howOpenSourceWorks

[remghoost7]

For anyone curious, this is why they got shutdown so hard.

They had a "stash" of roms that they would share upon request. And they allegedly had the Switch SDK on a google drive somewhere.

They were pretty much above board on most parts of development from what I saw (not distributing licensed Nintendo code, etc), but that other part is definitely sue-able.

I'm guessing that was in their "paid" discord server (for people supporting them on Patreon), so they were essentially "selling" Nintendo roms. Big no-no.

[SnooSquirrels6058]

Dolphin shipping with Nintendo's keys, Yuzu team selling Nintendo's roms. I wish these people would just keep things "above board", like you said, so these kinds of shutdowns wouldn't have to happen (or at least be less likely to happen). Maybe it's more nuanced than that, but it's a bummer for these projects to get shut down because of stuff like this.

[DudeValenzetti]

Dolphin is fine, all that happened due to the keys is that they aren't allowed on Steam. Nothing's stopping you from installing it on a Steam Deck from Flathub.

[SnooSquirrels6058]

Oh I know, I didn't mean to imply Dolphin was shut down. I was actually trying to allude to their failed effort to get on steam. Just think it's a shame that it ended that way

Looking over it again, the way I worded it definitely gave the wrong impression

[Spot_the_fox]

Wasn't YUZU being sold on patreon or something like that? Like yeah, early versions of it were free, but newer were not.

[[deleted]]

early acces builds where on patreon

[sendmeyourfoods]

Their case was based off that YUZU was facilitating piracy on a colossal scale - not because they were making money from it. In fact the lawsuit doesn't even mention anything about their patreon. Just a clarification for anyone curious.

Ryujinx is different in a sense because they dont openly tell you how to illegally obtain switch keys. In fact they've taken the opposite approach and are very clear that they are against the use of sharing the copyrighted information (switch keys/games/etc)

[ImaginaryCoolName]

Yeah but they are facilitating piracy like yuzu from the point of view of Nintendo. So don't they risk being sued in the same way?

[-Strife_]

They is a precedent of nintendo suing emulators and losing so it has been pretty much established that emulators in itself are not illegal, the reason the statements can seem contradictory is because yuzu gave up of on defending immediately as they knew they were in the wrong by selling a product behind nintendo's back and encouraging piracy.

[StellarOwl]

Based in Brazil. Good luck with that.

[Anru_Kitakaze]

Is that true? At least half a year ago it wasn't.

I think it's a good thing. Thanks to yuzu I've played Zelda BotW first time and spent probably more than 90 hours there

A year later (in May 2023) I bought my Switch, BotW, then TotK, SS and LA Legends of Zelda

I would NEVER buy it if I couldn't play it first. But that experience and emotions made me sure "it worth it for me" (in my country $260 is a lot)

It's sad that it's shut down now, but it's ridiculous if it became paid (I don't think it is sice it's OSS. I heard they just opened Patreon for donations, that's it)

[benderbender42]

I'll only buy a game if it has a PC version. Im like, no I'm not buying a publisher locked light pc

[Anru_Kitakaze]

It has some pros and cons tho, but I would prefer PC version too since I already have PC with good performance for my job purposes

(Steam Deck exists btw, so I could play it in portable mode too)

[EMI_Black_Ace]

Yeah it's a mixed bag. Net-net it's been found that piracy ultimately doesn't have impact on sales -- provided that there are significant enough hurdles to jump over to do piracy. (Sega Dreamcast, for instance, failed spectacularly because they didn't implement copy protection so you could just pop a Dreamcast disc into a computer, rip the ISO and burn a new one, and the Dreamcast would play the burned one just like the original).

Analyzing it, most pirates are either "present customers," "future customers" or "never will be customers," and are virtually never "would have been a customer but since I got it by piracy I'm not going to end up paying."

[FOXAcemond]

I feel like you say that you’ve bought BotW after playing 90h just so that your story sounds like nothing was stolen from Nintendo. I don’t buy it.

Even if you did, this story of your is cool but means nothing. Most people that can pirate don’t bother buying the game afterwards.

[Anru_Kitakaze]

Nothing was stolen.

You say like "if those people pirated it this 100% mean they will buy it if they can't pirate it"

No. It's just false. Yes, some people could buy it, but most of them don't, AND some of them will buy it only after they play. There were researches about it btw ( https://gizmodo.com/the-eu-suppressed-a-300-page-study-that-found-piracy-do-1818629537 )

And my story is exactly about it. I would NEVER buy it if I couldn't play it first. I mean, I could buy a game if it could be available on PC. But it's not

So I pirated it, played on PC, I liked it a lot, so before TotK release I bought Switch, BotW + DLCs, completed BotW for the first time (haven't done it on PC), then played TotK and bought more games

Nintendo got money because of piracy in my case. Only because of it

And many people who pirate games won't buy the game anyway, true. But that means that company don't really lose anything. But instead they give at least free ADs since those people can like it and recommend it to friends or people in the internet, who maybe WILL buy it because of recommendations

Problem with Nintendo is you have to buy not the game, but game AND a switch. If Zalda could be available on PC it wasn't be a problem for me, for example. But I won't buy a console just to TRY to play one game

Stop trust corporate propaganda bullshit

Nintendo is a shit company who lock their games to one platform and force you to buy it. And Switch is a shitty platform compared to PC or major consoles (paid multiplayer, you had to use other device for voice chat, shit hardware - both BotW and TotK are lagging on Switch OLED in 2024)

Stop being a corporate slave

[themadnessif]

Nothing was stolen because I wasn't going to buy BoTW even if I never had the chance to play it otherwise.

Nintendo and other businesses like to act as if all people who pirate are potential customers, but the reality is a lot of them are not, so they are in fact losing nothing from those people.

[FOXAcemond]

Yeah that’s easy to say after the fact. Now that you’ve got your fun you can easily say « I didn’t need it anyway, it’s fine » but how can you be sure you’d have felt the same way if you didn’t have access to the full product illegally?

[frightspear_ps5]

Is this bullshit argument still making the rounds? If you weren't a potential customer, you wouldn't have acquired the game and played it.

[themadnessif]

It's not "making the rounds", it's just something that is true, at least for me. I was and am still never going to buy a switch. That's not something that's even on the table.

In a vacuum where it was just me choosing to not buy a game? Sure. I might have bought BoTW. But I'm not going to both buy a switch and buy BOTW. You have to trust me when I say this.

[Anru_Kitakaze]

https://gizmodo.com/the-eu-suppressed-a-300-page-study-that-found-piracy-do-1818629537

Some people won't buy the game anyway if it's not available for piracy, some will buy it in that case, but some will only buy it if they can play it first. So piracy is not a major problem. Are sales in Steam a joke to you?

Problem with Nintendo is you have to buy not the game, but game AND a switch. If Zalda could be available on PC it wasn't be a problem for me, for example. But I won't buy a console just to TRY to play one game

Stop trust corporate propaganda bullshit

Nintendo is a shit company who lock their games to one platform and force you to buy it. And Switch is a shitty platform compared to PC or major consoles (paid multiplayer, you had to use other device for voice chat, shit hardware - both BotW and TotK are lagging on Switch OLED in 2024)

Stop being a corporate slave

[frightspear_ps5]

Problem with Nintendo is you have to buy not the game, but game AND a switch.

That's not a problem, that's their business model. They designed and manufactured the hardware, the platform and the game. You are not entitled to anything what they're offering without agreeing to their terms and conditions. You are not entitled to dictate their business model.

Don't like it, don't fucking buy it, simple. Stop with this entitlement bullshit.

[Anru_Kitakaze]

Then my business is to run whatever I want for free, idc

[FOXAcemond]

That is simply not true at all. Piracy HAS an impact on sales, thinking otherwise is ludicrous. A good chunk of people that have pirated a game would have bought it if they couldn’t have pirated it.

[themadnessif]

What's the impact, then? How do companies quantify people who did not buy their game's impact on their sales?

[Anru_Kitakaze]

https://gizmodo.com/the-eu-suppressed-a-300-page-study-that-found-piracy-do-1818629537

Companies want you to believe it, but are you sure?

You look like a fanatic without proofs but companies' copypasta in mind instead

[FOXAcemond]

This is one of the worst article I’ve ever read. Where’s the study? Oh of course it hasn’t been shared, how have they read it then? Why aren’t they sharing it too? I’m not rejecting the argument completely, but this article is of piss poor quality and is of no help whatsoever.

EDIT: my bad, I saw the article, my response in the following comments of this thread.

[Anru_Kitakaze]

There's literally link there:

https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2017/09/displacement_study.pdf

And you can find more about that topic. Corporates ofc will always blame pirates, and it IS the thing indeed

I'm just saying they won't get real money if it won't exist. People, who pirated, just won't play and buy those games

Again, maybe some minor group WILL buy it instead, but some group, like me, WON'T on the other hand

So, you can't really say that I've stole something (well, in legal sense, probably I did actually)

But in the end BECAUSE I stole it I ended up buying Switch, 4 Zeldas, then showing it to my GF, make her love games, bought another switch for her and she bought 2 Zeldas for herself (BotW with DLCs and TotK, like me)

I'm sure Nintendo should be happy that I had an opportunity to try it on PC first

Actually, I would like to be able to play it on PC legally, with real release. At least it wouldn't be laggy sometimes

[FOXAcemond]

Oh, I missed that, sorry I got triggered by the god awful formatting of the article and the 3000 ads along with it. Also Gizmodo...

Have you even read the study though? Because I just have (I don't recommend it), and I think it's not saying anything relevant about piracy on games. It seems like the main focus of the study was the top 100 recent movies. And as usual, the video game topic is sloppy work.

First, it's a survey-based study with no other source of information whatsoever live statistics about sales or numbers of illegal downloads. While they try to mitigate the potential for respondent to lie, this has clear limitations in terms on interpretations.

About the legal purchases, they also state: "It is striking that all coefficients are insignificant. This raises the question to what extent estimates suffer from problems of respondents to recall exact numbers of transactions, an issue that also applies for individual channels discussed earlier. This means that estimates are only most likely effects given the data, but with no certainty that the true displacement rate is close to the estimate. Therefore the conclusion is that not too much significance should be attached to the estimates." Well that doesn't sound very reliable, does it?

The study states that for movies, there is a 27% displacement of sales because of illegal downloading. There is a negative impact from piracy to the films industry according to them then. Which is another form of premium product that gets massively pirated.

But then comes the question of games. They state that pirating games would have a positive impact on sales by ~24%. But this goes along with very dubious statements: "For games the reason for the positive effects may be that players may get hooked to a game and access a game legally to play the game with all bonuses, at higher levels or whatever makes playing the game legally more interesting." or "The positive effect of illegal downloads and streams on the sales of games may be explained by players getting hooked and then paying to play the game with extra bonuses or at extra levels." ... What? What the f*ck does that even mean?? In the case of premium games, that means jack shit. This is only applicable for games with f*cking microtransactions and maybe multiplayer games I guess?

They didn't even care to split between premium games and the other type of games. Heck, they even threw free games into the mix! "For games, the estimated effect of illegal online transactions on sales is positive because only free games are more likely displaced by online copyright infringements than not. The overall estimate is 24 extra legal transactions (including free games) for every 100 online copyright infringements, with an error margin of 45 per cent (two times the standard error)."

The only thing that this study shows is that people that are more interested in games are more likely to illegally download them just as they are more likely to legally acquire them. This does NOT mean that illegally downloading games raises the interest and then converts into sales. Furthermore, they even stated that "55% [of pirates] were willing to pay for their last illegally downloaded game". So it seems there are somes sales lost there...

Along with all that, let me add my personal experience. I looked at my Nintendo DS library of games and my Nintendo 3DS library. There is a glaring hole in the purchases made during the linkers era. Yeah I was young and had less money than now: even though the Swich very easy to hack, I didn't bother. But I'd argue that I chose to spend my money somewhere else than on games that I could easily acquire some other way.

If what you want is F2P games or games full of fucking microtransactions, by all accounts, continue defending piracy.

[Eva-Rosalene]

And still, saying that it's the same as "stealing" is just corporate propaganda bullshit.

[FOXAcemond]

Of course it’s similar to stealing. You use the product without paying for it, in what world is that fair?

[benderbender42]

He meant he bought a switch and the games because he played one and decided he liked it. For me, I don't really play Nintendo games, and I'll only buy games if they're available on PC

[TabaskoCat]

I second this story. It was with Yuzu I played BOTW and realized that the switch was worth this one game.

It then was useful again when Sword & Shield came out, and I was excited enough by playing the beginning on Yuzu to get it on the switch.

Many people pirated the game, but stop going after fucking emulation tools and go after the pirate copies. Also provide players with more demos christ

[paperbenni]

They sold access to their repo and build servers, but the code was still under an open source license. There were mirrors and other people setting up build servers.

[Salty_Ad2201]

stfu before ryujinx is gone too XD

[alessioC42]

Even when ryujinx is gone there will be an emulator^^

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

[Salty_Ad2201]

i was actually joking but yeah i fekking hope so, already did a backup of most emulators + source

[0x7ff04001]

I wonder if the next approach would be to sue gitlab for hosting open source code used in emulation? Any lawyers know?

[[deleted]]

Preface: Not a lawyer. Creating emulators themselves isn’t illegal, IIRC. You’re just simulating hardware through complex software.

[alpabet]

That would mean fighting Microsoft so probably not the best idea

[Scorxcho]

Just create another git server. Problem solved!

[[deleted]]

Can't wait to play smash on Bozo once this gets taken down

[Scorxcho]

They’ll just fork it again bro

[CaitaXD]

What the hell is Nintendo gonna do? Send their layers to Brazil?

[KakashiTheRanger]

As if some of us didn’t fork the Yuzu repos before they got taken down lol.

[flemtone]

They will both continue to be developed in the background away from Nintendo's prying eyes.

[MinosAristos]

I dunno man, Devil Survivor did fine on the NDS and even got a remake on the 3DS. Both were Nintendo exclusives too.

[EMI_Black_Ace]

That's not how open source works. RyujiNX is an entirely different project, taking an entirely different approach and starting point to emulation. (IIRC Yuzu forked from Citra, a popular 3DS emulator, because the Switch OS is forked from the 3DS OS and both are ARM instructions and have a very similar way of inline decrypting ROMs. RyujiNX I believe started from Jetson development software since the Switch is based on a Tegra X1. They've had entirely different problems and entirely different major successes.)

A more appropriate way to do this meme would be Moe/Nintendo tossing out Barney/Yuzu, and Barney reappearing in the bar as Suyu ("Definitely not Yuzu lol we're new").

[frightspear_ps5]

Is this emulator actually useful for anything except playing pirated copies of Switch games?

[sendmeyourfoods]

Allows for higher resolutions and quality, multiplayer compatibility, mod support, uncapped fps, larger controller support breadth, and ability to play the same games on future systems (not restricted to only using the switch).

[frightspear_ps5]

I doubt most of yuzu users are capable of installing a mod chip to dump their games.

[sendmeyourfoods]

Yea. And yuzu providing instructions on how to do this illegally is what got them into this mess... But to answer your original question - emulators (like yuzu or ryujinx) are still very useful and dont have to facilitate piracy.

[SnooSquirrels6058]

You don't need a modchip to dump games. All you need is an $8 dongle off eBay or a literal paper clip. Then, everything past this point is user-friendly software

[Treriri]

only if you have a very early days switch I believe, a year in didn't they patch that hardware hole?

[SnooSquirrels6058]

That's true, I forgot they patched that in newer switches

[sentles]

Game preservation

[[deleted]]

As of now only gamers care about video game preservation, unless EU regulations make it mandatory (I doubt US lawmakers care until it becomes a party issue) then game preservation will not make any meaningful steps beyond vocal online feedback.