8 mo. ago • 98%

Yuzu agrees to pay Nintendo $2.4 million and will entirely shut down

www.gamingonlinux.com Yuzu agrees to pay Nintendo $2.4 million and will entirely shut down

After Nintendo recently filed a lawsuit against the Yuzu team, it was pretty much inevitable this was going to happen wasn't it.

Gaming @lemmy.zip Yuzu agrees to pay Nintendo $2.4 million and will entirely shut down

97 comments

Reminder that poor Gary Bowser was jailed for a year and owes 30% of his income to Nintendo for the rest of his life. He uses a wheelchair and has two kids.

It would be morally wrong to pirate all future Nintendo titles and pay the cover price to Gary's gofundme. Please don't do that.

139
- Please don't conflate an open effort to own your own hardware and data with a closed effort to literally sell access to copyrighted content under the table, and try to launder the profits and commit fraud. Yuzu and Bowser are not the same.
  
  20
  
  you mean the MiGSwitch, a device for dumping and preserving switch ROMs? I would love to have one for personal backups, and it pairs well with yuzu. Team Xecuter is credibly presumed to be the developers, so that's likely Bowser's current hobby.
  
  9
- Does 30% of the gofundme go to nintendo?
  
  12
  
  Google says yes
  
  19
- There's no way that kind of punishment is allowed by the 8th amendment. This is definitely an unusual punishment.
  
  6
- Reminder that "poor Gary" was selling pirated roms.
  
  -16
  
  I disagree with selling pirated roms but, he also wasn't part of the development team he was closer to a sales associate then anything. the punishment given to him was cruel and unusable and honestly a failure of the legal system.
  
  I see this on the same level as forcing a sales associate at Walmart to pay the fine of all the wage violations the company as a whole did. It's rediculous.
  
  I personally will never be buying a Nintendo product again out of principle.
  
  10
Nintendo screwed big time. Now there's going to be multiple forks of Yuzu all over the internet. And on every self-hosted Git forge.

137
- Already mirrored on my personal forge
  
  53
  
  Pony up that 2.4mil bucko
  
  4
- The bigger deal is that development by this team has been halted, not that it will be a little harder to find a trustworthy download of the most recent version.
  
  37
  
  Yep. This is more to stop the emulation of their next console than anything else. Especially considering it's likely to be a just slightly better Switch.
  
  20
  
  That's only temporary tho. One fork will emerge as the replacement everyone goes to, including the developers who were only working on Yuzu and Citra as volunteers. We know what Nintendo was sueing over, so that can probably be avoided in that fork.
  
  2
- I tried to fork but couldn't find a repo to clone. Do you have a link?
  
  17
  
  It's all over Codeberg. And within a few hours or days, I guess it will reach NotABug too.
  
  27
- 17
fuck Nintendo, I'll never support them or buy anything related to them ever again.

88
- I feel like the people saying this now aren't going to follow through and will buy future Nintendo products. If this behavior was a deal breaker for you then you would already be boycotting Nintendo.
  
  60
  
  Well, given that the last game I officially bought by Nintendo was Metroid Prime Dread (because I really really want that franchise to regain its former glory, same with F-Zero) and that also after a year or so of not buying anything new. Yeah I was kinda in a soft boycott already.
  
  18
  
  Depends on the person really. I've been a sailor all my life, and the only times I've bought games was when I bought some physical disc games for my ps4, so it really depends on the person.
  
  2
  
  I am
  
  1
- Is this... surprising behavior on Nintendo's part?
  
  12
  
  No, and it's still disgusting. They are fricking bullies.
  
  16
The publicity inspired me to install it, so great job Nintendo.

76
- I've owned a switch for like 8 years and suddenly I'm inspired as well..
  
  Is there an updated resource on how to?
  
  9
  
  Here’s the guide I followed:
  
  https://overkill.wtf/how-to-setup-yuzu-for-steam-deck/
  
  And yuzu was still in the Discover store available to download as of this afternoon.
  
  4
- Ah, the good ol' Streisand effect
  
  7
Permanently Deleted

60
It is always morally correct to pirate nintendo products.

59
Where does a FOSS project find $2.4M? They weren't selling anything were they? They can't really have that big of a war chest can they?

51
- They don't have it. It's a limited liability company so in this way they will pay only the sum of their assets (=bankruptcy) which is lower than legal expenses against a Goliath and definitely lower than 2.4 million. I'm guessing 1000x lower than the settled amount or they wouldn't have reason to found the LLC in first place or to settle this easy and this fast
  
  42
  
  Did they just create the LLC after the lawsuit?
  
  1
- My understanding is they've been making 30k a month from their Patreon.
  
  Which is also the main reason they were vulnerable to a lawsuit, because they've been profiting off of the emulator (which why legal by itself, is only popular enough to make money due to piracy).
  
  27
  
  $2.4M is 8 years' worth in that case, assuming they were making that much the entire time. And of course a lot of that money was probably for the devs to afford basic living expenses.
  
  17
  
  Permanently Deleted
  
  1
- They had a Patreon so maybe that?
  
  10
- @bionicjoey @sirsquid They've had a lot of patreon money being funnelled in for years now...
  
  7
- Can't they just file for bankruptcy or something like that and not really pay the money? I think it isn't about the cash, but just shutting the project down
  
  3
As of right now, both Citra and Yuzu are available via Flathub!!! Get them now if you don't have it!!!

44
- How do I turn off Yuzu's auto-update? I don't want my computer to connect to a website that Nintendo now owns every time I boot up the emulator.
  
  13
  
  You should be fine. Yuzu checks the Github repo for updates which is now down. If you're still worried you could download it via Flathub and disable network access via Flatseal or terminal.
  
  19
  
  I have the opposite question. How do I make sure that Nintendo knows every time I run yuzu?
  
  14
- Anyone got the windows installer?
  
  2
  
  boom!
  
  4
  
  Lots of people have already forked it. I think it's even backed up on the Internet Archive too. You could also check the Yuzu subreddit as well.
  
  2
Emulator devs should rly do their best to be anonymous

41
- This shouldn't need to be the case; emulation is legal and has been tried by the courts in several jurisdictions.
  
  Sucks that laws like the DMCA make it illegal to bypass encryption for the sake of emulation or other fair use, so the legality of emulation isn't really "enough" in the face of even rudimentary protections.
  
  The nice thing about loving on a global society is that this can still be legally pursued elsewhere and we can all benefit. (Or coordinated/shared on the dark web, which can be untraceable even for those living in justifications where it might be illegal.)
  
  In this case, they'll be fine. They made a LLC and didn't take any personal liability in the settlement. They can just declare bankruptcy and fold.
  
  22
  
  Emulation may be legal on paper, but in the end, we are rarely ever a match for such massive corporations, and a legal system that lets them get away with outspending you on legal fees.
  
  15
  
  Sucks that laws like the DMCA make it illegal to bypass encryption for the sake of emulation or other fair use
  
  IANAL, but there are a bunch of carve outs for these purposes.
  
  It's unclear how this would have actually shaken out, but probably just because Nintendo is Nintendo, it would have gone in their favor. And yuzu didn't want to be the one to set bad precedent for any future endeavors.
  
  3
Holy shit this thing smells so bad. The announcement reads like "Nintendo's legal team wrote this in exchange for 1 mill smaller settlement"

41
Fuck Nintendo. All my homies hate Nintendo.

39
Reminder that paying Nintendo money is morally wrong and should be avoided when possible. Buy the consoles, sure, but pirate if you have to play the games.

24
- The consoles are the fucking things I don't want to buy... I'm sick of Nintendo and their "buy my console or fuck you" motto...
  
  I haven't bought an Xbox since the 360 and haven't bought a PlayStation since PS4 because I'm so sick of dropping hundreds of dollars on a console for one or two games since the parent companies are assholes and won't have the games ported to PC. At least Sony and Microsoft got the message that you can have your console and sell the games on PC
  
  13
- Permanently Deleted
  
  6
- It's the other way around imo. I don't want to pay hundreds of euros for a console (which is still just a computer) that is slower than my phone just because Nintendo puts artificial restrictions on what hardware the software they make can run on. I already have a PC that could run those games perfectly fine. Or rather, it can run those games perfectly fine, way better than a Switch actually. Unfortunately, the only way for me to play those games on my PC, without having to buy a console I don't need, is to pirate them.
  
  So basically, I can either pirate the games for free to play them on my PC or I pay for a console for no other reason but to get the privilege of being able to pay for the games.
  
  6
  
  Same here. I'm not gonna pay lots of money for a locked down piece of hardware that makes me pay indefinitely to play online and could take away my purchased games at a moment's notice.
  
  I still occasionally buy physical switch games to play on my sibling's switch. I buy physical because there's a resale value to the game. I feel like I actually own a copy of the game.
  
  Anyways, I have a big Steam backlog that I'll never get to because of 1) Factorio, 2) A personal game I'm programming in HTML/CSS/JS, and 3) riding my motorcycle.
  
  3
- This is a hot take if I've ever seen one. I may disagree with this particular action but supporting companies that make games I want to play and are demonstrably fun is never morally wrong.
  
  The world is more complex than that.
  
  3
  
  supporting companies that ~~make games I want to play~~ bully people into shutting down their projects...
  
  FTFY
  
  1
- Reminder that paying money is morally wrong and should be avoided when possible. Steal the consoles and pirate if you have to play the games.
  
  1
- Shit. How easy/safe is it to hack the Switch?
  
  1
They're shutting down the website too :( I really liked the in depth update logs. Yuzu (the website, emulator, android app) felt so extraordinarily polished for an emulator too. Shame Nintendo

17
That escalated quickly.

17
I agree to never give Nintendo my money again, I hope they also shut down someday.

15
Should've done a GoFundMe or something to fight Nintendo, I would've funded that...

12
What happened to the lawsuit that said that emulation is legal?

12
- Probably take a dim view of it when emulating current gen games.
  
  Also they made a ton of money off it.
  
  1
They must know they fucked up somewhere and decided to go this route rather than get exposed for potential shenanigans. From reading comments in other communities I was surprised to see a lot of people expected this outcome, although nobody was particularly specific about why (maybe someone here can give some insight.) For the record I've been on team "Fuck Nintendo" after the Gamecube, but I'd take the fact that other emulators haven't been targeted as possible hint that Nintendo got wind of something wacky going on. Who knows, maybe they're next?

11
- They ran a LLC company and earned a quite substantial amount of money with Yuzu. I also suspect that they don't actually plan to pay much of this fine and just let the LLC go bankrupt.
  
  25
  
  Financially the right move. If what I read was correct, it would take approx. 8 years of steady Patreon income to get to the $2.4M figure anyway.
  
  10
I'm planning to just Google my way out of this, but what's the cleanest way to block the repo I've been using in yay from updates without uninstalling the version I've got running already?

8
- Are you using the AUR? The package will probably just get orphaned or the upstream will change to a duplicate repo. I don't see Yuzu or Citra going anywhere considering they are open source.
  
  13
  
  Yeah pretty sure I installed the experimental branch from the AUR. I just didn't want the repo to be poisoned or something. 🤷‍♂️
  
  Thanks for the info!
  
  6
-- A wild Codeberg appeared. --

Codeberg is a collaboration platform providing Git hosting and services for free and open source software, content and projects.

Website: Codeberg.org

The organization selected the European Union for their headquarters and computer infrastructure, due to members' concerns that a software project repository hosted in the United States could be removed if a malicious actor made bad faith copyright claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Wikipedia: Codeberg e.V.

In June 2022 the Software Freedom Conservancy's "Give Up Github" campaign (in response to the GitHub Copilot licensing controversy) promoted Codeberg as an alternative to GitHub.

Conservancy: Give Up GitHub!

2
Already the installer is gone. I can't find it anywhere.

2
- I would be surprised if there wasn't a differently named fork up somewhere within a week. Not like the program itself was infringing on any law.
  
  There's just no winning a legal battle against a spiteful company that could drown you in fees before you even reach a ruling.
  
  10
- There he is!
  
  3
  
  Thanks!!
  
  2
Does anyone have a copy of the compiling guide? it just points me to a 404 page.

2

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