2 ms·

You know, a part of me is glad this is how it ended. It sucks that Yuzu had to get bullied out of existence, but there's a universe where this went to court, a

You know, a part of me is glad this is how it ended. It sucks that Yuzu had to get bullied out of existence, but there's a universe where this went to court, and Nintendo is successful in making emulation illegal. At least this way, no legal precedent was set. Even still this is pretty depressing situation, simply because it might scare off people from contributing to or creating their own emulators. If they don't want to face the wrath of Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft/Apple/Google, then they might decide to pass and the emulation world will suffer for it. For that matter, I think there's a non-zero chance the Sony and Microsoft see this as their opportunity to start sicking their lawyers on emulator developers. And if we're really unlucky, one of them might be successful in getting console emulation banned. I mean, as it stands, it seems like every large company is working extremely hard to ensure that you don't own your media, and instead are just renting it until they feel that they would be better off taking it away. Emulation is one of the few ways to take back control of the media. I can play Wii and Gamecube games on pretty much any platform, without much headache, because Dolphin runs on basically anything. I can backup my games and as of right now, there's really nothing Nintendo can do about it, and it seems like that fact drives entertainment companies crazy.

nindalf 3y ago
Why would Sony and Microsoft care? No one out there is seriously emulating their latest consoles because they're too powerful. Nintendo's problem is that they're trying to sell a medium range SoC from 2014 in 2024. It's so underpowered that emulation is something even some legit Switch owners prefer to do.
- vel0city 3y ago
  > No one out there is seriously emulating their latest consoles because they're too powerful. Generally speaking, Sony and Microsoft's consoles are generally pretty similar to x86 gaming PCs with custom APIs. There's a little bit of oddities of shared memory between system and graphics but I'm not sure that makes that much of an architectural difference. The Xbox Series X is a 8-core Zen2 CPU with a customized RDNA2 GPU. Its not like emulating a cell processor on x86 or something.
- tombert 3y ago
  You're probably right, but there's at least one emulator out there that can run relatively modern games at a comparable speed on unsupported operating systems: WINE (and subsequently Proton and Crossover). [1] While I don't think APIs are generally copyrightable (IANAL) so WINE should be in the clear, I could totally see a universe where Microsoft decides that WINE is a threat, and they bully them through the legal system to stop development. Will this happen? Probably not, but it's just one example that could happen. Hell, Crossover even monetizes it, which is part of the issue that Nintendo had with Yuzu isn't it? [1] Yes yes I know "Wine is Not an Emulator", it's a compatibility layer, but it still more or less functions the same way as one for the sake of this argument.
leovander 3y ago
> It sucks that Yuzu had to get bullied out of existence, but there's a universe where this went to court, and Nintendo is successful in making emulation illegal. At least this way, no legal precedent was set. They got taken down because they were greedy (kind of opposite of the emulation scene no?) and distributed roms behind a paywall via their patreon and I believe even providing the new legend of zelda game before it released. Yes, it's an attack on emulation, but sister projects like ryujinx are still up and running.
- OatmealDome 3y ago
  > distributed roms behind a paywall via their patreon Not true. They were only distributing "early access" builds of the emulator there.
  - tombert 3y ago
    Yeah but weren't they making specific patches to accommodate an early leak of Tears of the Kingdom? At that point, they were kind of directly facilitating piracy; no one could argue that they were working with a legitimately obtained ROM. Of course, I don't know the details, I've never actually gotten Yuzu working in any capacity (since I run macOS) and thus I wasn't part of their Patreon or Discord, so maybe I'm mistaken?
  - emodendroket 3y ago
    I see a lot of falsehoods (like "nobody ever sold an emulator before," when Apple showcased commercial PlayStation emulation at a keynote event in 1999) going around and I assume the reason is people don't like the implications of this case and are substituting a more palatable version of events that didn't really happen.
    - tombert 3y ago
      Not only did Apple showcase it, Sony sued Connectix and lost, thus formally making emulators "legal". [1] Similarly though, it looks like they were able to basically shut it down by getting injunctions on it while the case was pending, and eventually buying and discontinuing it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectix_Virtual_Game_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectix_Virtual_Game_Station

nindalf 3y ago

Why would Sony and Microsoft care? No one out there is seriously emulating their latest consoles because they're too powerful. Nintendo's problem is that they're trying to sell a medium range SoC from 2014 in 2024. It's so underpowered that emulation is something even some legit Switch owners prefer to do.

vel0city 3y ago
> No one out there is seriously emulating their latest consoles because they're too powerful. Generally speaking, Sony and Microsoft's consoles are generally pretty similar to x86 gaming PCs with custom APIs. There's a little bit of oddities of shared memory between system and graphics but I'm not sure that makes that much of an architectural difference. The Xbox Series X is a 8-core Zen2 CPU with a customized RDNA2 GPU. Its not like emulating a cell processor on x86 or something.
tombert 3y ago
You're probably right, but there's at least one emulator out there that can run relatively modern games at a comparable speed on unsupported operating systems: WINE (and subsequently Proton and Crossover). [1] While I don't think APIs are generally copyrightable (IANAL) so WINE should be in the clear, I could totally see a universe where Microsoft decides that WINE is a threat, and they bully them through the legal system to stop development. Will this happen? Probably not, but it's just one example that could happen. Hell, Crossover even monetizes it, which is part of the issue that Nintendo had with Yuzu isn't it? [1] Yes yes I know "Wine is Not an Emulator", it's a compatibility layer, but it still more or less functions the same way as one for the sake of this argument.

leovander 3y ago

> It sucks that Yuzu had to get bullied out of existence, but there's a universe where this went to court, and Nintendo is successful in making emulation illegal. At least this way, no legal precedent was set. They got taken down because they were greedy (kind of opposite of the emulation scene no?) and distributed roms behind a paywall via their patreon and I believe even providing the new legend of zelda game before it released. Yes, it's an attack on emulation, but sister projects like ryujinx are still up and running.

OatmealDome 3y ago
> distributed roms behind a paywall via their patreon Not true. They were only distributing "early access" builds of the emulator there.
- tombert 3y ago
  Yeah but weren't they making specific patches to accommodate an early leak of Tears of the Kingdom? At that point, they were kind of directly facilitating piracy; no one could argue that they were working with a legitimately obtained ROM. Of course, I don't know the details, I've never actually gotten Yuzu working in any capacity (since I run macOS) and thus I wasn't part of their Patreon or Discord, so maybe I'm mistaken?
- emodendroket 3y ago
  I see a lot of falsehoods (like "nobody ever sold an emulator before," when Apple showcased commercial PlayStation emulation at a keynote event in 1999) going around and I assume the reason is people don't like the implications of this case and are substituting a more palatable version of events that didn't really happen.
  - tombert 3y ago
    Not only did Apple showcase it, Sony sued Connectix and lost, thus formally making emulators "legal". [1] Similarly though, it looks like they were able to basically shut it down by getting injunctions on it while the case was pending, and eventually buying and discontinuing it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectix_Virtual_Game_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectix_Virtual_Game_Station