They could start by developing in the open and not in some shitty discord group.
All that needs to be asked of them is “are you willing to pay the court costs associated with Nintendo taking you to court, and then the millions of dollars to Nintendo if you lose?”. If not then they shouldn’t even touch it, because Nintendo will come after them.
Nah it’s pretty easy to kill litigation before it starts if things step up. If you receive a cease and desist and don’t want to fight it, you can shut it down and never look back. If you’re served paperwork with a court date, the initial hearings can get the lawsuit thrown out if there are no grounds for a case on intellectual property infringement, one of which is “non-profit”. In fact, a lot of people would argue that Yuzu was completely in the right to do what they did despite having a link to their patreon, but at that point the courts might decide either way and litigation costs money.
but at that point the courts might decide either way and litigation costs money.
It also sets a precedent which makes it easier for Nintendo and other companies to sue open source developers. It would have been bad for everyone in the emulation community if they went to court and lost.
if there are no grounds for a case on intellectual property infringement, one of which is “non-profit”.
These guys have said right from the get go that they’re trying to profit off it though. Whoopsies.
Also the fact that its the exact same code that Yuzu ran, which just settled with nintendo for millions of dollars, is going to influence any future cases.
but at that point the courts might decide either way and litigation costs money.
Yeah so like I said - they have to be prepared to fight nintendo or just shut it down almost immediately.
You know what’s a really good defence: Not being based in the fucking US.
TL;DR:
-
They will avoid monetization
-
They will avoid providing step-by-step guides to play games on the emulator (I assume they mean extracting games from the console using hacked tools)
-
They will avoid providing keys or circumvent DRM, you’ll have to get everything from your Switch
-
The devs are upset at how much attention they’re getting which is kind of ironic considering the article.
“We wanted to fly under the radar at the start […] It’s already much more widespread than ideal for the current stage of development.”
Which is how emulation worked the last 20 years. It flew under the radar because they weren’t doing anything explicitly illegal, while also avoiding getting paid or having anything point at you.
Yuzu flew too close to the sun. I’m sorry, but they did. They very brazenly operated like they were challenging Nintendo. They werent just emulating games from last Gen but modern Gen games that just came out. Like it or not, that is taking money from Nintendo and it was obvious they were going to get the hammer.
For me I’m mad at them. Mad because their cavalier attitude made all emulation look the same as piracy, which it isn’t. There’s a clear dividing line and Yuzu came very close to labeling all emulation as piracy.
I got freaking crucified for this sentiment the day the news dropped.
Emulator devs deserve compensation, copyright laws are bullshit.
Nintendo lost some negligible (to them) amount of money, and in return ruined some peoples lives, and disappointed their fans.
Emulator devs deserve compensation, copyright laws are bullshit.
There’s literally nothing that legally bars emulator devs from being paid, or even releasing their emulator as a commercial product outright. Except being sued and the cost of fighting that suit burying them financially.
Bleem! eventually won, and it was a commercial emulator for a then-current gen console. The cost of winning that fight put them out of business.
Not providing encryption keys/BIOS and not directly assisting with piracy are the key things to be legally in the right. Making money on it just makes you a more likely target, even if you’re legally entirely in the right.
There’s literally nothing that legally bars emulator devs from being paid, or even releasing their emulator as a commercial product outright. Except being sued and the cost of fighting that suit burying them financially.
Bleem! eventually won, and it was a commercial emulator for a then-current gen console. The cost of winning that fight put them out of business.
So basically large corporations get to decide if unaffiliated developers can earn money. Seems reasonable.
I don’t see how your comment contradicts mine at all.
More like anyone can sue anyone for anything, even if they have no chance of winning and sometimes corps do exactly that to force a settlement so you’ll do what they want even if you did nothing wrong.
Any action you take happens only because billionaires and massive corps don’t consider you worth suing over it. Even if there is nothing resembling legitimate grounds to do so because they can tie you up in court until you are bankrupt.
I always like pointing out the fatal mistake of Gawker - they outed that a billionaire was gay while he was in a country where being gay was punishable by death. He then spent the next several years offering to fund any lawsuit that had any chance of success against them in revenge, and eventually one stuck.
Anyone can sue for any reason + large corporations can force a settlement = large corporations can decide if unaffiliated devs earn money for any reason.
Exactly. They were brazen with what they were doing, making it easy to pirate games. While I want to support devs, by accepting money and assisting piracy they painted a giant target on themselves. Most emulator devs know what they’re doing and stay out of the way, yuzu did the opposite.
-
the Suyu development team has decided to avoid “any monetization,”
Should of always been like that
Either emulation is legal and you’re therefore okay with devs getting payment for tgeir labor or it’s illegal and they need to keep as low a profile as they can
I hate people who try to be on both sides
The monetisation part wasn’t what fucked them over, it was merely what made their more illicit activities worse.
The Yuzu team were using leaks to tweak their code, namely the ToTK leak.
I agree but pay walling features is just asking for trouble, I should of specified what I meant with pateron.
The features weren’t exactly paywalled, as the source code was always available. They merely provided beta builds to patreons, that were also available free of charge by someone else [1].
Selling emulators is legal, as far as we know (been a while since the last ruling). If it’s true what others have pointed out, that yuzu devs were distributing copyrighted material in their public discord and talking open about privacy, then Nintendo has support for their argument that yuzu was intentionally designed to circumvent copy protection and purposely facilitates piracy.
Isn’t pineapple just stealing the builds from pateron and did they release the current source code or did that get released after pateron build went public. I didn’t really keep track of it.
You’re likely right, it seems like they made use of the code being open-source and distributed it freely after getting access through patreon. Each commit is quite big with all the source code changes of the specific early access build.
Congratulations, you’ve shown everyone how dumb you are.
of
*have
(Or “Should’ve”)
Disagree. People deserve compensation for labor, and the Yuzu devs did good work. It’s our laws that suck.
SueYou is an awesome name for N**tendo emulator
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“Suyu currently exists in a legal gray area we are trying to work our way out of,” contributor and Discord moderator Sharpie told Ars in a recent interview.
The Suyu project arose out of “a passion for Switch emulation” and a desire not to see “years of impressive work by the Yuzu team go to waste,” Sharpie said.
But that passion is being tempered by a cautious approach designed to avoid the legal fate that befell the project’s predecessor.
The Suyu devs have also been warned against “providing step-by-step guides” like the ones that Yuzu offered for how to play copyrighted games on their emulator.
Those guides were a major focus of Nintendo’s lawsuit, as were some examples of developer conversations in the Yuzu Discord that seemed to acknowledge and condone piracy.
Suyu, by contrast, is taking an extremely hard line against even the hint of any discussion of potential piracy on its platforms.
The original article contains 297 words, the summary contains 154 words. Saved 48%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is one of the most clever names I’ve seen for an emulator.
Reminds me of sosumi, a Linux util for one-click MacOS virtual machines. Sosumi also happens to be the name of the alert/error sound in early MacOS.
I was excited to see but I see is now archived. Is there a successor or new maintainer? I have to try this
Sosumi (the alert sound) was named due to Apple having a long running court battle with a music company called Apple Corps, link here.
