> * how will they pay $2M?

They most likely don't. Most of these settlements have another agreement made behind closed doors.

I was alleged to do stuff related to video game cheats, and was in settlement talks with a company bigger than Nintendo. I didn't end up signing, so a quick overview of what such secret agreements include (the money point is the last one):

- keep everything of the following secret

- be truthful with us and tell us everything

- hand over source code, server access, chats

- shut down social media, websites related to the cheats

- if defendant cant shut down the cheat site, defendant has to try to shut it down via other various means and email the plaintiff once every quarter for three years with the efforts made

- plaintiff will make a public announcement that defendant owes 2.5 million USD (used by the plaintiff for marketing / scaring people off). After X years, the plaintiff agrees to file a full satisfaction of the monetary award (aka plaintiff files that the defendant paid the money and so their credit score isn't totally fucked), BUT in reality the defendant only has to pay the money if they breach any of the terms above.

Thanks for this insight. This honestly sounds like the reasonable solution for both parties. Everyone just walks away, and no ones life is ruined.

Was your name on the lawsuit or was it an LLC?

The complaint listed the company (a German Unternehmergesellschaft; which is basically an LLC), but my name and many others too.

Lol, the engineowning lawsuit?

>how will they pay $2M?

The same way Bowser did, I suppose. Wage garnishing + whatever Patreon money they earned?

Apparently it's estimated to have made some $1.2 million from patreon so that may help

>why did they settle for that much?

Bad crooked lawyers that said they had no chance or very good lawyers that said they had no chance. IANAL, so I can't truly say which.

> isn't strict emulation legal? Maybe not in the US...

It is AFAIK, apparently the judgement's big argument here is

>Developing or distributing software, including Yuzu, that in its ordinary course functions only when cryptographic keys are integrated without authorization, violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s prohibition on trafficking in devices that circumvent effective technological measures, because the software is primarily designed for the purpose of circumventing technological measures.

Again, I don't know how much water that holds.

>is there something fishy that was hidden somewhere?

Depends on if you think whether or not it would have cost more than $2.5m dollars to fight nintendo in a full battle. I imagine Yuzu doesn't have such funds nor means to. So this was the cheapest option for them.

Another case of Nintendo ruining peoples' lives [1]

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2024/feb/01/the-man-who-ow...

Seems to me more like he ruined his own life through poor choices. Actions have consequences, I won’t be shedding any tears.

> As a part of that agreement, Bowser now has to send Nintendo 20-30% of any money left over after he pays for necessities such as rent.

> Bowser has now managed to secure housing, and he thinks that after rent, he has a couple of hundred dollars leftover for food and other necessities. He assumes he’ll be turning to food support services.

Nintendo's not being compensated any meaningful amount. This is nothing more than a lifelong public flogging. And for what?

"and for what?", the what is to send a message to everyone not to screw around with Nintendo. Whether that's morally right is another question.

Why are you pretending Nintendo is the justice system? Are you confused by how the legal system works?

I'm not pretending that Nintendo is the justice system, although I will admit that the US legal system does confuse me!

The point was that if you have deeper pockets than your opponent then you're able to leverage the legal system to make life hard and stressful for them.

Nintendo has deep pockets and the will to go after anyone it considers a threat to its business model.

Won't somebody think of the multinationals.

Nobody is thinking about the multinationals, they are thinking about what is morally correct.

Morally, these multinational corporations deserve piracy or any bad thing that happens to them.

Nintendo gave up on doing what was "morally correct" ages ago. That doesn't make anyone else's moral failing acceptable, but comparatively Nintendo's sins are far greater and they've never faced consequences that came remotely close to what they're putting Gary Bowser through.

more people need to just read the "history" section of Nintendo's Wikipedia page. because that "ages ago" is 140 years ago, when the company was founded, by being the only {morally,legally} bankrupt enough people willing to sell their wares to Yakuza-run casinos.

to be fair, they're not unique in this space. but the perception of them as "the family-friendly gaming company" has always been some very big amount of nonsense.

> and they've never faced consequences that came remotely close to what they're putting Gary Bowser through.

His own actions and the legal system are why he is where he is today. Nintendo isn’t putting him anything, unless you now think that Nintendo controls legal decisions that are handed down.

> Developing or distributing software, including Yuzu, that in its ordinary course functions only when cryptographic keys are integrated without authorization, violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s prohibition on trafficking in devices that circumvent effective technological measures, because the software is primarily designed for the purpose of circumventing technological measures.

This seems like a massive stretch to ask a judge to sign off on, since it pretty radically expands what the DMCA covers. If were to come into force, you could slap some encryption on any piece of software and block anyone from interoperating with it.

I guess the fishy thing was the Patreon, which I was not aware of.

Hell, I just even knew about Yuzu because of that lawsuit. #streisand

The relevant precedent is Bleem, which was for-profit

It's not really a precedent since PS1 games weren't encrypted.

> * how will they pay $2M?

They actually made quite a bit of money, around ~$30k/mo from just Patreon, wouldn't surprise me if they had that much money.

> * why did they settle for that much?

Expensive to fight it, and if they lose they'd have to pay even more. Nintendo can go on forever, they have so much money and the best lawyers.

30k a month is only (roughly rounded) 1 mill per 3 years. So that be 6 years income without spending, and it’s likely their income wasn’t always at this level.

Taxes will also eat away at that

They have paid themselves out already and will declare bankruptcy.

If down voters want to explain their objection we'd probably all benefit - this may sound pithy but afaict parent is correct: Tropic Haize LLC is the defendant in TFA; LLC stands for Limited Liability Company. IANAL but this essentially means the company is on the hook for the damages, if it doesn't have that much then Nintendo probably becomes it's most senior creditor (gets paid first) in bankruptcy, but its directors (the emulator devs, presumably) are unlikely to be personally liable, at least wouldn't be in a judgement on this case. Settling would I assume imply that Nintendo thinks it is getting paid (won't bankrupt the company, or directors agreed to kick it in) though.

They're about as likely to get paid as the poor sods the RIAA sued. It's just about using their legal muscle to shut them down.

They will get the assets though. So $30k in patron money for the month, the domain, the trademark, and the copyright to the GPL'd code.

They didn't win in court though, they settled, so the money would be a strange and arbitrary amount if they don't think they're getting it?

Pretty much. The term for this is judgement proof.

As far as I know (IANAL) it was Tropic Haize LLC that was sued and is on the hook for the $2M.

> * how will they pay $2M?

Probably patreon

> * why did they settle for that much?

Because Nintendo will just ruin their lives otherwise

> * isn't strict emulation legal? Maybe not in the US...

Thank you DMCA for ruining this scene. The federal government should not be the one interjecting itself into this area, but here we are. Because of the anti-circumvention rules of the DMCA, right to repair is completely broken. Heck, WV was able to hide them lying about emissions because of it.