3 ms·

One argument I heard for the Yuzu settlement was to avoid discovery. There's speculation that Nintendo had the goods on them, and that discovery would expose th

One argument I heard for the Yuzu settlement was to avoid discovery. There's speculation that Nintendo had the goods on them, and that discovery would expose them to more than the civil penalties they were facing. Nintendo has never been friendly to emulation, or most fan content in general, but there are protections for fair-use and this team appears to be building their work behind those, rather than playing fast and loose with them.

LelouBil 3y ago
Yeahw if they used leaked games to optimize the emulator for release day, they would have much more to fear.
klausa 3y ago
My understanding was that they were offering a specially-patched version of Yuzu to their Patreon supporters, that included improvements for games that _weren't released yet_. *Making money* by helping people run Zelda _before it came out_ was begging for trouble. Nintendo's approach to fan projects and emulators is ridiculous, don't get me wrong — but Yuzu authors were definitely playing with fire and overstepping what's generally accepted in the community.
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  This was a widely spread myth, now generally considered incorrect. Yuzu did not offer improvements before launch day. There were badly patched unofficial versions that were trying. Nintendo does allege though that Yuzu was doing research to develop the patches before launch day.
  - klausa 3y ago
    Thank you for the correction!
testudovictoria 3y ago
There are fair-use protections, but it costs money to defend. Part of why so many Smash tournaments folded in 2022 was because of Nintendo telling people they weren't allowed to host tourneys using their IP. Granted I'm not a lawyer, but people gathering to play a multiplayer game and then streaming the matches doesn't inherently constitute any infringement on Nintendo's rights or ability to make money. Many TOs (tournament organizers) left the scene or stopped featuring Smash as a title over the C&D notice. No one wanted to take on Nintendo in court. Kind of. Some TOs are calling Nintendo's bluff. Nintendo released a set of guidelines[0] on what kinds of tournaments can be hosted. However, Collision 2024 just happened with attendees and a prize pool surpassing the guidelines. [0]: https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/63433/~/community-tournament-guidelines https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/...
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  Not really. Fair use does not really legally exist. It exists primarily as a defense after you’ve already been sued - which is also why there is no official codification of what fair use actually is. Also, as Nintendo can argue, imagine this was a movie. Imagine it was a movie being shown on screen for two hours. That would be case closed. Now imagine it was a movie recutting competition. Again, case closed. So what makes a tourney special? In the eyes of the law, a judge might say, absolutely nothing. You might argue, “well, there’s skill being applied, whereas a movie is passive.” No dice there - just because you put effort into your copyright violation is meaningless. You might argue a movie is a full work when a video game only displays a subset - but do you think you could publicly perform 30 minutes of The Lord of the Rings and be OK? Of course not.
  - testudovictoria 3y ago
    Interesting way to put it, but I'm still not sure that quite applies. The game is a multiplayer game intended to be played with other people. Commercial endeavors change with movie viewing. It's implied that single entity can own a single copy while charging admission to profit from their single copy of the movie. Meanwhile, movie companies (mostly) don't care if I play _The Lord of the Rings_ in a private setting to a small audience of known people. I would argue that the competitive nature of tournaments implies that the entrants all have a copy of the game along with hardware to run the game (emulation withstanding). The only thing is streaming the event. Even then, what would be the difference between streaming a tournament and streaming myself or a small group of friends playing? It doesn't seem like that would infringe upon the core purpose of the game.
kotaKat 3y ago
Beyond speculation. Nintendo is known to not fuck around, thanks to its leaks. In one of the various Nintendo leaks in the past few years was a bunch of documentation of "Operation Belgian Waffle", their attempt to "Knock and Talk" with a private investigator, law enforcement, and Nintendo Legal visiting a fairly well-known hacker in the scene. All of this was being spearheaded and commanded by Nintendo of Japan towards the subsidiaries in other countries. https://torrentfreak.com/nintendo-conducted-invasive-surveillance-operation-against-homebrew-hacker-201223/ https://torrentfreak.com/nintendo-conducted-invasive-surveil... Nintendo was already operating inside the Discord as per screenshots of evidence in the case, so they really had some leverage here.
junon 3y ago
Notably, Japan has no fair use laws.
jrockway 3y ago
How come Satoshi Nakamoto can remain anonymous in spite of his worth in the billions of dollars, but emulator developers, worth almost nothing, can't hide from Nintendo? Opsec mistakes, or just no opsec at all?
- exitb 3y ago
  There are tons of people involved in piracy that stay anonymous. It seems like they chose not to.
- k12sosse 3y ago
  .. because emulator developers are real?
brendoelfrendo 3y ago
My impression of the Yuzu team is that they didn't keep a very clean house. While the project didn't officially condone piracy, some members of the team were absolutely willing to help people run pirated games. Add to that the fact that they were emulating a current system, and that they ran a very successful Patreon to pay their team, and I think they eroded their plausible deniability down to nothing. Consider that Nintendo leaves Dolphin more-or-less alone. I think Nintendo understands where emulation sits legally, and they went after Yuzu because of what was happening around the emulator, and not because of the emulator itself.

LelouBil 3y ago

Yeahw if they used leaked games to optimize the emulator for release day, they would have much more to fear.

klausa 3y ago

My understanding was that they were offering a specially-patched version of Yuzu to their Patreon supporters, that included improvements for games that _weren't released yet_. *Making money* by helping people run Zelda _before it came out_ was begging for trouble. Nintendo's approach to fan projects and emulators is ridiculous, don't get me wrong — but Yuzu authors were definitely playing with fire and overstepping what's generally accepted in the community.

gjsman-1000 3y ago
This was a widely spread myth, now generally considered incorrect. Yuzu did not offer improvements before launch day. There were badly patched unofficial versions that were trying. Nintendo does allege though that Yuzu was doing research to develop the patches before launch day.
- klausa 3y ago
  Thank you for the correction!

testudovictoria 3y ago

There are fair-use protections, but it costs money to defend. Part of why so many Smash tournaments folded in 2022 was because of Nintendo telling people they weren't allowed to host tourneys using their IP. Granted I'm not a lawyer, but people gathering to play a multiplayer game and then streaming the matches doesn't inherently constitute any infringement on Nintendo's rights or ability to make money. Many TOs (tournament organizers) left the scene or stopped featuring Smash as a title over the C&D notice. No one wanted to take on Nintendo in court. Kind of. Some TOs are calling Nintendo's bluff. Nintendo released a set of guidelines[0] on what kinds of tournaments can be hosted. However, Collision 2024 just happened with attendees and a prize pool surpassing the guidelines. [0]: https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/63433/~/community-tournament-guidelines https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/...

gjsman-1000 3y ago
Not really. Fair use does not really legally exist. It exists primarily as a defense after you’ve already been sued - which is also why there is no official codification of what fair use actually is. Also, as Nintendo can argue, imagine this was a movie. Imagine it was a movie being shown on screen for two hours. That would be case closed. Now imagine it was a movie recutting competition. Again, case closed. So what makes a tourney special? In the eyes of the law, a judge might say, absolutely nothing. You might argue, “well, there’s skill being applied, whereas a movie is passive.” No dice there - just because you put effort into your copyright violation is meaningless. You might argue a movie is a full work when a video game only displays a subset - but do you think you could publicly perform 30 minutes of The Lord of the Rings and be OK? Of course not.
- testudovictoria 3y ago
  Interesting way to put it, but I'm still not sure that quite applies. The game is a multiplayer game intended to be played with other people. Commercial endeavors change with movie viewing. It's implied that single entity can own a single copy while charging admission to profit from their single copy of the movie. Meanwhile, movie companies (mostly) don't care if I play _The Lord of the Rings_ in a private setting to a small audience of known people. I would argue that the competitive nature of tournaments implies that the entrants all have a copy of the game along with hardware to run the game (emulation withstanding). The only thing is streaming the event. Even then, what would be the difference between streaming a tournament and streaming myself or a small group of friends playing? It doesn't seem like that would infringe upon the core purpose of the game.

kotaKat 3y ago

Beyond speculation. Nintendo is known to not fuck around, thanks to its leaks. In one of the various Nintendo leaks in the past few years was a bunch of documentation of "Operation Belgian Waffle", their attempt to "Knock and Talk" with a private investigator, law enforcement, and Nintendo Legal visiting a fairly well-known hacker in the scene. All of this was being spearheaded and commanded by Nintendo of Japan towards the subsidiaries in other countries. https://torrentfreak.com/nintendo-conducted-invasive-surveillance-operation-against-homebrew-hacker-201223/ https://torrentfreak.com/nintendo-conducted-invasive-surveil... Nintendo was already operating inside the Discord as per screenshots of evidence in the case, so they really had some leverage here.

junon 3y ago

Notably, Japan has no fair use laws.

jrockway 3y ago

How come Satoshi Nakamoto can remain anonymous in spite of his worth in the billions of dollars, but emulator developers, worth almost nothing, can't hide from Nintendo? Opsec mistakes, or just no opsec at all?

exitb 3y ago
There are tons of people involved in piracy that stay anonymous. It seems like they chose not to.
k12sosse 3y ago
.. because emulator developers are real?

brendoelfrendo 3y ago

My impression of the Yuzu team is that they didn't keep a very clean house. While the project didn't officially condone piracy, some members of the team were absolutely willing to help people run pirated games. Add to that the fact that they were emulating a current system, and that they ran a very successful Patreon to pay their team, and I think they eroded their plausible deniability down to nothing. Consider that Nintendo leaves Dolphin more-or-less alone. I think Nintendo understands where emulation sits legally, and they went after Yuzu because of what was happening around the emulator, and not because of the emulator itself.