Just last week, on Tuesday, February 26th, 2024, news broke out about the Yuzu emulator team being sued by none other than Nintendo themselves, with Nintendo claiming that the emulator apparently allowed users to play certain games early (due to street dates being broken) and also allowing piracy of the current Nintendo Switch system.

Today, in a rather surprisingly quick manner, it seems like Tropic Haze LLC., the company behind the Yuzu team, has reached a settlement with Nintendo in regards to the lawsuit. According to a recent official document uploaded just a few minutes ago, Tropic Haze will pay up 2.4 million USD in favour to Nintendo, with both parties agreeing in the settlement and its amount.

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UPDATE: According to the proposed Final Judgement and Permanent Injunction document, Yuzu as a whole in its current form will cease to exist, meaning no further development and prohibition of any distribution of built or source code forms of it.

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Official document of the settlement
Final Judgement and Permanent Injunction

 

[n00bsaib0t]

We don’t know if it does or doesn’t comply with the DMCA because it was never litigated. It is my opinion that it does - I see nothing that would suggest otherwise.

Nintendo laid that out in the lawsuit. Per the DMCA, you can legally make and use backups as long as you don't have to circumvent protection (encryption) to do it and the same applies to modding a console. That's the big thing that is completely fucked about the DMCA. Yes, you're allowed to have a backup and play it in an emulator but because you need to circumvent protection to mod your Switch, and the emulator circumvents protection to play the game, that is not legal. If you're not seeing that then I don't know what else to tell you. The problem is the law itself, it's complete bullshit. When we buy hardware we should have a legal right to run the software we want to on it, when we buy software we should be allowed to make backups without stipulation, if emulation is going to be ruled legal it needs to be without stipulation.

 

[Smoker1]

Supposedly this all came about due to 1 User not liking the fact that Yuzu did not run on Win7, so they complained to Nin.

 

[Anity]

Supposedly this all came about due to 1 User not liking the fact that Yuzu did not run on Win7, so they complained to Nin.

theres no way one single entity was the one that made this all go down... nintendo is a whole company, they will know when people pirate games, money lost means no revenue to keep it all going

 

[Smoker1]

 

[J-Will]

View attachment 424428

I don't believe this caused it

 

[Kioku]

View attachment 424428

You’re only fooling yourself if you think Nintendo wasn’t aware of Yuzu long before that alleged email.

 

[Anity]

View attachment 424428

ive seen these, i mean i do not believe that was the tipping point

 

[Jogarr]

Thank god for Open source!

 

[Smoker1]

Hence why I said Supposedly. But you never know. Just wish Citra did not have to be impacted as well. Nothing more is being done with that System, so why did that have to suffer?

 

[MadMakuFuuma]

ok. think for a moment how many emails nintendo receive daily, with people (mostly nintendo f4nb0ys and such) showing them emulators, sites and posts about pyr4cy etc, to try to take down those emulators. i doub't any of this have to do with Nintendo taking down yuzu.

 

[Slinger]

Jesus F. Christman!

So, Nintendo, what's next? Are you gonna sue devkitPro? And then Sony sues pspsdk? And microsoft sues wine/proton? Is the steamdeck illegal because it runs a windows compatibility layer?



Sorry for going on a rant, but I have to take my steam off: I heard about the lawsuit, but was somewhat hopeful nintendo would lose the case. But now I look at gbatemp and this is escalating into a monstrosity! And affecting all kinds of emulators, tools and people!

For crying out loud! People DO use emulators for other things than piracy. Some use them exclusively for software development. I know because I happen to be one of them*! In fact PPSSPP and Citra happen to play an important role in what I hope will become my Master's thesis.


*) Yes, I do use emulation for old games, but modern systems (like psp and later) I only emulate for development convenience.

 

[Foxi4]

Nintendo laid that out in the lawsuit. Per the DMCA, you can legally make and use backups as long as you don't have to circumvent protection (encryption) to do it and the same applies to modding a console. That's the big thing that is completely fucked about the DMCA. Yes, you're allowed to have a backup and play it in an emulator but because you need to circumvent protection to mod your Switch, and the emulator circumvents protection to play the game, that is not legal. If you're not seeing that then I don't know what else to tell you. The problem is the law itself, it's complete bullshit. When we buy hardware we should have a legal right to run the software we want to on it, when we buy software we should be allowed to make backups without stipulation, if emulation is going to be ruled legal it needs to be without stipulation.

This is incorrect, and has been discussed to hell and back. Not only does the emulator *not* do that, you could very easily argue that it falls under the interoperability exemption if it did. The emulator itself is completely incapable of bypassing any copy protection whatsoever - it requires a key provided by the user. How the user obtains that key is immaterial. It is the user, if anyone at all, that’s technically breaching the DMCA, but in ways that are arguably covered by Fair Use, and more importantly, Private Use.

 

[Lumstar]

I think it'd be better if emulators strove to run the game from the cartridge first, where practical. A backup copy should be regarded as secondary.

Either way... since Nintendo has already been paid for the game, it can be argued they're only "damaged" when a backup is played on a platform it's currently being sold for.

 

[ertaboy356b]

Nintendo laid that out in the lawsuit. Per the DMCA, you can legally make and use backups as long as you don't have to circumvent protection (encryption) to do it and the same applies to modding a console. That's the big thing that is completely fucked about the DMCA. Yes, you're allowed to have a backup and play it in an emulator but because you need to circumvent protection to mod your Switch, and the emulator circumvents protection to play the game, that is not legal. If you're not seeing that then I don't know what else to tell you. The problem is the law itself, it's complete bullshit. When we buy hardware we should have a legal right to run the software we want to on it, when we buy software we should be allowed to make backups without stipulation, if emulation is going to be ruled legal it needs to be without stipulation.

And this is why emulators should not do the decryption. Instead, an anonymous decryptor should be released so the responsibility falls to the user instead of the emulator devs. A simple python decryptor will do the trick.

 

[n00bsaib0t]

This is incorrect, and has been discussed to hell and back. Not only does the emulator *not* do that, you could very easily argue that it falls under the interoperability exemption if it did. The emulator itself is completely incapable of bypassing any copy protection whatsoever - it requires a key provided by the user. How the user obtains that key is immaterial. It is the user, if anyone at all, that’s technically breaching the DMCA, but in ways that are arguably covered by Fair Use, and more importantly, Private Use.

The keys themselves cannot do anything that the emulator is not asking them to do. Buy a car and refuse to put gas in the tank, go to the dealer and say the car cannot be driven and you are wanting them to honor the warranty. When they won't take them to court, argue to a judge that the car is worthless and does not drive because the user has to provide the gas. See how long your logic can really hold up.

 

[Foxi4]

The keys themselves cannot do anything that the emulator is not asking them to do. Buy a car and refuse to put gas in the tank, go to the dealer and say the car cannot be driven and you are wanting them to honor the warranty. When they won't take them to court, argue to a judge that the car is worthless and does not drive because the user has to provide the gas. See how long your logic can really hold up.

It is perfectly legal and permissible to reverse engineer a system in order to demonstrate how it works. You can publish those findings, that is not illegal. Knowledge isn’t illegal, acts are illegal. 17 U.S. Code § 1201 specifies this very clearly - “to ‘circumvent a technological measure’ means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner”. Yuzu developers aren’t doing that - the user is doing that.

The subsection also specifies that “No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof” and lists three qualifiers:

1. “primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title” - that’s not what the emulator is primarily designed to do, it’s what it must do in order to fulfil its primary function, which is emulation
2. “has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title” - that’s a second no, it has a large swathe of uses besides circumvention, even if we agree that it’s designed to circumvent measures at all
3. “is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person’s knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title” - this one’s tricky because while Yuzu isn’t actively marketed in this way, the developers had pretty loose lips and should’ve kept their mouths shut in regards to *how* one might obtain keys. That’s on them, but could be argued in court as documentation. It wasn’t, so we don’t know the outcome

Your analogy is silly, and let me explain to you why. I can purchase a car without an engine right now and I don’t need a driver’s license to do so. I can even build that car as a kit and nobody in their right mind will ask me to pay tax on it because it’s not a motor vehicle and *cannot function*. It only becomes a motor vehicle the moment I put an engine in it. I need to supply the engine, it’s the engine that’s relevant in the “motor vehicle” equation - fuel is a consumable. You could call ROM’s fuel, since that’s what an engine runs on. You should pay for your fuel, nobody suggests that you should steal fuel. What you’re suggesting is that the Yuzu team is somehow liable for selling cars without engines because they had working drivetrains. That’s silly. The wheels won’t spin until the user attaches an engine, and at that point it’s on the user to make sure that they comply with any and all regulation regarding motor vehicles.

 

[CJL18]

Jesus F. Christman!

So, Nintendo, what's next? Are you gonna sue devkitPro? And then Sony sues pspsdk? And microsoft sues wine/proton? Is the steamdeck illegal because it runs a windows compatibility layer?



Sorry for going on a rant, but I have to take my steam off: I heard about the lawsuit, but was somewhat hopeful nintendo would lose the case. But now I look at gbatemp and this is escalating into a monstrosity! And affecting all kinds of emulators, tools and people!

For crying out loud! People DO use emulators for other things than piracy. Some use them exclusively for software development. I know because I happen to be one of them*! In fact PPSSPP and Citra happen to play an important role in what I hope will become my Master's thesis.


*) Yes, I do use emulation for old games, but modern systems (like psp and later) I only emulate for development convenience.

99.9% of people who use emulators use them for piracy, and I love when someone says the ones who pirate the game had no intention to buy the game anyways yeah right.

 

[Slinger]

I don't mean to be harsh, I appreciate your reply. But without any source backing that up, I seriously doubt it's "99.9%". Emulators are used for other things all the time, such as software development (both professionally and homebrewing). And even when used for playing commercial games, it's not a clear cut case of "piracy". I have many old games and consoles from which I've personally dumped roms and firmware for use in emulation.

And to expand on the concept introduced by emulation: there's virtual machines and api compatibility layers (such as wine/proton). To me those can pretty much be referred to as emulators as well, and are rarely ever used for piracy.

Also you bring up the old idea of "a pirated game means a lost sale". I think that's been well debunked for a long time. Not only tend people who pirate also to be actively buying, but back in the GBA days many games were utter shit shovelware - playing a rom before buying a game was the only way to be sure it wasn't money wasted (with the exception of first-party Nintendo titles). In those cases piracy did cause lost sales simply because people had a chance to find out the game was terrible. Instead of being fooled by the boxart. And IMO that was a good thing!

Back in the days, I bought many games (both PC and console) because I had a chance to try them out and decide they were worth the money.

 

[n00bsaib0t]

It is perfectly legal and permissible to reverse engineer a system in order to demonstrate how it works. You can publish those findings, that is not illegal. Knowledge isn’t illegal, acts are illegal. 17 U.S. Code § 1201 specifies this very clearly - “to ‘circumvent a technological measure’ means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner”. Yuzu developers aren’t doing that - the user is doing that.

The subsection also specifies that “No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof” and lists three qualifiers:

1. “primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title” - that’s not what the emulator is primarily designed to do, it’s what it must do in order to fulfil its primary function, which is emulation
2. “has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title” - that’s a second no, it has a large swathe of uses besides circumvention, even if we agree that it’s designed to circumvent measures at all
3. “is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person’s knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title” - this one’s tricky because while Yuzu isn’t actively marketed in this way, the developers had pretty loose lips and should’ve kept their mouths shut in regards to *how* one might obtain keys. That’s on them, but could he argued in court as documentation. It wasn’t, so we don’t know the outcome

Your analogy is silly, and let me explain to you why. I can purchase a car without an engine right now and I don’t need a driver’s license to do so. I can even build that car as a kit and nobody in their right mind will ask me to pay tax on it because it’s not a motor vehicle and *cannot function*. It only becomes a motor vehicle the moment I put an engine in it. I need to supply the engine, it’s the engine that’s relevant in the “motor vehicle” equation - fuel is a consumable. You could call ROM’s fuel, since that’s what an engine runs on. You should pay for your fuel, nobody suggests that you should steal fuel. What you’re suggesting is that the Yuzu team is somehow liable for selling cars without engines because they had working drivetrains. That’s silly. The wheels won’t spin until the user attaches an engine, and at that point it’s on the user to make sure that they comply with any and all regulation regarding motor vehicles.

Look, the bottom line is that yuzu itself has to know how to work combined with the keys. You not liking my analogy won’t change that. This not nearly as cut and dry as you’re acting like it is. Yuzu had to either figure out their own way (“clean room”, correct me if I’m wrong but this is why Dolphin is safe, Nintendo blocked it being on Steam but can’t touch the emulator itself because it has its own reverse engineered method of decrypting) or it doesn’t fall into what you’re quoting here. “It does it the exact same way a Switch does with the exact same key” isn’t reverse engineering.

Post automatically merged: Mar 8, 2024

I don't mean to be harsh, I appreciate your reply. But without any source backing that up, I seriously doubt it's "99.9%". Emulators are used for other things all the time, such as software development (both professionally and homebrewing). And even when used for playing commercial games, it's not a clear cut case of "piracy". I have many old games and consoles from which I've personally dumped roms and firmware for use in emulation.

And to expand on the concept introduced by emulation: there's virtual machines and api compatibility layers (such as wine/proton). To me those can pretty much be referred to as emulators as well, and are rarely ever used for piracy.

Also you bring up the old idea of "a pirated game means a lost sale". I think that's been well debunked for a long time. Not only tend people who pirate also to be actively buying, but back in the GBA days many games were utter shit shovelware - playing a rom before buying a game was the only way to be sure it wasn't money wasted (with the exception of first-party Nintendo titles). In those cases piracy did cause lost sales simply because people had a chance to find out the game was terrible. Instead of being fooled by the boxart. And IMO that was a good thing!

Back in the days, I bought many games (both PC and console) because I had a chance to try them out and decide they were worth the money.

To a degree you’re right. Especially with less common disc based games like the PS1 DDR titles, I ripped my own years ago because they were harder to find. I didn’t need anything special for it like I would a GBA cart, I just used my PCs disc drive. A lot of my larger PS3 games were definitely easier to rip myself they would take forever to download. I’m not going to pretend either of those libraries aren’t a mix of legit and pirated games though. Like I pointed out before, we don’t get upset that Nintendo shuts down rom websites because of sheer principle while looking at our squeaky clean rom libraries. You said yourself after talking about ripping your own games that you’ve downloaded games to try them. That’s still piracy.

 

[Maximo101]

YuZu has always been open source and its source code has been readily available to download before Nintendo shut the project down...

How do you shut down an open source project? I mean, how would you kill linux if you were Microsoft? Linux is an operating system...