After shutting down several popular emulators, Nintendo admits emulation is legal
Submitted 3 days ago by schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de to games@lemmy.world
https://www.androidauthority.com/nintendo-emulators-legal-3517187/
Comments
g1ya777@lemmy.world 3 days ago
LouNeko@lemmy.world 3 days ago
$600 <-> prolly three fiddy
ohitsbreadley@discuss.tchncs.de 2 days ago
Uh, base Steamdeck is $399.
CaptnNMorgan@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Not sure why this is getting down votes. Price is the key factor most parents look at, and most people who aren’t into technology probably don’t know what the steam deck is or know what “gaming on Linux” means. That is what is stopping a good friend of mine. Price is a huge factor, but the intimidation from lack of knowledge is just as big
endeavor@sopuli.xyz 2 days ago
SD is way cheaper in the long run. You already have a sizeable library and if you don’t 620 on steam deck and humble bundle is going to get you way more games than 620 spent on switch and overpriced nintendo copy paste games.
john89@lemmy.ca 19 hours ago
Me using a gaming laptop, a solution which has been available for over a decade.
IceFoxX@lemm.ee 3 days ago
So the lawyer says that Nintendo, despite knowing that the emulators themselves are legal, has unlawfully caused take downs and reputational damage. Sounds kind of illegal
egerlach@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Not really. It sounds like they haven’t gone after them for emulation, but instead for emulation-adjacent things: copying ROMs, circumventing digital locks, etc.
They explicitly mention (one of?) the developers of Yuzu sharing ROMs in the article.
In other words, the emulator itself isn’t illegal, but in order to use the emulator the way most people want, you have to do illegal things, and that’s what they go after you for.
IceFoxX@lemm.ee 2 days ago
Logical conclusion takedown of the ROM’s and not the emulator. ROM’s can be obtained without problems, I don’t regularly read that sites are taken down or people are taken up. That’s just a convenient excuse. Nintendo just knows that their only argument is exclusive titles. Who would still want a Wii if you could use it better on the steam deck with yuzu?
I also remember that I often read that you have to organize such and such files yourself. Where then reference was made to original hardware/data carriers and not to Rom pages etc. I had problems with Zelda in particular.
Tattorack@lemmy.world 3 days ago
You don’t say, Nintendo. Pretty sure they’re also using open source emulators, from the developers they really hate, to run their older titles.
Sanctus@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Idk their emulation is garbage except for the suspension and rewind. A lot of the open source emulation I have seen, especially of Nintendo products, is immaculate.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Not to mention the selection of games available is pretty paltry.
frezik@midwest.social 3 days ago
Zelda 64 on the Switch was a mess at release, but the emulator has improved greatly since then.
Matriks404@lemmy.world 3 days ago
That’s just not true. They have their own emulators, but most of the time they are inferior to community ones. I think Virtual Console releases used some kind of optimized emulators for their hardware, but didn’t care about accuracy, etc.
KazuyaDarklight@lemmy.world 3 days ago
*The top IP lawyer at Nintendo agreed that emulators are technically legal at a panel for intellectual property rights.
They run afoul of the law when they bypass encryption, recreate copyrighted programs, or point users to pirated material.
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
The headline is deceptive and people don’t read the article.
AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Nintendo used to have a page on emulation on their website incorrectly claiming that it was always illegal and all emulators had solely been created to enable piracy. This new claim is not compatible with their previous action of having that page.
kipo@lemm.ee 3 days ago
Repeal the DMCA. One of the worst pieces of legislation ever passed.
Caboose12000@lemmy.world 3 days ago
while were at it, let’s get rid of copyright and IP law altogether
nul9o9@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Is it possible to emulate without bypassing encryption?
wccrawford@lemmy.world 3 days ago
In theory, it’s possible for games that don’t use encryption. None of which are official Switch games.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I don’t recall finding any encryption on the NES.
Matriks404@lemmy.world 3 days ago
There’s nothing new in this article. And I don’t think Nintendo ever said that emulation is illegal, just emulating their games is, which technically is true to some part at least in the United States, where sometimes you need to circumvent some security measures to get games emulated which is a forbidden (this is mentioned in the article).
QubaXR@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Yea, if I recall correctly, the Yuzu team was sharing roms of latest Nintendo releases internally and Nintendo was able to prove it. At least Jeff Gerstman podcast suggested something to that accord when reporting on it.
psycho_driver@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Yeah and the Yuzu people had made something like 4 million bucks on the project too. When you start making serious cash off of tools for piracy (and when we’re talking about a current-gen console that’s essentially what it is, not a tool for preservation like older emulators) then you should expect some heat to come your way.
Nintendo has always been a bit on the bastardly side of things when it comes to fan projects but I can’t say that I blame them for going after Yuzu when they felt like they had a winnable case.
GeneralEmergency@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Get a load of the nerd reading the articles and making informed opinions. Just join the rest of us in mindless circle jerking.
stevedice@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
A very strong case could be made that dumping your keys and your games is not bypassing encryption.
Trilobite@lemm.ee 3 days ago
Nintendo lost my business long ago nothing they make or say will get me to buy another Nintendo product
sma3in@lemmy.world 2 days ago
we know emulation is legal, but we’re still going to legally have a legal reason to take y’all emulators to court angry face
IMALlama@lemmy.world 2 days ago
See also: …wikipedia.org/…/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public…
Strategic lawsuits against public participation (also known as SLAPP suits or intimidation lawsuits), or strategic litigation against public participation, are lawsuits intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition
There are many, many variants. The idea is the smaller player can’t really afford to fight in court, so even if the larger actor has shaky legal claims they will still win.
viking@infosec.pub 2 days ago
Bypassing copy protection has always been the number one reason, it was never emulation per se.
mariusafa@lemmy.sdf.org 2 days ago
I prefer my nintendont 2 (aka steam deck)
john89@lemmy.ca 19 hours ago
Glad I still have my solid copy of Yuzu.
Never buying another console again, and it’s been years since I bought a video game.
The companies only have themselves to blame.
yournamehere@lemm.ee 2 days ago
“please buy our new switch”
nah, i m good.
KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 3 days ago
Needless to say I will not be buying a Switch 2 today.
Gullible@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
I imagine the steam deck will be capable of emulating switch 2 titles nearly immediately, so there’s little reason to buy it. They really need to make their hardware comparable to their software (minus the notoriously awful Japan™ netcode)
ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 3 days ago
Emulating Switch 2 games on the Steam Deck would be a challenge. Even though it’s on an outdated process node, I think it’s fair to say it’s in the same class of hardware as a a Steam Deck (which is 3 years old at this point).
Deck 2, though…
DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
Good luck getting someone to continue emulation development. The only potential chance for development is exclusively on the under web, and the dev has said that “this was supposed to be a hobby” meaning they have an out if they don’t want to continue
Theoriginalthon@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Yeah you’ll have to wait until at least march
john89@lemmy.ca 20 hours ago
Glad I never bought a switch.
In fact, ever since the PS4 I’ve been strictly a PC gamer.
Seeing how Microsoft was able to lower everyone’s standards by charging for online really puts things into perspective for me.
secret300@lemmy.sdf.org 2 days ago
Nintendo needs to burn. The fact they can just shut down whatever they want is disgusting and needs to be stopped.
john89@lemmy.ca 19 hours ago
Copyright and patent laws need to die.
SoftTeeth@lemmy.world 2 days ago
If they spent half their lawyer money on making good games they wouldn’t be losing money to competition
b34k@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I think Nintendo first party games are great. And I certainly don’t think they’re losing money… the Switch has the most global sales of any current console by a lot. In fact, the PS2 is the only non-Nintendo console to have sold more.
SoftTeeth@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Strange that they targeted Palworld but not any of the other monster collector games that came out in the last 10 yesrs that weren’t nearly as successful.
They don’t need the money, but them wanting other developers money is what makes them do these petty lawsuits. And if they really wanted the money then they could have just made the pokemon game that Palworld ended up filling the niche for.
But they’re lazy and greedy instead of a fun games company so they choose to hire lawyers to suppress real competitors
jol@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
Arguable, but I think they do both.
Razzazzika@lemm.ee 2 days ago
What bugs me is i thought it was cause of the switch 2 pending, but turns out the switch 2 won’t be fully backwards compatible Image
stooth64@lemmy.world 2 days ago
The Switch 2 has a new hardware size and some software (like Labo and Ring Fit) has a physical component that is sized to the original Switch/Joy-Con. It could be referring to that.
Razzazzika@lemm.ee 2 days ago
Yeha but the pessimist in me thinks of box’s backwards compatibility where only the games they curated would work. Still can’t play eternal sonata anymore.
brown567@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Our new console is backwards compatible*
- It isn’t
ziggurat@lemmy.world 2 days ago
To be fair, (I hate Nintendo because of their crusade on open source software), but to be fair,
ps2 had issues on some Ps1 games, the list is short though, and the last few revisions of ps2 even software emulated Ps1 (don’t know the compatibility difference with hardware backwards compatibility)
Ps3 had issues with even more ps2 games, and only the first few revisions had hardware backwards compatibility, the ps2 emulation on ps3 without hardware compatibility is a mess
PS5 has issues with some ps4 games, including but not limited to psvr games, and I think I saw an official in incompatibility list by sony
Wii backwards compatibility i dont know about any issues except with games that use hardware accessories, maybe someone knows more? Later revisions dropped backward compatibility, but the hardware is still present, and homebrew will help you.
As for switch 2 to switch 1 backwards compatibility speculation, here is a educated guess. The asterisk is referring to lobo games and some other games with accessories. Why this speculative conclusion? Because of the way the hardware inside it works.
The arm cpu can be optionally designed to be completely backwards compatible. But is it? (more on that soon). The gpu part of the SOC, is most certainly not 100% binary compatible, because of what we already know about the architecture changes between these gpu generations. This isn’t limited to arm and nvidia gpus, ps5 also has these issues with x86 jaguar to ryzen, and Radeon generations.
So why is your experience with pc gpus, and cpus, and ps5 to ps4 compatibility etc? Well, emulation, the instructions, that are not compatible are emulated in software, this is common place, and in practice it works quite well. The main issue comes down to timing. Some things take different amount of time to do, like an instruction can take fewer cycles. Or if it’s emulated it can take more cycles. Emulation does work well, even if it often can have timing issues. Some times instructions from a future generation can possibly be emulated on your pc cpu. I can remember my friends computer using an installed windows driver, to emulate a future version of the SSE instruction set, I think it was SSE 2 or 2.1, it worked well enough to play VR games (oculus rift dev kit 1 days).
Another issue is that when cpu makers deprecate instructions some times, but they do this in a quite annoying way, they can add a wait, so an instruction takes much longer to run than previous cpus.
I’m not confident enough to talk in this detail about GPUs, because as we all experience, the high level compatibility sdks like directX or vulkan do all this all the time for us, and I don’t know graphics programming. But I do know this is more of an issue on consoles talking more directly to the hardware. But lots of switch games use vulkan so, those should TM work fine…
Nvidia also is responsible for the Cpu design, directly or indirectly. I don’t know how much they care about being as backwards compatible with the cpu instructions as possible though. Probsbly if Nintendo has anything to say about it, they can be 99.999% compatible, with only some timing issues, which may or may not affect games.
So what is the conclusions? Of course this is speculation, and users have to test games, it will take years to know the full extent, but I think we will see near 100% compatibility for games that don’t need hardware accessories that are not compatible. If we exclude shovelware (low effort crap that somehow got into the eshop) maybe a couple to a handful of games will have big enough issues that they can’t be played. Maybe more games will have minor graphics issues, or things that look fine, but just slightly different to switch1
ceenote@lemmy.world 3 days ago
So when they shut down Ryujinx and Yuzu, was it basically “Stop running this emulator or we will ruin your lives with legal bills”?
iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Iirc, and take this with a grain of salt, ryujinx actually got paid by Nintendo to stop development.
stevedice@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
That’s a rumor. All we know is that they talked with the dev behind closed doors and he deleted everything related to Ryujinx afterwards. Sure, they could have paid him but it’s just as likely that they just threatened him. Let’s not forget how Nintendo made its money.
audaxdreik@pawb.social 3 days ago
With the Switch 2 announcement, it’s kind of clear that they aren’t even trying to be a tech company anymore. While not every last one of their consoles released was a true innovation, it did feel like something that was built into part of their brand. Now we just have the Switch 2 which is mostly what you’d expect with some decent QoL upgrades.
Nintendo is pursuing the walled garden approach. You’re barely even buying a console anymore, a lot of this hardware has more or less converged. What you’re buying is access to the cultivated ecosystem. Like everything else these days, they entice you in with the big, recognizable brands and hope there’s enough else to keep you there. Emulators straight pierce that veil and it’s why they went so hard on them.
I’m not criticizing (too heavily) the people that choose to hold on to the franchises they love, but once you step outside and choose alternatives, there’s very little to bring you back. Pokemon lost me a few gens ago, honestly not the biggest Zelda fan, and Mario alone won’t do it for me. Metroid and Starfox are scattershot … Personally I’ll stick with the Steam Deck and wait for Switch 2 emulation to roll around. And if it doesn’t, there are just so many other games to play these days.
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 3 days ago
I don’t think Nintendo ever tried to be a tech company. They have always been a game company first and foremost. If they were ever a kind of tech company, the closest analogy would be Apple, another company that focused on consumer electronics.
Linktank@lemmy.today 3 days ago
I wouldn’t say ALWAYS, seeing as how they also tried their hand at taxis and love hotels for a while there.
turkalino@lemmy.yachts 3 days ago
What walled garden are you talking about? Exclusive games? Literally every console ever made has those.
QoL console releases? Again, Nintendo is not the only company to do that. PS4/PS5 Pro, the recent Xboxes, etc
With emulators, they’re only trying to protect their current hardware. They’ve put basically zero effort into shutting down emulators for consoles they don’t sell anymore. Yeah, I’m with everyone else in wishing they didn’t shut down the switch emulators but it’s somewhat understandable that they’re trying to protect their revenue from hardware sales
Linktank@lemmy.today 3 days ago
How do you see with your nose so far up Nintendo’s butt?
CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
Nintendo bad for making QoL console releases? Again, Nintendo is not the only company to do that. PS4/PS5 Pro, the recent Xboxes, etc
Nintendo has a history of doing something different each hardware generation: Snes had the 4 button + shoulder buttons controller. N64 controller was designed for someone with 3 hands, DS had 2 screens, 3DS had 3d without glasses, Wii had motion controls, Wii U the tablet controller, Switch is a console and portable… Every system had something that made it unique. What’s unique about the Switch 2?
Nintendo is not able to compete with other consoles on power, it’s the unique hardware that gives a reason to own it over something else.They’ve put basically zero effort into shutting down emulators for consoles they don’t sell anymore.
Technically correct. If they hear a whisper of a ROM for Mappy Land on the NES they have their lawyers on speed dial. ( Me typing that sentence means someone from Nintendo is now watching this thread to see if anyone links to a ROM.)
Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 3 days ago
. You’re barely even buying a console anymore, a lot of this hardware has more or less converged. What you’re buying is access to the cultivated ecosystem.
Bingo. In an age where most people’s phones have better hardware than the Switch, it’s all about access to the walled garden instead of hardware.
addie@feddit.uk 3 days ago
Not that I disagree with your point about walled gardens, but “better” hardware for a handheld gaming machine needs to have a decent balance between performance and battery life. Longest plane or train journey that I’m likely to take is about five hours, and I’d need to rate any gaming hardware on the ability to run for that length of time. On that basis, the Switch is pretty much optimal. My phone has a higher resolution and can probably push more frames, but it would run hot for about forty-five minutes maximum. Plus, I’d then not be able to make calls or listen to tunes at my destination.
Steam deck would probably be a better choice, though. Fuck Nintendo.
jared@mander.xyz 3 days ago
Fuck Nintendo!!!
catloaf@lemm.ee 3 days ago
No shit, it’s been case law since the 90s (Bleem, Connectix). The recent cases haven’t been about emulation, but decryption keys lifted from the BIOS.
MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net 3 days ago
Doesn’t matter, bait headline worked wonderfully.
Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee 2 days ago
More like nintendon’t!
sumguyonline@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I was a life long Nintendo fan boy. I have every system excluding the virtual boy cuz of the headaches, and the Wii u because I was under employed when it released. I stopped buying Nintendo after Gary Bowser, their software is janky, and bad for 2000’s level of web portal. I had already complained to Nintendo as a long term investor, and instead of innovating their software and hardware, they litigate away anything that might be considered competition and sue into poverty anyone that alters the devices. I never altered my switch, but I stand on the side of the hackers because Nintendo desperately needed to create a quality software core for their switch family. They want their software to be an extremely basic game launcher, and in modern software terms, that’s just incompetent. I stopped buying Nintendo because Nintendo stopped innovating their software, started litigating their profits, and relied solely on old worn out IP instead of creating something new and fresh. You know how many new games are gonna launch on switch 2? Less than 5. Know what one of the first 10 games is gonna be? Mario. Want another? Probably a racing game that’s another rehash but has something blandly new and shiny, like space ship racing with gerbils(instead of diddy Kong racing, or jet ski racing etc). Nintendo has no new IP ideas, and while I was mostly OK suffering through the tired old crap to get to whatever gameplay innovation they made, they seem to have abandoned the gameplay innovation entirely, and are just suing people to force them to play their games the way they want, even if they already received money for the game and system. Whatever they might have in store for the switch 2, so long as Gary Bowser is living in debt to Nintendo, I will never purchase another Nintendo product new, ever again, and I will only purchase used if they have an absolute banger of a game, but I’m only buying that used as well. No profit to Nintendo. I can buy off eBay.
gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
Yeah, that’s why I’ve been exclusively pirating and emulating your switch games, and will continue to do so
Nintendo never gets my money again, and it’s been a better experience so far doing so
sirico@feddit.uk 3 days ago
Back to the forks bois
hmmm@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Wtf
Linktank@lemmy.today 3 days ago
Time to counter-sue?
lowleveldata@programming.dev 3 days ago
I mean, walking is not illegal but walking in private property could be.
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Until someone publishes another one anyway
MITM0@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Guys we got em
eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
Image
john89@lemmy.ca 19 hours ago
Heck, piracy is almost always morally correct because developers are only doing the least while charging the most.
If they want to treat business as “us vs. them”, then that’s what they’re going to get.
Wogi@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Agrivar@lemmy.world 3 days ago
zecg@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Did you just all-black-people-look-the-same yourself