The key bit:

> Unlike Yuzu, the Suyu team does things differently in regards to Nintendo Switch emulation than their predecessors. Whereas Yuzu only required prod.keys, Suyu will also require you to dump your title.keys and firmware from a hacked Switch to run games. The devs also clarified that they are doing this for nonprofit (there's no Patreon) and do not condone piracy.

We'll see how long it lasts...

One argument I heard for the Yuzu settlement was to avoid discovery. There's speculation that Nintendo had the goods on them, and that discovery would expose them to more than the civil penalties they were facing.

Nintendo has never been friendly to emulation, or most fan content in general, but there are protections for fair-use and this team appears to be building their work behind those, rather than playing fast and loose with them.

My understanding was that they were offering a specially-patched version of Yuzu to their Patreon supporters, that included improvements for games that _weren't released yet_.

*Making money* by helping people run Zelda _before it came out_ was begging for trouble.

Nintendo's approach to fan projects and emulators is ridiculous, don't get me wrong — but Yuzu authors were definitely playing with fire and overstepping what's generally accepted in the community.

This was a widely spread myth, now generally considered incorrect.

Yuzu did not offer improvements before launch day. There were badly patched unofficial versions that were trying. Nintendo does allege though that Yuzu was doing research to develop the patches before launch day.

Thank you for the correction!

There are fair-use protections, but it costs money to defend. Part of why so many Smash tournaments folded in 2022 was because of Nintendo telling people they weren't allowed to host tourneys using their IP. Granted I'm not a lawyer, but people gathering to play a multiplayer game and then streaming the matches doesn't inherently constitute any infringement on Nintendo's rights or ability to make money. Many TOs (tournament organizers) left the scene or stopped featuring Smash as a title over the C&D notice. No one wanted to take on Nintendo in court.

Kind of. Some TOs are calling Nintendo's bluff. Nintendo released a set of guidelines[0] on what kinds of tournaments can be hosted. However, Collision 2024 just happened with attendees and a prize pool surpassing the guidelines.

[0]: https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/...

These are just easy pickings for Nintendo to bully. When they go after Twitch is when the real case law will be made.

I honestly think game streaming is a grey area that could easily be made illegal by the wrong company getting sued for it.

> people gathering to play a multiplayer game and then streaming the matches doesn't inherently constitute any infringement on Nintendo's rights or ability to make money.

Esports and tourneys in general generate a decent amount of money, are recurring and control a decent chunk of the narrative around games affecting their marketing.

Not trying to defend Nintendo or any other company, but their objective as a profit-driven organisation is to generate maximum profits.

Not really. Fair use does not really legally exist. It exists primarily as a defense after you’ve already been sued - which is also why there is no official codification of what fair use actually is.

Also, as Nintendo can argue, imagine this was a movie. Imagine it was a movie being shown on screen for two hours. That would be case closed. Now imagine it was a movie recutting competition. Again, case closed. So what makes a tourney special? In the eyes of the law, a judge might say, absolutely nothing.

You might argue, “well, there’s skill being applied, whereas a movie is passive.” No dice there - just because you put effort into your copyright violation is meaningless. You might argue a movie is a full work when a video game only displays a subset - but do you think you could publicly perform 30 minutes of The Lord of the Rings and be OK? Of course not.

Interesting way to put it, but I'm still not sure that quite applies. The game is a multiplayer game intended to be played with other people. Commercial endeavors change with movie viewing. It's implied that single entity can own a single copy while charging admission to profit from their single copy of the movie. Meanwhile, movie companies (mostly) don't care if I play _The Lord of the Rings_ in a private setting to a small audience of known people.

I would argue that the competitive nature of tournaments implies that the entrants all have a copy of the game along with hardware to run the game (emulation withstanding). The only thing is streaming the event. Even then, what would be the difference between streaming a tournament and streaming myself or a small group of friends playing? It doesn't seem like that would infringe upon the core purpose of the game.

The law is fairly immune to mental gymnastics and mind games, regardless of what the dramas indicate.

For movies, it’s fairly simple and widely understood you are buying a license for private viewing. While there’s some room for interpretation, it goes without saying that if you are inviting strangers and/or charging admission and/or running advertising, you’re inviting scrutiny.

Also, let’s just be honest, the moment you run advertising for anything, it’s almost impossible to argue this is not a publicly available event. Public is also fairly broad - collages have to license every movie they want to show to a classroom, for example. My college paid over $2000 to Netflix for a single showing to Math Club of one movie for about 7 viewers.

> The game is a multiplayer game intended to be played with other people

The law only cares about copyright. What it is, is irrelevant.

As for your point about how the participants must have bought the game - I don’t think that would work either. Imagine you ran your unapproved Lord of the Rings convention. You also had the movies playing on repeat the whole time. I don’t think arguing that “only people who have bought the movies have any interest in being here” would protect you.

> Fair use does not really legally exist

literally in the text of the DMCA itself

No, it simply clarifies that the DMCA cannot be used to say that fair use does not exist anymore, solely in a potential copyright lawsuit, but that DMCA provision does not apply in a DMCA circumvention lawsuit.

This is also why this carve-out is practically useless and also does not define guidelines for fair use.

Beyond speculation. Nintendo is known to not fuck around, thanks to its leaks.

In one of the various Nintendo leaks in the past few years was a bunch of documentation of "Operation Belgian Waffle", their attempt to "Knock and Talk" with a private investigator, law enforcement, and Nintendo Legal visiting a fairly well-known hacker in the scene. All of this was being spearheaded and commanded by Nintendo of Japan towards the subsidiaries in other countries.

https://torrentfreak.com/nintendo-conducted-invasive-surveil...

Nintendo was already operating inside the Discord as per screenshots of evidence in the case, so they really had some leverage here.

How come Satoshi Nakamoto can remain anonymous in spite of his worth in the billions of dollars, but emulator developers, worth almost nothing, can't hide from Nintendo? Opsec mistakes, or just no opsec at all?

There are tons of people involved in piracy that stay anonymous. It seems like they chose not to.

.. because emulator developers are real?

Yeahw if they used leaked games to optimize the emulator for release day, they would have much more to fear.

My impression of the Yuzu team is that they didn't keep a very clean house. While the project didn't officially condone piracy, some members of the team were absolutely willing to help people run pirated games. Add to that the fact that they were emulating a current system, and that they ran a very successful Patreon to pay their team, and I think they eroded their plausible deniability down to nothing.

Consider that Nintendo leaves Dolphin more-or-less alone. I think Nintendo understands where emulation sits legally, and they went after Yuzu because of what was happening around the emulator, and not because of the emulator itself.

Notably, Japan has no fair use laws.

Has the team explained their reasoning anywhere? Yuzu ostensibly already "required" dumping keys from a Switch console, and I don't understand how more involvement of Nintendo firmware and keys lowers the risk. If anything I'd have expected a "safe" fork to go the other direction, position itself as a homebrew development tool, and remove explicit support for commercial games altogether (requiring e.g. a third-party tool to decrypt and unpack commercial game formats into some quasi-homebrew format).

Note that emulators for all(?) other Nintendo consoles remain available, and were available while the consoles were relevant. There is little Nintendo can do as long as the authors actively steer clear of guiding/condoning piracy or guiding/condoning certain types of DRM-bypass.

It was to my knowledge Yuzu's stance on this particular matter that cost them the project, with Nintendo lawyers striking once they saw the hole in the homebrew armor.

Legally, there's actually quite a bit Nintendo can do, there's just always the risk of setting an undesirable precedent due to how few cases there are.

Yuzu's actions just elevated the likelihood of success to near 100% instead of 80-90%.

> Suyu will also require you to dump your title.keys and firmware from a hacked Switch to run games

It seems misleading to imply that you NEED to dump them from a real device? Can't you just provide the files found on the internet?

Well, that would be piracy. The Suyu team condemns that behavior.

Edited: condones -> condemns

Must be nice for some people to legally hide behind words.

"Yes, your honor. We did build this thing that some may define as a bomb capable of destroying the entire planet, but our intention was just to build a big power source. We are very much against illegal use."

If society wants to prosecute people for making emulators without any infringing content in them, then they need to make laws to make it illegal. You can't hold people accountable to laws that don't exist, especially when laws are amazingly over-reaching as it is

Well, looks like that's based on a true story ;)

I'm not sure we can draw a fair analogy between the nuclear arms race and software piracy. Not unless we're starting from a premise that every law is equally just and righteous.

Cui bono in Nintendo having the right to tell the world that nobody is allowed to build machines that interoperate with theirs, even after they've sold their machine?

"I'm not sure we can draw a fair analogy between the nuclear arms race and software piracy."

Of course not. It was just a joke. :)

Yet, many feel that they should be permitted to take hardware the purchased and tinker with it legally. If I were to write some code that allowed me to interact with a cartridge that I bought, why shouldn't I be able to share that code with others that might also wish to tinker with their cartridges in the same manner?

If you make emulation of hardware that doesn't infringe on copyright illegal, you stamp out a lot of legal and useful tinkering.

I assume you mean condemns that behavior.

They don't condone piracy, you mean.

Wink wink nudge nudge.

> The Suyu team condones that behavior.

You mean it does not?

I'm having 50,- on the fact they won't get to May before Nintendo Legal starts cutting up their loved ones.

Yea, I wish them the best, but I would not take the other side of that bet. It’s sad that we all know it will happen and have relatively no political power to change it, despite most of us living under democratically representative governments.

I might be wrong, but buy a game, dump the keys, sell game?

The keys are in the console, not the games.

Also, every single switch related thing has a unique ID associated with it that's sent back to nintendo when you access the internet. e.g. consoles, controllers, docks, game carts, etc...

I haven't heard of them banning a game cart yet, but it's entirely possible.

Or use Ryujinx or Yuzu, use some really good Github pages with uuencoded links, and pirate games.

Like this "Link" (not Zelda's haha): https://github.com/Abd-007/Switch-Emulators-Guide/

Given that saves are on the NAND (anti-user backup location on device), and only able to be backed up with 3rd party tools IF the game creator "permits it"...

And the slowdowns in games like Zelda dont exist on computer, AND you get 60hz.

Again, the pirates have it better. I will never buy a Switch. I know if I do, I'll be punished for doing the right thing with keeping my data away from me, and terrible DRM preventing me my rights of stuff I own.

Been gaming on PC (and a little bit with consoles) for 20 years and the hubbub about Nintendo closing Yuzu made me want to try it to see what's this all about.

And yes it's unbelievable how much better these games are on emulator, even if you only judge based on the games themselves.

I've been thoroughly captivated by TOTK and the worst I've had to ensure was mild microstutters which I didn't even bother to try and fix yet. Even that could have an easy solution.

If Nintendo sued Yuzu because they were indirectly causing damage, then I can sue car makers for making air polution.

You can, but to win ridiculous cases you need massively out-lawyer the defendant. It's a lot easier for a big company to out-lawyer a handful of individuals than the other way around.

Land of the Free

That's literally what happens though: https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/german...

VW got fined for that, not enough though and many others got out scot-free for similar rigging. A handful of cars (within regulations) don't pollute enough to cause harm but throw in thousands and thousand on narrow city roads and then do we blame the city planners?

In some ways Nintendo suing the original project was a good thing. It brought the project to the attention of a lot more people. Now there is a new version with a bunch of bugs fixed. Who knows how many new developers will be working on it now.

I have to think Nintendo knew this. They had to defend what they could and did so because the original project actually seemed to be doing some sketchy stuff. They know they can't stop everything though.

I think it's pretty clear that if they felt that they had a case against emulation as a whole, they would have brought down the Dolphin project. As it stands, the worst they've done is gotten it booted off Steam, but I can happily still download it from their website. The Dolphin project has been around in some capacity since 2003, while the GameCube was still relevant, and had more-or-less decent Wii Emulation in 2009 as well; by all accounts in 2010 Dolphin was directly competing with "real" Wiis (while offering proper HD output no less).

I'm sure Nintendo's lawyers were perfectly aware of Dolphin pretty early on, and if they felt that there was any case against them then they would have done something.

“Sue You,” as in Nintendo will…

<https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sosumi&oldid=1208...>

3 things in life are certain. Death, taxes, and Nintendo emulators.

There is no 3rd without the legal problems with Nintendo.

Not sure what you mean, there are a ton of Nintendo emulators out there, some decades old.

Just a bad joke.

It only became a problem when emulator performance overtook their current-gen hardware

(Especially if enhanced versions of big titles like the Zelda games are intended to be a significant selling point for their next console)

I mean, Higan/BSnes, SNES9X, Project64, Mupen64, FCEUX, mGBA, and probably dozens of others that I'm missing have been around for a very long time, and as far as I'm aware haven't had any legal issues from Nintendo, though that might be because all of them don't require any kind of BIOS.

Is there a definitive fork of Citra as well? That was the actual tragedy of the Yuzu aftermath.

I do know there are forks for Citra VR, Mac, and Android that were unaffected which is great however.

At least Citra is a mature emulator, almost 100% of the games work.

The disaster is actually the online lobbies. Citra had a multiplayer network and it’s not available anymore

Why don't any of these major emulator teams build and release anonymously?

You can still be sued. At that point, you either: a) defend yourself as normal, while attempting to maintain anonymity (difficult & doesn't solve anything) b) let the case go to default judgement (for likely an enormous amount of money) at which point Nintendo has every reason to try to track you down in real life, and can use the courts to help them do so. Hope you were really, really thorough about your anonymity.

How do you sue someone that is anonymous?

OpSec is hard. The Silk Road guy was anonymous, up until he wasn't.

File a lawsuit against a John/Jane Doe defendant(s) and describe who the defendants are, e.g., the people who code and maintain the emulator. Maybe a little harder than if you had the names but not by a lot.

I should say: the real difficulty is service, but if there's any way to get in contact with you, there's at least a chance it will be accepted as good service. There was famously a recent case where a defendant known only by a Bitcoin address was served by sending a transaction with an attached message to that address.

If you want Patreonbux for your work it has to be tied to a real person (or a real legal entity which is tied to real people)

It can be a resume piece. Having been in these communities (server emulation instead of console) you find some insanely bright developers in them. A lot of them don't have a formal education background, but are willing to build out well thought out pieces of software. You just have to do the research on them if they tell you this is who they are, a lot of the times you can find out plenty about how they code and design things out in the open. I'd probably almost always hire such a dev if their code seemed good, and I knew they cared about the quality of their code. Having been involved in those communities though I do know there are awful devs who don't care about what anyone says "my code aint broken" types who never give credit when you help them either (reputation / respect matters more when you're coding for free in some of these communities).

I'll double down on personality that parent comment pointed out. If you see someone submit a project they worked on instead of formal education then you need to see what their exact contribution is and how they interact with other devs. Look at past github comments, issues, etc. Lurk in their chat server or pull logs. Expect to see a more casual attitude than what will show up at work, but pay attention to how contributions are handled, how credit is handled, and how disagreements are handled. It's not a universal problem, but I've seen some of the worst developer drama around volunteer open source video game projects.

Not making sense.

These anon devs can still have socials.

Their resume is public, and you can reach them without revealing their identity.

This is a little too risky since it could wind up with someone revealing their identity inadvertently or otherwise. If you truly want to be anonymous you should not be leaving so many breadcrumbs. All it takes is for a former employer to have a security breach and someone to point out that they found your real identity.

You said "resume piece."

Now, you say any posting can reveal their identity and is too risky.

These are mutually exclusive.

If you're trying to be anonymous yes, if you're not, then it doesn't matter.

Sometimes the reverse engineering community leans somewhere between gray and blackhat. You may not want to expose your actual identity.

We're talking about building and releasing anonymously.

Your responses are talking past this.

Do they expect a company to believe them when they say "Yes, that anonymous social profile is actually me, John Emu maker. Really." Then if they proove it, by logging in and posting a known sentinel for example, do they expect everyone on that interview loop to keep their secret?

Companies generally don't take anonymous credentials.

You're arguing with the parent, not me.

"How does someone break the circularity of building a resume and staying anonymous for legal employment?"

Even if the anonymous developer submitted the resume, they are giving the employer the power to dox them. There is a lot of trust there.

Because making an emulator takes a lot of work. And emulator devs want some compensation for this work - be it money (in form of donations) or a status that could help them gather followers or even land a job.

What's the big fuss when we still have Ryujinx ?

I think the fear is that this is only the beginning. Nintendo successfully killed one emulator, why would they stop there?

Nintendo certainly knows about Ryujinx and is patiently waiting for them to screw up anything legally so they can bring them down next.

Yeah I still think Ryujinx should be safe for a bit since they don't monetize the emulator as much as Suzu did, who knows, Nintendo Lawyers are ready for anything

I suspect Ryujinx does a better job outright condemning piracy in their discourse, so there's less for Nintendo to pounce on.

I'm sure nobody mentions it because of the fear that the mighty Nintendo might discover us Ryujinx rebels.

If 5 minutes of online research yields Ryujinx, I'd say it's a fairly safe bet that Nintendo are already very aware of its presence.

Yeah I think with 31k stars on github, youtube videos reaching hundreds of views..

I think it's safe to assume Nintendo knows about Ryujinx haha

On my Mac, the .dmg mounts but the executable says "“suyu” is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the Bin."

If it's apple silicon you need to run `xattr -cr` on the .app to get it to be executable.

You can usually circumvent that by right clicking (or control clicking) and pressing open. There will now be a button that says “open anyway”.

Is the name intentionally a pun on sue you?

Reminds me of the Mac OS 7 sound “Sosumi” (so sue me!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sosumi

The readme used to contain the text:

> suyu, pronounced "sue-you" (wink wink) is the continuation of the world's most popular, open-source, Nintendo Switch emulator, yuzu.

https://github.com/lineCode/suyu-

Here is a link to the commit where they changed it:

https://gitlab.com/suyu-emu/suyu/-/commit/bc4f5c38fee23b8e8b...

It is. This was removed from the GitLab page 5 days ago: "Removed sue-you wink wink"

You just made it so.

I would pay Nintendo the price of a physical switch console - and then each game individually - for the ability to play their games legally in top graphical fidelity using my supercomputer. I'd even be open to the idea of paying a subscription fee to do it, instead of buying individual titles, and includes back catalogue