Wait what, there is a Nintendo switch emulator out there called Yuzu? Thanks Nintendo!
It’d be pretty great if an entire generation referred to this phenomenon as the Nintendo Yuzu Effect instead of the Streisand Effect. Or maybe the YouTube Adblock Effect? These companies keep accidentally telling everybody about shit that is relatively unknown yet universally desired in order to not have to pay exploitative prices. Even early Switch games are still fucking impossible to find for less than their launch price. And actually, now that I think about it, the MSRP of the Switch itself still hasn’t dropped either. It costs just as much today as it did 7 goddamn years ago to legally buy a Switch, BotW, and Mario Odyssey. Nintendo’s greed is the reason Switch piracy was ever big enough to be worth chasing, and now chasing it will cause an even bigger boom in it. Well, that and their shitty controllers. I don’t blame anybody for wanting to play BotW with an Xbox controller on their last-gen PC.
Nah keep it Streisand effect, as that’s where the term originated, if we changed phrases every single time a company did this, we’d be changing it every hour.
True, but nobody born after 9/11 knows who the fuck Barbra Streisand even is, so they definitely don’t know the story.
Yeah, but no one knows who Bob is and we keep calling him people’s uncles.
Which adds to the point: even though no one knows who she is anymore or about her giant beachfront mansion she tried to have removed from the Internet, her name lives on in infamy
Damn. Nevermind, you just appealed to my petty side. I can clearly see now that I was wrong haha.
Historians will look back one day and be like “this woman was so renowned for her terribleness, we can trace the entymology of this modern word back to her name”.
Maybe they know this banger and think she’s a song? 🤷
Lol people born after 9/11 were <9 when this song came out.
Fair, but they still could have heard it on the radio while their parents were driving them to hockey practice or welding seminars or whatever 9yos did back then 🤷
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
If gameboy games are anything to go by, prices almost never drop. I remember getting a GBA game for 20 euros back when the Nintendo SD was already ending its end of life.
There is a copy/fork of it already called nuzu
And if they kill that, it’s miizu. Then wezu. Then nouzu.
Turns out it was just a 14 year old who cloned everything and hadn’t commited any code to GitHub in the past year. Suyu is the new wave now.
It’s not the distribution that they wanted to stop. It was future updates
Yeah that’s not gonna stop either.
Not anymore
Looks like it’s still available through a mirror.
Imma just put this here, totally unrelated thing
Also, in a totally unrelated note, y’all should check out this project, I find it really cool
It’s getting pulled down basically everywhere so you’re going to have to find some smaller communities or individuals to get your hands on it now. That’s the real annoying part here lol
The code itself is not illegal, so hosting it is fine.
Just dont encourage piracy, like at all. No linking, no support, and certainly not patching for games which didnt come out yet and offering these fixes early for payment.Yeah, there’s totally not Mirrors around with the original source code that got pulled, and the entire internet having collectively archived it before Yuzu itself pulled the plug
Also it was the only Switch emulator in existence, there totally isn’t another emulator going around
Also you totally should not follow what I said here, y’know, emulation is wrong after all according to NintendoThat’s my Nintendo, always forcing me out of my comfort zone to discover cool, niche new communities to enhance my piracy know-how! Thanks, Nintendo!
If there’s one thing I know about the situation, a LOT of people who otherwise haven’t bothered are scrambling to download yuzu, if for any other reason to say fuck Nintendo.
It’s me, I’m people.
Me too. I’ve never cared for Switch games, I don’t even have a console, but now I’m discovering many gems on my computer.
Both of my roommates own a switch and I’m welcome to use them. If I’m gonna play, I’ll just use those. Still, I’m people.
Streisand effect for me. Never heard of this project until Nintendo caused a fuss.
same
Open source projects do not grow by themselves. It requires serious effort from dedicated developers to develop and maintain applications as complicated as an emulator. Yuzu’s developers are banned from doing so and I don’t see how this incident could help bringing more developers.
I’m sure there will be developers capable enough to keep it working on new operating systems. Games that worked with it until now will keep on working, and that’s what matters to most people anyways. No need for major changes to the codebase.
I truly admire the optimism but I think it’s also important to understand the hard work and dedication that the Yuzu developers put in.
You’re correct that someone probably will fork it and development will continue but it is not simple and it requires a very specialized skill set.
I just think it’s important to never take for granted the people who take time out of their lives to give the community something so wonderful.
I don’t think it’s diminishing the work of the Yuzu devs, but more so a strong belief in the capabilities of the open source community. They worked their asses off and are extremely talented, and I’m sure there are others who will hop in and carry the torch.
I’m also curious if there’s a programmatic way to circumvent the argument Nintendo made about bypassing DMCA by separating the emulator from the code that utilizes the keys such that you can use tool A to bypass DMCA, and tool B (Yuzu with game decryption removed) to run the circumvented game. In this case tool A already exists, and tool B could be a fork of Yuzu.
This is similar to how Tachiyomi forks can still exist. Even though tachiyomi never had a real case go to court, they’ve separated the extensions library from the reader so nothing comes “preloaded” with any potential copywrite infringing parts.
to keep it working on new operating systems
That’s really easier said than done
Yeah, of all the forks and mirrors I’ve checked out, none of them even have the Android builds. Obviously I’ve not checked them all, but still…
What do you mean with they are banned? Who’s gonna stop them from contributing to one of the many Yuzu forks? What are they gonna do about it?
A permanent injunction is entered against Defendant enjoining it and its members, agents, servants, employees, independent contractors, successors, assigns, and all those acting in privity or under its control from:
a. Offering to the public, providing, marketing, advertising, promoting, selling, testing, hosting, cloning, distributing, or otherwise trafficking in Yuzu or any source code or features of Yuzu
IANAL but that sounds like the court is banning those developers from working on Yuzu. I mean, you can still try to work on project that is 90% Yuzu but with another name but I feel like your lawyer would advise against that.
Who’s gonna stop them from contributing to one of the many Yuzu forks? What are they gonna do about it?
The answers are “the court system” and “have the police arrest them for defying a court order” respectively.
Can’t they just create pseudonyms?
Okay then what? Unless the devs try real hard to stay hidden, Nintendo’s lawyers will do a little bit of digging, they will find out who those pseudonyms are, and sue again. And this time the devs will be extremely lucky if they can get away with just paying out 2.4m because the law generally does not appreciate it very much when you try to ignore and avoid its previous rulings. A console emulator is absolutely not worth the potentially devastating legal consequences.
Nintendo would stop them. If yuzu devs want to go to court, they can continue development.
Yuzu devs could do it anonymously, but that’s gl on not doxxing yourself, at risk of lawsuit.
it’s most likely part of the cease and desist order
I mean, I guess it can happen through private web communities of course. It would just enter the region of game cracks.
Also marginally possible someone reverse engineers, and puts up something unrecognizable compared to the original.
this doesn’t apply to hundreds of their contributors tho right
What if I told you that throwing more developers at a problem != that problem getting solved faster?
there are hundreds of open issues on ryujinx.
so there are hundreds of problems with zero developers to solve them.
Switch 2s architecture will probably be very similar, so Nintendo might have done it to protect the next gen.
Yeah like that is going to work. There are forks left and right.
Forks are meaningless.
Unless a team steps up to continue development, the project is as good as dead.
I can still play emulated games right now, so its alive and well for my purpose (playing games that I fucking paid for without stutter at 60fps)
Are there any that actually have a new team behind them that would presumably add Switch 2 support?
Dunno, but it will come
It is working. It buys them enough time to sell enough new hardware and games. It will take a really long time until development picks up again, since basically every developer associated (not necessarily every one who has contributed to the project) with the yuzu group can no longer legally work on that project. So basically a lot of expertise is lost.
There are literally working forks right now. Switch 2 support is different though. We’ll have to wait and see how that turns out.
Yes there are forks, but having a fork and maintaining it are 2 completely different things.
Absolutely.
Although i think the need and the drive to use emulators is higher then ever. So the next project without direct responsibility will come eventually I think.
Of course it’s not gonna work. But that’s just how lawyers think I suppose.
More like Nintendo thinks they can deal with their costumers, but the outcome stays the same so it doesn’t really matter
It’s a shame about Yuzu. Have you heard about this new emulator called Nuzu?
“Sue you” lmao
Don’t forget about it’s inevitable fork “suye”.
This aged like milk.
Don’t be silly, milk lasts a whole lot longer
Jokes on Nintendo, my next handheld is most likely still going to be a steam deck (clone?). The only difference now is I won’t buy a physical game and emulate their games on it by (downloading) a backup.
I’m not proud of it but I’ve pirated games when I was a kid, but I bought every game I pirated if I could get it on modern hardware. Even the mediocre games like Minecraft.
It’s tempting as a kid when your parents gets you an Xbox but never got any games for it, eventually you wanna play more than demos. They got duke nukem forever with the xbox and as a kid I preferred the pack in game of Kinect adventures over it.
Definitely get a Deck, it’s shocking how powerful the hardware is. If price is an issue you can wait until the refurbished ones go on sale again and pick up the cheapest model for $280.
One day when I don’t feel as poor. I got more important things like going into debt for a piece of paper.
Nintendo basically sent out a press release saying “Its super easy to pirate our games!”. This is really only positive for them if no other projects show up.
And if ryujinx didn’t also exist
Shhh
This time it won’t be based in Jersey either good luck closing down a project hosted in China or San Marino. The Yuzu team has done a great service closing the case as quickly as possible
I don’t understand why people who work on these things don’t protect their identity and location any better…
Host in a random country, accept crypto donations and make them untraceable by switching them to monero, always use a VPN…
Right? It seems the official discord also had links to where to get ROMs, as in pirated ROMs. I can’t believe they got complacent knowing Nintendo could come after them at any second.
This made me wonder if blockchain tech could, hypothetically, be used as a sort of distributed SCM platform, where each commit is stored as data appended to a transaction, not unlike git. Blockchain’s polycentric structure would solve the issue of resilience and integrity, and Monero’s technology could be used to anonymize the commits.
This would of course come with all of the disadvantages of blockchain, and the project would still need a central authority to accept or reject commits, to manage branches, and to define which transactions represent the HEAD of each branch. I think it’s at least an interesting concept.
But we can already mirror a git repository, and you can already sign your commits. The weak point here was the developers’ identities, not the platform on which the data was hosted.
Yes but they are debt slaves to Nintendo for life
Nah they Incorporated specifically to protect themselves. The company will go bankrupt, but the people will be protected.
Oh that’s good to know
Not necessarily. The LLC will pay out as much as it can and then filler for bankruptcy. The individuals will likely get off scott free since they’ve not actually been convicted of any wrongdoing.
I imagine that developing Yuzu and Citra would be a huge item on their CVs, too. Honestly, if Nintendo were smart, they would have tried to buy the project somehow and hire the developers to work on backwards compatibility for whatever the console that comes after the Switch 2 is…
So, if I was to download this, I could play all the Switch games? Sounds fun. I definitly wouldnt do it, I have too much respect for Nintendo, but if I had do it, what games do people would recommend, for example? I just want to bring awarNES on this.
I’ve heard Super Mario Wonder is fantastic and may just run great on Steam Deck.
That sounds like something I would like to play. If only…
Copied from another post I made
Mario + rabbids, pokemon legends, zelda:BOTW/TOTK (pick one they’re both pretty similar and have their pros/cons), Mario Wonder, Mario Odyssey, Pikmin 4, Cadence of Hyrule (zelda spin-off of crypt of the necrodancer), zelda:links awakening remake, Mario rpg remake, and Bayonetta 2 (can also play on wii u emulator, 3 isn’t as good)
Would you believe that 2 days ago I didn’t know this was a thing, and now, I have the software and a list of great games to play? Now I know, and I’m gonna have to make sure as many people as possible are aware of this. I think I’ll make a document with simple download links, so people can make sure to block this content.
I really like breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom.
Thanks. So, someone with a Steamdeck who would like to hurt Nintendo could play it just like that… Kind of crazy when you think about it.
Not just play it, but play it better than on a switch. The games run better and can run at higher resolutions
Lol. I can’t believe this so I will try it just to make sure you’re wrong. But if it’s true… more people need to know about it.
So BotW can play pretty well on Steam Deck now, TOTK on the other hand… it’s a mixed bag. Requires a lot of tweaking and even then you’ll see dips into the 20s for FPS and the occasional stutter. It’s playable, just not smooth. That said, the OG switch only performs just marginally better with the OLED Switch being the best of the three.
This is also coming from someone who has done a lot of tweaking for ToTK to make it work to a satisfactory level. There may have been some further developments in the past couple months, I haven’t tried since the start of the year
Having played TOTK on both the deck and on a bigger brother Linux desktop, it’s for sure better on a machine that can has a reasonable, dedicated GPU. It’s passable on the deck, enjoyable on the desktop.
I’m playing the Super Mario RPG remake now.
I never played it, or really any JRPG before (at least not very much). I gotta say I’m really enjoying it.
How do I hack the shit out of my oled switch
You get a steamdeck.
Alas, the only easily hackable Switch’s were made until about a year after release. To hack modern ones requires a special mod chip that isn’t easily soldered on.
Nintendo unfortunately did a good job on hack proofing the Switch.But you say its still possible?
Yes, and with literally every other console over time it will get easier and easier
Yes, but you need a modchip and some knowhow. Or you find a guy
I haven’t looked into the details myself since I got lucky with my used Switch. But, yeah, it should still be possible.
Get a hammer and smash the fuck out of it.
And even their worst accusations are ‘It cost five percent of our biggest game’s revenue! It was only a record-breaking success!’
My speculation is that their main goal was to thwart the teams potential efforts emulating the next Nintendo console. It is likely going to be close enough to the switch that the same team will have an easy time emulating it. Not anymore.
Fuck Nintendo, first year I won’t be celebrating March 10th #FreeBowser
So they’ll stop giving frequent updates to the software huh? That’ll make it easier to pirate.
That right let’s teach them a lesson by enjoying their hard work and artistic expression without paying them because that makes them the assholes!
Nintendo refuses to fix the joycon drift issue and still charges full price for a 7 years old device. We will call it a moral draw.
Funny how people use that term moral victory when what they mean is that they have no “moral” qualms with stealing. Especially if they can convince themselves the company deserves it. Thats what you’ve said. Rules and laws don’t apply as long as you have your “moral victory” Congrats, winner!
Look at this corporate slave handing down life lesson. Get off your high horse bitch.
Corporate slave? Life lessons? I don’t remember inviting you to my ted talk.
Oh no, one faceless corporation won’t pay another faceless corporation for a sale they wouldn’t have made anyway.
Gunpei Yokoi, Shigeru Miyamoto, Satora Iwata, and Reggie Fils-Aimé…Faceless? Of all the gaming companies Nintendo is literally the least “faceless”.
Seriously, when did the entire emulator scene turn into a bunch of whiny simps crying foul every time Nintendo, a company of hard working and creative artists ,tries to protect its art. Seriously, at what point of success are you allowed to labor without being exploited by shitty people who refuse to pay for art. Video games are art, the makers are artist, and people who emulate for the purpose of piracy are shit. You’re not kewl and edgy because you refuse to pay for something. It makes you a useless freeloader. Your actions ensure the continued enshitification of gaming. You’re the reason everything is a live service hell of micro transactions and $20 horse skins. Buy the games, support the artist, quit trying to justify your actions, and if you like me enjoy emulation legally, stop standing up for and supporting the useless freeloaders.
Do… do you think the people who actually make the game get royalties or something? Bc once the game is made that’s it for them lol
Do… do you believe the people who actually make the game don’t continue to work for the company, work on sequels and other projects, and generally rely on the financial success of their artwork for their continued livelihood? BC once the game is made, they usually don’t quit their jobs and stop making art. lol
Congrats! You’re part of the problem!
i’ve been known to be a bit of a naughty boy
You’ve got a little shoe polish on your teeth, boot licker.
Oh please, do me a favor and come up with something more biting and critical than accusing me of not being able to make salient points about piracy without the assistance of my corporate masters leather clad encouragements.
The very beginning. The emulator scene has existed since the 80s. The emulator scene has fought against Nintendo since literally the NES. And they have frequently won.
But for what purpose other than to circumvent honest and responsible commerce? I have not seen a single reasonable explanation for why emulation and piracy are intrinsically linked and therefore require support for one in order to substantiate the other.
I’m anti capitalist and explicitly anti commerce, especially with regards to large corporations, so. Whether it’s for piracy or not doesn’t matter. When I buy a game, I should have a legal right to do whatever I want with the data comprising that game. Including creating software to play it on other devices. It, therefore, should absolutely be legal to create and use emulators. Whether a particular end user is using it on legitimately purchased copies is beyond the scope of control of the creator of the emulator. This was already settled in courts in the 90s.
Piracy is also moral. It’s always moral to pirate content created and/or distributed my international corporations with income in the billions.
So morality of crime is defined by the success of the victim? So if you become incredibly successful for what you created there becomes a point where it’s moral for you to lose all rights and control over your art? So then the moral of the lesson is art is worthless and creating new things serves no useful purpose? Almost like the game companies learned that same lesson from people like you and just started making shittier games to accommodate their shittier fans. Thank you!
So morality of crime is defined by the success of the victim?
Close, the morality of a crime is defined by the impact that committing the crime has on the lives and rights of others. Killing someone is a vile crime. You’ve taken away someone’s inaliable right to life. Stealing from the poor is a vile crime. You have taken the means of survival from someone who struggles to survive. Stalking is a vile crime. You’ve interceded on someone’s inaliable right to privacy and safety.
How does downloading a cracked video game or a TV show impact others? Who is being victimized, and how are they being victimized? Say, for instance, that today I download a game for free. What tangible impact does this have on others?
So if our ‘victim’ is a multi billion dollar corporation that is one of the fastest growing game companies in the world and is quickly approaching income levels rivaling some small nations, the tangible impact that me downloading their game for free has is literally none. There is no impact. They will never even know that I did it, and I do not consider the “right to commerce” as a fundamental human right. I do not think that me taking potential profits from billionaire investors is in any way interceding on their human rights and also do not believe that the action causes any harm to them.
So if you become incredibly successful for what you created there becomes a point where it’s moral for you to lose all rights and control over your art?
Corporations are not people. The designers artists and programmers at Nintendo do not direcy profit from game sales. They are paid a salary by their company. Again, it’s relative. There is no such thing as a moral absolute, we have to consider the context in which actions happen and the effects those actions cause. Stealing from the poor is vile. Stealing from Walmart isn’t.
So then the moral of the lesson is that art is worthless and creating new things serves no useful purpose?
I do not consider the primary purpose of art to be profit for shareholders, if that’s what you consider “useful purpose”. Art is useful in that it communicates human emotions and experiences. It’s useful in that it delights us, it inspires us, and we take great enjoyment in it. Even if all art was free, this would still be true. Free games are fun. Free books are worth reading. Free music is worth listening to. Paintings don’t lose value because I can see them without paying. Your view of art and your view of capital are so intertwined that you are ignorant of the reality that art is not capital.
Almost like the game companies learned that same lesson from people like you and just started making shittier games to accomodate their shittier fans.
Every single corporation on Earth will cut as many corners as possible to generate the maximum possible revenue for the minimal possible cost. Shitty games still sell exceedingly well. They have a profit incentive to invest as little money into their games as possible. Games as products are less enjoyable than games as art. We love games whose creators felt passion in creating them. We love games whose designers believed in what they were making, and felt connected to their product. Faceless corporations lose this entirely. Games are how Nintendo makes money. Therefore, even if no one wants to make this game, it must be made. For Nintendo must turn profit. This is part of the reason some games are amazing experiences and others are clear, transparent cash grabs.
First, I want to tell you how much I genuinely appreciate your care and effort in replying to my comment. You paid it more respect than it deserved, a fact I acknowledge in hindsight. Second, I admit my bias in this matter. I, like many children of a certain era have a strong emotional attachment to Nintendo as a brand. Through highly effective propaganda coupled with, what I will admit for myself was, some of the only joy I experienced growing up a poor child of color in the rust belt of the U.S. Nintendo, Sugar Cereal, and Saturday Morning Cartoons were on the same level as Thanksgiving, American Football, and Church on Sunday. They were our politics, our religion. Third, I believe were we afforded the luxury of better conditions of conversation we would find we have many beliefs and values in common. I too believe stealing from Walmart is no real crime. I concede your arguments are sound. My observations and stated opinions were influenced more by emotion than logic. Again I appreciate you taking the time to share your opinions. That is something that takes more courage to achieve day by day.
I’m pretty sure that people pirating games have little to do with the current surge micro transaction filled games. It’s the opposite, the people who buy all that shit and let companies get away with it are to blame.
Politely disagree, as live service and micro transactions are part of the greater push by the industry to take away physical and/or perpetual ownership of the games we buy. The people who pay aren’t perpetuating the push, they are simply victims of it.
Is that a copypasta
Yep, straight from the script the George soros space laser society of America gave me. Can’t wait til my $20 check clears so I can buy a new keffiyeh.
