4 ms·

There is no impact to a company's bottom line when you are emulating a product they do not sell.

by BadHumans 2y ago

lcouturi 2y ago
Yuzu, the emulator that was sued by Nintendo, was emulating the Nintendo Switch, which is a product Nintendo does sell.
- BadHumans 2y ago
  Yuzu is not the only emulator taken down by Nintendo and Nintendo is not the only company that has gone after emulators.
  - lcouturi 2y ago
    In that case, could you clarify what instances of this you're referring to? The death of Citra wasn't really a deliberate action on the part of Nintendo, it was collateral damage. Citra was started by Yuzu developers and as part of the settlement they were not able to continue working on it. Citra's development had long been for the most part taken over by different developers, but the Yuzu people were still hosting the online infrastructure and had ownership of the GitHub repository, so they took all of it down. Some of the people who were maintaining Citra before the lawsuit opened up a new repository, but development has slowed down considerably because the taking down of the original repository has caused an unfortunate splintering of the community into many different forks. There is some speculation Nintendo was involved with the death of the Nintendo 64 emulator UltraHLE a long time back, but this was never confirmed. If indeed they did go after UltraHLE, then this would just like Yuzu be a case of them taking down an emulator for a console they were still profiting from, as UltraHLE was released in 1999. The most famous example of companies going after emulators is Sony, which went after Connectix Virtual Game Station and Bleem!. Both were PS1 emulators released in 1999, a period during which Sony was still very much profiting from PS1 sales. Sony lost both lawsuits and hasn't gone after emulators since. In 2017, Atlus tried to take down the Patreon page for RPCS3, a PS3 emulator. However, Atlus only went after the Patreon page, not the emulator itself, which they did because of their use of Persona 5 screenshots on said page. The screenshots were simply taken down and the Patreon page was otherwise left alone. Of note is that Atlus is a game developer, so they were never profiting from PS3 sales. However, they were certainly still profiting from Persona 5 sales, which had only released in 2016. These are the only examples I can remember. Did I miss anything?
    - fragmede 2y ago
      the bnetd emulator, that let Diablo and StarCraft players not have to pay Blizzard for the privilege of buying the game, though that's a bit different.
    - omegacharlie 2y ago
      emulators for many nintendo consoles have been developed and released while the console was still sold and have been left alone as long as they had no direct links to piracy, recent events are a bit of a change. > There is some speculation Nintendo was involved with the death of the Nintendo 64 emulator UltraHLE a long time back, but this was never confirmed. iirc it got c&d but a case was never filed in court, the source code turned up eventually anyways.
fragmede 2y ago
Yes there is. If I can emulate Super Mario Odyssey on my PC, I don't need to buy a Nintendo Switch. If it wasn't available there, I'd have to buy a Nintendo Switch to play it. That's a lost sale for Nintendo. You could argue that I wasn't going to buy a switch anyway, but then we're getting too into hypotheticals.
- ExoticPearTree 2y ago
  This is the same reasoning the music and movie industries use when they go after people downloading music. And contrary to the popular opinion, I think it is wrong: if people want to pay, they will pay. Same for movies: if people would really want to pay for a movie, they would go to a cinema. Or stream it after a week or two. But there are also people who would jump through hoops than pay for music or movies. And that is not a lost sale because there was never an intention to buy something in the first place.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    Music isn't video games or movies, and is experienced differently, so while there are similarities, it's not the same because they aren't same thing. Locks keep people honest. Unfortunately, software lockpicks have the unfortunate reality of being as easily distributable as the software itself.

There is no impact to a company's bottom line when you are emulating a product they do not sell.

lcouturi 2y ago

Yuzu, the emulator that was sued by Nintendo, was emulating the Nintendo Switch, which is a product Nintendo does sell.

BadHumans 2y ago
Yuzu is not the only emulator taken down by Nintendo and Nintendo is not the only company that has gone after emulators.
- lcouturi 2y ago
  In that case, could you clarify what instances of this you're referring to? The death of Citra wasn't really a deliberate action on the part of Nintendo, it was collateral damage. Citra was started by Yuzu developers and as part of the settlement they were not able to continue working on it. Citra's development had long been for the most part taken over by different developers, but the Yuzu people were still hosting the online infrastructure and had ownership of the GitHub repository, so they took all of it down. Some of the people who were maintaining Citra before the lawsuit opened up a new repository, but development has slowed down considerably because the taking down of the original repository has caused an unfortunate splintering of the community into many different forks. There is some speculation Nintendo was involved with the death of the Nintendo 64 emulator UltraHLE a long time back, but this was never confirmed. If indeed they did go after UltraHLE, then this would just like Yuzu be a case of them taking down an emulator for a console they were still profiting from, as UltraHLE was released in 1999. The most famous example of companies going after emulators is Sony, which went after Connectix Virtual Game Station and Bleem!. Both were PS1 emulators released in 1999, a period during which Sony was still very much profiting from PS1 sales. Sony lost both lawsuits and hasn't gone after emulators since. In 2017, Atlus tried to take down the Patreon page for RPCS3, a PS3 emulator. However, Atlus only went after the Patreon page, not the emulator itself, which they did because of their use of Persona 5 screenshots on said page. The screenshots were simply taken down and the Patreon page was otherwise left alone. Of note is that Atlus is a game developer, so they were never profiting from PS3 sales. However, they were certainly still profiting from Persona 5 sales, which had only released in 2016. These are the only examples I can remember. Did I miss anything?
  - fragmede 2y ago
    the bnetd emulator, that let Diablo and StarCraft players not have to pay Blizzard for the privilege of buying the game, though that's a bit different.
  - omegacharlie 2y ago
    emulators for many nintendo consoles have been developed and released while the console was still sold and have been left alone as long as they had no direct links to piracy, recent events are a bit of a change. > There is some speculation Nintendo was involved with the death of the Nintendo 64 emulator UltraHLE a long time back, but this was never confirmed. iirc it got c&d but a case was never filed in court, the source code turned up eventually anyways.

fragmede 2y ago

Yes there is. If I can emulate Super Mario Odyssey on my PC, I don't need to buy a Nintendo Switch. If it wasn't available there, I'd have to buy a Nintendo Switch to play it. That's a lost sale for Nintendo. You could argue that I wasn't going to buy a switch anyway, but then we're getting too into hypotheticals.

ExoticPearTree 2y ago
This is the same reasoning the music and movie industries use when they go after people downloading music. And contrary to the popular opinion, I think it is wrong: if people want to pay, they will pay. Same for movies: if people would really want to pay for a movie, they would go to a cinema. Or stream it after a week or two. But there are also people who would jump through hoops than pay for music or movies. And that is not a lost sale because there was never an intention to buy something in the first place.
- fragmede 2y ago
  Music isn't video games or movies, and is experienced differently, so while there are similarities, it's not the same because they aren't same thing. Locks keep people honest. Unfortunately, software lockpicks have the unfortunate reality of being as easily distributable as the software itself.