WTF happened to Yuzu, and what comes next?
WTF happened to Yuzu, and what comes next?
The likely repercussions of the most dramatic emulation events in recent history, and a small tribute to Akira Toriyama.
Two of the most high profile emulator projects were wiped out in an afternoon. In the days since, more have followed. The developer of Pizza Boy, a paid Game Boy emulator for Android, pulled it from the shop, writing "I have chosen to prioritize my family over the development of my apps." A 3DS homebrew developer pulled their tools from Github. Android DS emulator DraStic went free, will soon go open source, and the developer says they plan to pull it from the Google Play store at some point.
Legally, the Yuzu settlement sets no precedent. But you can sure as hell feel the chill cast over the whole scene.
. . .
If you buy a Switch, you should be able to dump its encryption keys, and you should be able to study it and write software to reproduce its functions if you have the skill it takes to do so. If you buy a game, you should be able to back it up. If you buy a Kindle book or an iTunes MP3, you should be able to strip that DRM and put it on the device of your choice. So it should be, but the law unfortunately doesn't offer us these clear protections.
. . .
. . . but seeing my own reporting mentioned in the lawsuit reinforced for me how much lawyers will bend any innocuous thing their way to make it sound like proof of guilt. They cited that "in an interview Bunnei game to PC Gamer" ⬆️ he stated Yuzu's developers were aware people were modding Tears of the Kingdom to get it running in the emulator pre-release. I mean... duh? Of course they were aware! How could they not be aware? What are they guilty of, not doing the 'see no evil' pose for two weeks 🙈? The lawyers also claim "thousands of additional paid members of Yuzu's Patreon signed up so that they could download the early access build and play unlawful copies of Zelda: TotK," making it sound an awful lot like Yuzu's developers were updating the emulator to play Tears of the Kingdom pre-release.But they weren't. That didn't happen.
Perhaps all the devs had pirated the game in secret and were getting updates ready for day one, I don't know — but I do know they weren't releasing builds to support it until the release day, no matter what the slippery legal phrasing implies.
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Moral of the story: don't charge money for your emulator.
Emulation is critical to console and handheld video game preservation and longevity. Charging for the pleasure is legally ill-advised, and antithetical to the cause.
Yuzu was free though so that moral isn't relevant.
It's perfectly relevant to nearly every other callout in the article. The article also clearly states a claim that Yuzu devs had a Patreon which they were accepting money through, for early access.
Early access version of their own emulator, not the game, it's nothing more than a donation. You'll get the same thing for free if you wait a bit.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. It's still accepting money for an emulator, which is legally ill-advised and antithetical to the cause.
They did as well as anyone could at quashing all discussions of piracy on their official discord, reddit, and patreon. The existence of r/newyuzupiracy (they had no connection to the emulator), while convenient for pirates like me, was extremely bad optics and made Yuzu synonymous with piracy.
Charging money for labor is normal and good, actually. No one bats an eye at virtualboy selling on the Google play store, etc etc.
At least one of the devs literally posted screenshots of them downloading games from gdrive and thanking another member for access to the stash. That's pretty far from quashing all talk of piracy.
Apparently there was a link to a bunch of games/switch OS itself too.
Did not know that. Every time I visited their discord, there were randos and kids without brains that popped up constantly asking about pirated and unreleased games, and every time, they were shouted down or banned quickly.
It seemed exhausting for the mods.
Legally ill advised? Sure.
Antithetical to the cause? Meh. I don't care if the dev charges for early access version of the emulator given there is a public free version of the same. Even if there is not, it shouldnt be an excuse to send them to jail or order them to take the emulator down.
for what its worth the bleempak tried to do a similar thing except properly commercial and won its original court case. sony then buried the company in legal fees to ensure non-competition with dreamcast emulatuon.
see sony lawsuit at the natopedia link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleem!#Bleemcast!
If money is involved, they will come sniffing.
Love the goalpost move there. "Don't charge money" has very quickly become "accepting money". Accepting money and charging money are entirely different things.
There's no goalpost, this isn't a competition. Let me clarify my message then:
Don't involve money with your emulator.
No. Because you made up an artificial rule.
I made up a rule?
Alright, friend. One of us needs to go touch grass, and I'll volunteer.
Rule, message, mandate, who cares? Give a reason why the emulator devs shouldn't be paid for creating a quality product with active development and timely bug fixes.
Yes, Yuzu development has ceased, but the rapid progress they made in switch emulator development is massive, and the code is open source. And it's a solid product right now as-is, and it lived long enough to have fixes for all games that came out in the Switch's lifespan save this one final year.
But Ryujinx still exists, so that can cover Yuzu's future blind spots.
Reason: If money is involved, this will continue to happen. I thought y'all were experts on the perils of capitalism here?
Additionally, it is my belief that emulation should be free and available to everyone. So, if payment is required, I do have a problem with that. Less so if donations are optional, but that still brings us back to point 1:
If money is involved, this will continue to happen.
EDIT: This is the goofiest fucking argument I've gotten into all week. I mean, what are we arguing at this point? Ideals over reality? Ways we can keep getting projects shut down, instead of flying under the radar? I will concede for my own sanity-- you win whatever this is.
They didn't read the article. The article does a good job of cutting through the smoke and showing that Nintendo is suing because they think emulators shouldn't exist at all and any DRM circumvention is defacto illegal. The only reason they don't sue all emulators is because it'd cost more than they'd benefit suing every NES emulator, etc. Bourgeois propaganda is so pervasive and constant that the first think pseudo-leftists can do is try to nitpick what Yuzu did than look at the actual power relations happening here.
Emulator devs will never be able to go toe to toe with litigious gaming corporations. The only current option is to fly under the radar. Having any paper trail of money being involved is asking for trouble. We aren't currently living in your fantasy world, we're living in one driven by capitalism. No one is nitpicking Yuzu devs, I was pointing out a key element that got them sucked into these power relations.
I've been involved in this scene since the mid 90s. In 30 years, this game hasn't changed in the slightest.