Repackaging old games for new consoles is basically the entire business model for Nintendo at this point. In light of that, I can see why they go after emulators so hard.
this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2024
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Parts of old games.
What's not reported is that they will create a new codeberg account under a fake name, fork, and continue development in a few months
Original dev almost certainly not, not if they have their real name which is likely.
Nintendo harasses people with private investigators and likely have a dossier on whoever they targeted that goes beyond just the project. Cheat on your wife? Have a questionable arrangement with your HOA about your garage? It's all ammo against you.
Don't use your real name, obviously.
In this age with PIs and lawyers, it can often be found, and emudevs probably don't start thinking they will be facing down a giant corpo over a hobby project.
In this age where PIs have been replaced with Facebook scrapers and lawyers have been replaced with ChatGPT, it can more easily be hidden -- especially if you use tools like Tor.
If you start the project intending to be untracable, yes.
Most software devs aren't thinking of that. These things with emulators often start as a hobby.
Sure, that's why you abandon it, make a public statement about closing shop (exactly like happens here) and then fork it under a new identity
Nintendo is not as stupid as you guys think, Yuzu forks that actually got some development like sudachi got targeted shortly after and was dmca'd too, nobody wants to work on something that's going to get claimed in 3 months.
Just serve the code locally from a Gitea or Forgejo instance. Then let's see how Ninty is going to DMCA that. Also, I'd love for someone to challenge the DMCA's as copyright should not apply to an emulator that doesn't use any original code and doesn't come with ROM files.
Yeah, it's why Nintendo got Yuzu through DRM circumvention since games are encrypted, if Ryujinx didn't comply they would've just done the same.
But nothing is circumvented. People have to provide their own keys, right? It's like suing GnuPG b/c it can decrypt stuff...
IANAL, but from what I read regarding Yuzu / the title and prod keys / etc., is Nintendo's argument is three-fold -- the only way to obtain those keys is to use a tool that itself is a violation of the DMCA, use of those keys by an emulator to decrypt Nintendo's protected content in a method outside of Nintendo's authorized use is a violation of DMCA even if the keys aren't provided in the emulator, and there is no legitimate use of those keys except to circumvent controls intended to protect copyright.
Therefore, by their argument, any emulator that can use those keys would effectively be subject to DMCA even if you had to bring your own keys, because unless the emulator only ran homebrew or completely decrypted content and had absolutely no decryption capabilities, you'd still be using the prod keys and title keys to decrypt content in violation of the DMCA in order to execute it. So, the tool that dumps the keys is a DMCA violation and any emulator that uses those keys to decrypt protected content in order to execute it is a DMCA violation, and Nintendo has a strong case that the actual keys themselves are only useful for making unauthorized copies of content that bypass the encryption that exists to prevent it.
It stands to reason that a clean-room developed Switch emulator that required all content it ran to be decrypted prior to being able to run it may be able to exist without Nintendo shitting it into non-existance, since Nintendo couldn't make any argument that the primary use was a DMCA violation as no encryption would be being bypassed by the emulator. They'd probably then go after whoever made the tool to dump the games, but they'd probably be less successful.
On the other hand, the pragmatist in me says that unless I was 500% sure of my online anonymity, I wouldn't want to pick a fight with Nintendo -- even if I thought I was right. They have enough money to lock someone up in legal battles for a very long time and most independent developers wouldn't have anywhere near the finances required to bankroll appropriate defense counsel. Can't say I'd blame people for not wanting to invite that hellscape into their lives.
Thing is, DMCA doesn't apply all over the world. There are countries where whatever electronic device you buy is actually yours and you're allowed to do whatever you want - including messing with the firmware. Also, I'd argue, the DMCA doesn't apply if you dump the firmware/keys for yourself only without distributing it.
That being said, it's unfortunate that these people are mostly in the US where the party with more money decides when a lawsuit is over and not some sane judge that just throws this case back at Nintendo. But after the stuff with Disney+ and the recent one with Uber, I'm not surprised at all anymore.
And that's exactly what they did to Yuzu and they settled, nobody wants to test it.
Ryujinx does not include DRM circumvention.
Oh yeah? What's the key files for then?
They gave out keyfiles? Is that what you are saying?
No Nintendo is saying that anything using the key files is illegal
Oh well then it's good then that the software doesn't have keyfiles in it, and plays unsigned and self-signed homebrew and switch software just fine.
You can't serve a DMCA to an account named Joe Doe with no email address..
But you can serve it to any public git and they will serve it to you.
How? Literally how will they contact you?
They served it to github and github removed it, it's that simple.
Use codeberg. Or you could self host it and just not provide contact info.
Wait! So the author bows his head, says hey great guys u win. Watch i complied.
Leans over to the stranger sitting next to him and says, hold my beer.
In the same heartbeat, creates another git acnt, exact same commit history. And carries on. Some other author, totally not the same guy but oddly the same pgp public key announces they've taken over and here are the new urls.
i call that mission accomplished
this comment thread is like fight Money Mcbags and go bankrupt for our entertainment and for the LOLs and feelz good?
Or we can just post the new urls and pretend it's a new maintainer, with the handle lawyerdisappointed
Source?
What are you even talking about, I was on their discord when I saw this and saw no links to a new version.
did he just out passive aggressive the Japanese?
Nintendo hates fun. Pass it on.
Nintendo hates fun that isn’t THEIR fun.
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