of DMCA's anti-circumvention. If you want to see how stupid this law is, look at the number of exemptions given for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act#Anti-circumvention_exemptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...
- aaomidi 3y ago
  I'll also go as far to say, if you support Nintendo here. You also are supporting Apple shutting down Asahi linux. All Apple will need to claim is that Asahi is bypassing some "client side protection", and Asahi is shut down.
  - jamesgeck0 3y ago
    Apple Silicon machines have a "permissive security" mode which allows booting unsigned third party kernels. Asahi isn't circumventing anything, this is a officially supported feature.
  - mcphage 3y ago
    > All Apple will need to claim is that Asahi is bypassing some "client side protection", and Asahi is shut down. Is Asahi bypassing some client side protection?
  - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
    Apple spent substantial engineering effort modifying their iOS bootloader so that Apple Silicon Macs could load third party kernels. If Apple wanted to kill Asahi Linux, they could just remove this functionality from iBoot. Apple will not remove this functionality, because they would not have added it in the first place if they did not want people to be able to use it.
BHSPitMonkey 3y ago
Obviously piracy plays a large (maybe the largest?) role here, though I wouldn't overlook the modding use case. I would be quite interested in running titles I legitimately own on more powerful hardware where I can play around with the resolution and framerate freely (and would have already used Yuzu for this purpose by now, but for laziness).
- ejj28 3y ago
  This is the only reason I have Yuzu installed - I own Tears of the Kingdom legitimately but the Switch is such a piece of underpowered, overpriced junk that I'll never replay the game on real hardware, when I can instead be playing at 1440p and 60fps with all kinds of enhancements on PC.
- nerdjon 3y ago
  ok yeah that is valid. I just have a very hard time believing that, like you said, the majority of the use case is anything other than piracy. I mean almost every emulation software somewhere says that you should only emulate games you own, but how many of us actually still own our NES or gamecube games that we may have downloaded. But it's easier to justify given that stuff not being easily accessible anymore, we don't even have a proper eshop for emulation on the Switch.
  - dns_snek 3y ago
    > I just have a very hard time believing that, like you said, the majority of the use case is anything other than piracy. Even if this is true, torrent clients are predominantly used for piracy too and they don't get sued. Neither are explicitly designed to facilitate it. Can anyone explain why Yuzu's case is different?
    - nerdjon 3y ago
      I feel like the difference here should be fairly obvious. One is an open protocol, and one is proprietary technology. AWS even at one point supported the protocol. I don't know if it's still a thing but it wasn't terribly uncommon to find Linux distros and other legitimate things shared through that protocol. Here we are talking about proprietary technology by Nintendo. On a system that they are currently selling and making money on. Given how much money they were bring in on patrion, it isn't much different than if they tried to make a physical knock off switch that could run switch games.
veec_cas_tant 3y ago
I don’t think preservation is an important argument. If I own an AppleTV, and I purchase a movie through their service, why should it be illegal for me to export that movie to watch on a different device? I own the hardware and the data, why would any law even care at that point? Obviously piracy should be illegal, but I just don’t see any argument against emulation even if it is current.
- gamblor956 3y ago
  For this reason, most of the major studios are members of Movies Anywhere, which allows you to access movies purchased at any (participating) storefront on any participating VOD service. Amazon, Fandango, Vudu, Disney, are participants.
  - veec_cas_tant 3y ago
    True, but the example was just an example. Buying a game on PC and making it run on a PS5 - why would something like that ever be illegal?
    - gamblor956 3y ago
      It's generally not, because you can run an OS on a PS5 that can then run the game, and the DMCA allows for this (with some limitations) because, and this is a very important point: there is generally no DRM-hacking required. But...if DRM hacking is required to get a PC game to work on a PS5, it's illegal to do so under the DMCA. (Note: DRM is defined very broadly for DMCA purposes.) Dolphin does require a bit of DRM hacking, but Dolphin (arguably) falls under one of the DCMA exceptions for archival use purposes. This is the second important point: the Dolphin emulates a system which has not been on sale for a decade. It's still possible* to use it for general piracy instead of archival access, but the archival use trumps the piracy concern. (It would be different though if the Dolphin developers started offering Dolphin on a commercial basis.) But Yuzu is a commercial offering, for a console that is still on sale, and its use requires DRM hacking. So it's got 3 fatal flaws. The only surprise is that Nintendo let it live as long as it has. You can bet they won't make that mistake again with their next console.
bobajeff 3y ago
>emulating a current console is not about preservation. It just isn't So we should all just wait until they stop selling a console before working to emulate it? Just imagine if they had this attitude when it came to reverse engineering IBM PC's bios.
- nerdjon 3y ago
  Did you... not even read the entire line that you decided to just quote part of? > But, emulating a current console is not about preservation. It just isn't. You can try to say it is, but no. Maybe, maybe you could argue that you are putting in the work now so it's ready when it's needed. But then be careful about putting it out there.
- kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
  IBM published the full BIOS listing and schematics. There wasn't much to RE.
- bongodongobob 3y ago
  If it's still being actively sold, why would the emulator be needed or distributed? It's a bullshit argument for current consoles.
throwaway48r7r 3y ago
>But, emulating a current console is not about preservation. Today's present is tomorrow's past.
- realusername 3y ago
  Especially considering that consoles have a less than stellar support from manufacturers, they just move on to the next console and you can say goodbye to your games, especially nowadays with game servers.
  - SmallDeadGuy 3y ago
    Nintendo have typically been pretty good with backwards compatibility as newer versions of consoles come out. GBAs could play GB/GBC games. DS could play GBA games. 3DS could play DS. Wii could play GC games. Wii U could play Wii games. The Switch is an outlier in that regard but mostly because the hardware is so different from previous consoles. It could never support the 2 screens required for DS/3DS or some Wii U games, nor is it big enough to fit Wii U disks anyway. But it wouldn't surprise me if the Switch 2 could play Switch 1 games. Nintendo also typically put entire games on their cartridges, and day 1 patches are for bug fixes only and are optional. If you keep the cartridges and your console, you keep your games perfectly fine. Or you can go out and buy cartridges second hand. And digital downloads will also still function, like my 3DS still has my digital purchases even if the eshop is gone. I just can't purchase new games anymore, for a 12 year old system.
unethical_ban 3y ago
>But, emulating a current console is not about preservation. It just isn't. I disagree in the general case. Sure, beware of litigious companies, but it isn't immoral. In the specific case of Yuzu bringing in cash from the endeavor, yes, I see why Nintendo did what they did. --- Totally off-topic, but I have never bought a Switch despite liking the idea of all the games on it, because I don't want to pay $600 for a gameboy, 2-4 real controllers and a copy of Mario Party. I can't understand how it or Steam Deck is popular. But that's just me.
ravenstine 3y ago
> Hold up, Yuzu was an actual company and had a Patreon bringing in over $29k a month? Yeah um, Nintendo has been bad but that's a choice for a current console. It is no surprise Nintendo went after them. LOL Yeah, as much as I am an anti-fan of Nintendo, it sounds like this company was asking to get sued.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  Making a big company angry is supposed to be legal.
  - stavros 3y ago
    It is legal, and you can spend all your money (and more) on lawyers' fees to prove it!
    - account42 3y ago
      But we don't have to cheer on that company.
Phrodo_00 3y ago
> But, emulating a current console is not about preservation. It just isn't. No, but it CAN be used as a tool to play legitimate copies of games on different hardware. A few people on this thread have said they do this. I haven't done it yet, but I'll probably dump the Switch games I want to play on my Deck instead of carrying the switch also.
johnfernow 3y ago
So long as Nintendo doesn't end up going after emulators released before the Switch, then the de facto (not de jure) precedent is: don't release an emulator for their current latest console. Overall, that's probably a mostly fine outcome for game preservation, and thinking about it more, it's probably much better for emulation and game preservation long term that Yuzu's devs settled instead of fighting this, as if they had lost and a legal precedent were set, many other emulators might have had to shut down or be hosted in countries where the DMCA doesn't apply. But with no legal precedent set here, emulators for consoles released before the Switch might very well be safe. Time will tell though.
imiric 3y ago
> emulating a current console is not about preservation. It just isn't. You can try to say it is, but no. Maybe, maybe you could argue that you are putting in the work now so it's ready when it's needed. But then be careful about putting it out there. What do you think of piracy in general? When would you consider pirating a PC game would be acceptable? The reality is that the modern gaming industry is actively hostile to the consumer. Content is locked behind intrusive DRM, store front exclusivity deals, licensing terms that may revoke your access at any point, obnoxious launchers, always online requirements, reliance on servers that may disappear at any moment, insidious subscriptions, microtransactions, and many other schemes ranging from shady to borderline illegal. Hype-driven marketing pushing pre-orders based on lies, followed by empty promises of multi-year roadmaps to get games in a playable state. Yearly releases of rehashed and reskinned content, low-effort and premature "remasters"... The list goes on and on. Is someone who plays a pirated version of a game they purchased, but can't access anymore, in the wrong? Or how about if they prefer the pirated version because it gives a better experience? Or how about if they're tired of always getting the short end of the stick by playing by the rules? The law says they are, but are they really? The morality here is not so black and white. BTW, I agree with you that Yuzu was clearly overstepping the boundaries, and that it's no surprise Nintendo took them out. I just think that Nintendo doesn't necessarily have the moral high ground, and that there's a strong argument in favor of not only emulation, but piracy.

aaomidi 3y ago

Folks. This is not about piracy at all. It is also not about copyrights or whatever. It's about the shitty part of DMCA's anti-circumvention. If you want to see how stupid this law is, look at the number of exemptions given for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act#Anti-circumvention_exemptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...

aaomidi 3y ago
I'll also go as far to say, if you support Nintendo here. You also are supporting Apple shutting down Asahi linux. All Apple will need to claim is that Asahi is bypassing some "client side protection", and Asahi is shut down.
- jamesgeck0 3y ago
  Apple Silicon machines have a "permissive security" mode which allows booting unsigned third party kernels. Asahi isn't circumventing anything, this is a officially supported feature.
- mcphage 3y ago
  > All Apple will need to claim is that Asahi is bypassing some "client side protection", and Asahi is shut down. Is Asahi bypassing some client side protection?
- Wowfunhappy 3y ago
  Apple spent substantial engineering effort modifying their iOS bootloader so that Apple Silicon Macs could load third party kernels. If Apple wanted to kill Asahi Linux, they could just remove this functionality from iBoot. Apple will not remove this functionality, because they would not have added it in the first place if they did not want people to be able to use it.

BHSPitMonkey 3y ago

Obviously piracy plays a large (maybe the largest?) role here, though I wouldn't overlook the modding use case. I would be quite interested in running titles I legitimately own on more powerful hardware where I can play around with the resolution and framerate freely (and would have already used Yuzu for this purpose by now, but for laziness).

ejj28 3y ago
This is the only reason I have Yuzu installed - I own Tears of the Kingdom legitimately but the Switch is such a piece of underpowered, overpriced junk that I'll never replay the game on real hardware, when I can instead be playing at 1440p and 60fps with all kinds of enhancements on PC.
nerdjon 3y ago
ok yeah that is valid. I just have a very hard time believing that, like you said, the majority of the use case is anything other than piracy. I mean almost every emulation software somewhere says that you should only emulate games you own, but how many of us actually still own our NES or gamecube games that we may have downloaded. But it's easier to justify given that stuff not being easily accessible anymore, we don't even have a proper eshop for emulation on the Switch.
- dns_snek 3y ago
  > I just have a very hard time believing that, like you said, the majority of the use case is anything other than piracy. Even if this is true, torrent clients are predominantly used for piracy too and they don't get sued. Neither are explicitly designed to facilitate it. Can anyone explain why Yuzu's case is different?
  - nerdjon 3y ago
    I feel like the difference here should be fairly obvious. One is an open protocol, and one is proprietary technology. AWS even at one point supported the protocol. I don't know if it's still a thing but it wasn't terribly uncommon to find Linux distros and other legitimate things shared through that protocol. Here we are talking about proprietary technology by Nintendo. On a system that they are currently selling and making money on. Given how much money they were bring in on patrion, it isn't much different than if they tried to make a physical knock off switch that could run switch games.

veec_cas_tant 3y ago

I don’t think preservation is an important argument. If I own an AppleTV, and I purchase a movie through their service, why should it be illegal for me to export that movie to watch on a different device? I own the hardware and the data, why would any law even care at that point? Obviously piracy should be illegal, but I just don’t see any argument against emulation even if it is current.

gamblor956 3y ago
For this reason, most of the major studios are members of Movies Anywhere, which allows you to access movies purchased at any (participating) storefront on any participating VOD service. Amazon, Fandango, Vudu, Disney, are participants.
- veec_cas_tant 3y ago
  True, but the example was just an example. Buying a game on PC and making it run on a PS5 - why would something like that ever be illegal?
  - gamblor956 3y ago
    It's generally not, because you can run an OS on a PS5 that can then run the game, and the DMCA allows for this (with some limitations) because, and this is a very important point: there is generally no DRM-hacking required. But...if DRM hacking is required to get a PC game to work on a PS5, it's illegal to do so under the DMCA. (Note: DRM is defined very broadly for DMCA purposes.) Dolphin does require a bit of DRM hacking, but Dolphin (arguably) falls under one of the DCMA exceptions for archival use purposes. This is the second important point: the Dolphin emulates a system which has not been on sale for a decade. It's still possible* to use it for general piracy instead of archival access, but the archival use trumps the piracy concern. (It would be different though if the Dolphin developers started offering Dolphin on a commercial basis.) But Yuzu is a commercial offering, for a console that is still on sale, and its use requires DRM hacking. So it's got 3 fatal flaws. The only surprise is that Nintendo let it live as long as it has. You can bet they won't make that mistake again with their next console.

bobajeff 3y ago

>emulating a current console is not about preservation. It just isn't So we should all just wait until they stop selling a console before working to emulate it? Just imagine if they had this attitude when it came to reverse engineering IBM PC's bios.

nerdjon 3y ago
Did you... not even read the entire line that you decided to just quote part of? > But, emulating a current console is not about preservation. It just isn't. You can try to say it is, but no. Maybe, maybe you could argue that you are putting in the work now so it's ready when it's needed. But then be careful about putting it out there.
kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
IBM published the full BIOS listing and schematics. There wasn't much to RE.
bongodongobob 3y ago
If it's still being actively sold, why would the emulator be needed or distributed? It's a bullshit argument for current consoles.

throwaway48r7r 3y ago

>But, emulating a current console is not about preservation. Today's present is tomorrow's past.

realusername 3y ago
Especially considering that consoles have a less than stellar support from manufacturers, they just move on to the next console and you can say goodbye to your games, especially nowadays with game servers.
- SmallDeadGuy 3y ago
  Nintendo have typically been pretty good with backwards compatibility as newer versions of consoles come out. GBAs could play GB/GBC games. DS could play GBA games. 3DS could play DS. Wii could play GC games. Wii U could play Wii games. The Switch is an outlier in that regard but mostly because the hardware is so different from previous consoles. It could never support the 2 screens required for DS/3DS or some Wii U games, nor is it big enough to fit Wii U disks anyway. But it wouldn't surprise me if the Switch 2 could play Switch 1 games. Nintendo also typically put entire games on their cartridges, and day 1 patches are for bug fixes only and are optional. If you keep the cartridges and your console, you keep your games perfectly fine. Or you can go out and buy cartridges second hand. And digital downloads will also still function, like my 3DS still has my digital purchases even if the eshop is gone. I just can't purchase new games anymore, for a 12 year old system.

unethical_ban 3y ago

>But, emulating a current console is not about preservation. It just isn't. I disagree in the general case. Sure, beware of litigious companies, but it isn't immoral. In the specific case of Yuzu bringing in cash from the endeavor, yes, I see why Nintendo did what they did. --- Totally off-topic, but I have never bought a Switch despite liking the idea of all the games on it, because I don't want to pay $600 for a gameboy, 2-4 real controllers and a copy of Mario Party. I can't understand how it or Steam Deck is popular. But that's just me.

ravenstine 3y ago

> Hold up, Yuzu was an actual company and had a Patreon bringing in over $29k a month? Yeah um, Nintendo has been bad but that's a choice for a current console. It is no surprise Nintendo went after them. LOL Yeah, as much as I am an anti-fan of Nintendo, it sounds like this company was asking to get sued.

Dylan16807 3y ago
Making a big company angry is supposed to be legal.
- stavros 3y ago
  It is legal, and you can spend all your money (and more) on lawyers' fees to prove it!
  - account42 3y ago
    But we don't have to cheer on that company.

Phrodo_00 3y ago

> But, emulating a current console is not about preservation. It just isn't. No, but it CAN be used as a tool to play legitimate copies of games on different hardware. A few people on this thread have said they do this. I haven't done it yet, but I'll probably dump the Switch games I want to play on my Deck instead of carrying the switch also.

johnfernow 3y ago

So long as Nintendo doesn't end up going after emulators released before the Switch, then the de facto (not de jure) precedent is: don't release an emulator for their current latest console. Overall, that's probably a mostly fine outcome for game preservation, and thinking about it more, it's probably much better for emulation and game preservation long term that Yuzu's devs settled instead of fighting this, as if they had lost and a legal precedent were set, many other emulators might have had to shut down or be hosted in countries where the DMCA doesn't apply. But with no legal precedent set here, emulators for consoles released before the Switch might very well be safe. Time will tell though.

imiric 3y ago

> emulating a current console is not about preservation. It just isn't. You can try to say it is, but no. Maybe, maybe you could argue that you are putting in the work now so it's ready when it's needed. But then be careful about putting it out there. What do you think of piracy in general? When would you consider pirating a PC game would be acceptable? The reality is that the modern gaming industry is actively hostile to the consumer. Content is locked behind intrusive DRM, store front exclusivity deals, licensing terms that may revoke your access at any point, obnoxious launchers, always online requirements, reliance on servers that may disappear at any moment, insidious subscriptions, microtransactions, and many other schemes ranging from shady to borderline illegal. Hype-driven marketing pushing pre-orders based on lies, followed by empty promises of multi-year roadmaps to get games in a playable state. Yearly releases of rehashed and reskinned content, low-effort and premature "remasters"... The list goes on and on. Is someone who plays a pirated version of a game they purchased, but can't access anymore, in the wrong? Or how about if they prefer the pirated version because it gives a better experience? Or how about if they're tired of always getting the short end of the stick by playing by the rules? The law says they are, but are they really? The morality here is not so black and white. BTW, I agree with you that Yuzu was clearly overstepping the boundaries, and that it's no surprise Nintendo took them out. I just think that Nintendo doesn't necessarily have the moral high ground, and that there's a strong argument in favor of not only emulation, but piracy.