this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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I feel like this lawsuit was a real Streisand effect for Nintendo. Now everyone know there’s a way to emulate the Switch.
Yes it was, but in some ways Nintendo still succeeded In what I believe is their goal - to scatter the developers.
By shutting down Yuzu, they fragmented everyone into forking their own copies and competing to become the next Yuzu.
What's more of a threat to them? One emulator with thousands of contributors, or 1000 emulators with 2-5 contributors each?
The best thing about open source is the pooling of developers and resources. While forking is neither a good nor a bad thing, it does tend to break up the developer pool.
It could take anywhere from months to years if at all for everyone to finally settle on a single fork and get back to the level of developer pool that originally existed - then if that happens, Nintendo can come along and do it all over again, at least untill they don't see the value in continuing.
Yeah. I didn't even know it was possible to do in a comfortable capacity
I was already emulating, but I prefer to play on a TV so I still bought games for my launch Switch. I was waiting for their next console before I jailbroke it, but annoyance with Nintendo for doing this pushed me to do it this past weekend. Now they'll get no more sales from me on the Switch guaranteed.
I play switch games on my TV with my Steam Deck docked :) much better than just a switch.
A good option if you have a Steam Deck!
Nintendo knows this, but it was an easy $2.3 million and now Yuzu development is essentially halted for the time being, meaning slower progress with switch updates, releases, and new hardware (eg switch 2).
Any victory for the FOSS/emulation community is a pyrrhic one.
And the subsequent C&Ds/lawsuits to the idiots who are "forking" the tainted codebase will do an even better job of explaining "you fuck with Nintendo and we will literally own you for the rest of your life"
That also assumes the various projects have competent developers (unlikely since anyone with the technical ability knows why you don't touch this code) and isn't just a way to rush in some crypto miners and spyware to people who are mad they can't have yuzu.
What I don't understand is why developers ever put their names to projects like this. Create the project and distribute it via peer to peer
Most emulation projects are completely legal and something to be proud of. And it's some of the technically most challenging problem solving that coders could have on their resume. Making a good emulator is incredibly impressive. You very much can get a job based on that.
Because this is generally hundreds, if not thousands, of ~~years~~ hours of their life.
Part of it is wanting to get some degree of recognition for that. Part of it is that this is very much part of their portfolio for future jobs searches.
@NuXCOM_90Percent @PopOfAfrica both recognition and showing the project in a portfolio and even receiving donations are more that possible using an alias. I don't see any point at all in exposing yourself like that, specially when emulators are legal and your only threat, a single company with way too many lawyers, can be almost completely avoided by not saying the name on your ID and where are you currently living
Yes. I am sure someone could set up multiple shell corporations in different countries and receive all their money in crypto that goes through multiple tumblers. Sure. Regardless, this is not the board to really argue about people being compensated for their labor.
But I will say this. If a person I am interviewing talks about how they can show me the code they have worked on in their spare time but that I cannot ever tell anyone that they wrote it and it is on a different github account and blah blah blah: I am noping the fuck out of that conversation before I need to ask HR what my obligation is to report criminal activity.
@NuXCOM_90Percent WOW you didn't read my comment at all. First of all, you are exaggerating the level of secrecy needed for getting money here. Nintendo isn't gonna get the fucking FBI to search for where does the money end (and that's assuming you're from USA, good luck finding out where I'm from), so using any cripto currency and a crypto mixer should be enough. As long as you don't move obscene amounts of money (which you won't get from this alone), you should be good by just being officially a freelancer on your country.
And, again, EMULATION IS LEGAL, AND LITERALLY NO ONE CARES EXCEPT NINTENDO. If you go to a company and show you're the developer of a successful piece of FOSS, they will literally just don't give a shit how your account is named or if nintendo likes it or not. If you can't understand that emulation is legal just keep shouting to a wall.
So... because this is 100% legal, people should... hide their name and run shell companies?
Because patreon tends to give a shit who they are mailing the check to.They won't just leave it taped to a wall outside the local Denny's and not ask questions about who picks it up. Shell companies can help with obfuscating that.
Relying on crypto DRASTICALLY reduces the likelihood people will make any donations to you. And is still incredibly easy to track, even through tumblers (there is a reason graph algorithms are such a hot topic and it isn't just twitter).
Because, you are right: Emulation is legal (if you thread the needle). Which is why people who spend thousands of hours writing cool software put their name on it. Rather than jump through all these hoops and make themselves look like criminals.
@NuXCOM_90Percent dude it's not rocket science...
- The activity is LEGAL, so your country (actual law enforcement) probably won't actively search for you.
- Even if it's legal, Nintendo still doesn't like it, and they have enough money to extend every single legal process and crush you on debt unless you stop like yuzu (which will be pricey anyway).
- Now, if you add 1 and 1, you'll see Nintendo can't rely on any government's collaboration in order to search for the devs, but the game is over the moment they know your name. Hiding your name for your country is really hard, but from a japanese videogame company? Just do not tell them your name.
I never talked about the likelihood of getting money, i know less people donate that way, but I was just talking about the possibility. Shell companies are also traceable, if you put it that way, but it's more complicated and costly to set up, and you'll look even more suspicious in your government's eyes; which are the most relevant here. I can justify to both my government and a company wanting to hire me the fact I'm developing free software but i prefer to take the donations money anonymously for whatever reasons; no one cares really as long as I'm declaring the earnings and paying my taxes. Same using shell companies, but you said it yourself, why would anyone do that? Sure you can trace money through crypto, but small amounts of money not reported to be stolen or a scam isn't gonna get you caught.
And yes i ultimately would agree people deserve being credited for their good work, but in this scenario i don't think it's worth it. Blame nintendo for this one, they're the ones abusing copyright laws to kill cool projects just for extra pennies. If, hypothetically, you had the resources to put up sith their crap, then by all means develop an emulator and make your name very public. Every time they lose in court it a point to the rest of us.
Are you an elf? We humans usually don't live that long.
It sure as fuck was. Half of the Nintendo community knows about this situation, and unless for some reason they still have respect for this evil company, they will now freely play whatever switch games they want without giving Nintendo a dime.
I'm sure most Nintendo "fans" aren't a fan of the company itself, just the games
Yup. I like their games and hate their business practices. Also been pirating their games since the 90s.
It genuinely surprises me the amount of diehard nintendo fans who will defend the corporation's heinous acts tooth and nail that there are. They make good games, and they were my childhood, therefore their wrongs are excusable (or not wrongs at all)!
I think being a fan of any company is weird. I mean products, sure, there are good ones, some are definitely works of art. But companies?
I think you underestimate the level of fanatism of many of those fellas, they would give Nintendo their first born if they had one.
I think you over estimate it. I have loved Nintendo games since I was five, but absolutely fuck the company for doing shit like this.
Yeah it doesn’t take a genius to hate Nintendo for simple things like artificially limiting amibos stock to make more money
Honestly, anyone that was gonna emulate switch already knew, and nintendo has all their big hitters out of the way so isn't going to be loosing much in terms of sales to piracy at this point. they just want a chilling effect for switch 2
If I had to guess the reason they're going after yuzu so hard is that the Switch 2 is going to be architecturally identical and that you will be able to run Switch 2 games.
Doesn’t seem like they’re gonna get the effect they were hoping for; Yuzu’s corpse isn’t even cold yet and there’s already a successor.
All we are seeing so far is updates to the read me files let's see how we are in a few weeks.
It is the domain expertise that will really set things back. The citra/yuzu devs have to stay away from emulation so the new teams won't have the same understanding and will be less effective. It is so specialized that I'm not sure how anyone can just jump in and pick it up.
I'm rooting for them anyway. They need to let go of discord either way , matrix private chats with encryption for dev communications.
Yeah, I think the 'successors' are still in dmca violation (at least one not sure about the other). But it's still early days, anyway. Yuzu was successful because of the dedicated team behind it. Just setting up other repos doesn't mean much yet. It's gonna take months to see how things shake out.
But you can't deny the potential chilling effect of it all. Nintendo has shown that they will come for you.
But they also showed with what they will come for you.
If you outsource decryption from emulation, they can't do it (this way) again