Fuck Nintendo. All they have done is ensure I never buy one of their products again.
Same! In fact, I have a switch, but tears of the kingdom was the last thing I bought for it.
I’ve skipped everything else. It’s not worth supporting an evil company.
I will always say this in these “Nintendo shuts down beloved fan project” threads: why don’t the people working on these projects operate anonymously and release via torrent? I feel like I’ve been reading the same story for 20 years. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone at this point that Nintendo will come after you.
Nintendo didn’t put legal pressure on emulator devs for decades at this point, which made devs less cautious about preserving their pseudonymity.
Now it’s too late and they can’t stop Nintendo from finding out who they are and which mistakes they did at some point over the years.
Maybe a new generation of emulator developers will be more protective of their identity, by using hosting providers like Njalla or privacy networks like i2p. The latter would limit access (as it requires i2p), which isn’t desirable for most users.
While that’s true, it’s incredibly reductive to a baseline of “nintendo should win because they are powerful and others aren’t”
How many of these emulators were shut down through legal action or threat of legal action? I mean, the list goes on and on
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/PlayStation_emulators
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/PlayStation_2_emulators
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/PlayStation_3_emulators
https://www.ppsspp.org/
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/PlayStation_Vita_emulators
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Xbox_emulators
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Xbox_360_emulatorsOh right, this happened https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment,_Inc._v._Connectix_Corp.
Nintendo is using every action possible to stop switch emulation, because, unlike other console companies, they don’t produce any advanced or specific hardware anymore, and they purely survive through their IP.
And because these are never finished projects. People can rant and rave about cloning the git all day, but without active, knowledgeable developers with the knowledge of the original dev team, these projects are dead. It’s not about using the emulators as they exist today… it’s about continuing to keep them working going forward. Anything that releases in the last year or two of the Switch’s life is now at risk of being lost forever into Nintendo’s archives.
Anything that releases in the last year or two of the Switch’s life is now at risk of being lost forever into Nintendo’s archives.
Somebody will archive it, for two reasons: 1) data hoarders and 2) hacked Switches.
Sure, it will be as playable as it is right now, right as the project shuts down. Any updates or improvements? Any new games? Only if someone else takes up the mantle and risks having world police nintendo suing them
I assume emulator development will continue eventually. Who knows when that will be, though.
The thing that sucks is that I’m in the middle of a couple of games, so if something upgrades and Ryujinx isn’t compatible, I’m hosed.
This is the first time they’ve been suing emulator developers.
Yeah! And they’ve been so cool and supportive of the gaming community thus far, <3 nintendo https://www.thegamer.com/a-snapshot-of-nintendos-convoluted-legal-history/
There were so many Nintendo apologists when Yuzu was taken down because “Yuzu used actual nintendo source code, so that’s why they were taken down, it won’t happen to Ryujinx.” Yet here we are. Nintendo is by far the shittiest company when it comes to protecting their IP, because it’s all they have. Turns out, Mario is a fucking bootlicker
I don’t understand how people think getting rid of emulators is good. Having emulators is better as a consumer than not having them at all, since it can give gamers more ways to play their games and might incentivize Nintendo to add features to compete with emulators (think better res and fps, mod support, save states, no online requirement).
Because a subset of people are and always will be idiots. Remember: some people think unions exist to steal your money, socialism is communist dictatorship propaganda, and privatization of government services is good for everybody.
Nintendo fanboys are a special breed of stupid, arguing with them about Nintendo’s policies and anti consumer practices is just a wasted effort.
Yuzu did not use “nintendo source code”.
They simply hosted decryption keys in their repository. But that still was not the focus of Nintendo’s move. It was that Yuzu and its company profited directly from the release of The Legend of Zelda.
Makes sense, what was the focus on their move here?
It’s still not clear what their request entailed.
Although the real root reason, is likely the near release of Switch 2 and the consequent need to be as clean as possible for investors.
Well he is always saving the monarchy. Should have been kinda obvious 👑
Saving one monarchy from another.
Yeah but Bowser at least gives his subjects free healthcare. Sometimes even brings them back to life. When have you seen a skeletoad?
True. The only time we’ve seen a Toad’s skeleton is when they’re electrocuted in Mario Strikers Charged.
because it’s all they have
I’m not quite sure you fully understand what you said here, given your surrounding arguments. Nintendo literally cannot exist if they allow emulators without becoming just another Sony/Microsoft. And they cannot realistically compete against those two.
fuck Nintendo and fuck fanboys who defend them at every turn. breath of the wild was a 7/10 game
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I’ve hated every cartoony zelda ever made. I will die playing LttP over and over again.
Link Between Worlds was awesome as well.
I would consider that cartoony as well. You might disagree but that’s ok. I’m not trying to pretend like my opinion is popular, it’s just how I personally feel.
Botw is easily a 9/10 for me . Totk too. I really like Nintendos take on open world. However, I still appreciate the other Zelda games a lot and I hope they don’t completely abandon that linear formula
The world is interactive but bland. Except a few scenic vistas, there’s nothing interesting about the botw’s open world.
All the more reason to buy their next system at V1.0 with 0 games.
…keep it in the box for a year and keep an eye on a hack hitting the news.
I say this as a die-hard 3D Zelda fan:
I was soooo boooored in BOTW! There was no current main story. It all happened in the past. You’re basically playing through the climax the entire time. And I hated it. I mainly play Zelda for the story, and this was a very poorly told one.
TOTK was somewhat better because it gave us better characters (I will die for Tulin), a bit better characterization (I enjoyed Zelda getting a lot more fleshed out this time), and a somewhat better story… but there were still way too many reused story beats. That is to say, the story was fleshed out much better, but they still reused the overall story structure from BOTW (get the memories fight the four bosses in the four temples, etc.). They did add a fifth temple and a mid-game story thing, but that’s mostly it. They also didn’t even acknowledge how similar some things were to their counterparts in BOTW (ex. the
MaliceGloom), which really bothered me. Also, some stuff just felt… unfinished. Like the reporter bird who, by the end of it all, just ends up pondering and trying to figure himself out… and that’s it. It felt like setup for DLC, but there wasn’t any.… That was a very unintentionally long rant.
To summarize: hated BOTW; somewhat enjoyed TOTK, though it could’ve been much better.
BOTW is not a real Zelda game IMHO.
‘offered an agreement’
So bribed them?
Probably more of a “Do x, y, and z and we agree not to sue you about it”
If Nintendo is smart, they should offer a job. Those guys most probably know more about those systems than many of their employees. And also Nintendo develops emulators for their online service. They could clearly profit by hiring them.
Make good sense
They sent people to his house
I’m Brazil
motherfucker had goons sicced on him
I’m Brazil
hi Brazil, I’m Dad!
Hi dad, I’m Brazil 💪😟💪
FWIW Brazil has the largest population of Japanese people outside of Japan.
Honestly that in itself sounds illegal. What was the emulator’s license? The guy taking the money isn’t the only code contributor.
I’m a bit salty this was apparently announced through Discord. Was it even posted anywhere else?
The future of social media is fragmented siloes, I guess.
I wouldn’t have an issue with many different communications platforms if they didn’t all require an account (also Discord not being indexable sucks).
Discord is even worse, as you need to find an invite to a specific Discord, and sometimes go through a lengthy sign up process for each Discord.
Some won’t let you sign up without a phone #.
I will never not be pissed off that the overwhelming majority of communities that made the internet vibrant especially when nerding out about niche stuff just happily moved to discord and foreclosed their futures.
Everytime I get down on the fediverse I think about what discord did to online communities I loved and I get fired up again.
I think eventually if a federated system (or particular server) gets too popular they will just defederate from everyone else and perpetuate the same problem all over again
Fragmentation is a concern but it isn’t the real issue, the issue is corporate capture of the commons as far as I am concerned.
Yeah, this is a big part of why I stopped using discord recently. Not yet sure of any alternatives but leaving is step one.
Matrix.
And… Lemmy.
It doesn’t matter though, the problem is the critical mass is migrating to Discord and shunting everything out of view. Honestly that’s much worse than being on Reddit, even now.
Matrix does not have seamless desktop sharing or voice chat, and has a drastically higher executive cost. It also does not solve the information silo issue.
The fediverse as a whole is promising but likely needs to mature a bit longer. Theres a lot of potential issues that have yet to be worked through.
Yeah… even worse, it appears the admin didn’t even announce it, this is just one of the developers clarifying what the admin probably did.
As someone who uses Ryujinx, I literally spent the afternoon curious about an error I was getting while updating about the build server being down “probably because it’s building a new version, check back in a few minutes”, only to find a Twitter screenshot of this linked in slack that evening.
Twitter screenshot of this linked in slack that evening.
The modern internet in a nutshell, lol.
People think emulator protections in the law are stronger than they really are. Sony vs Connectix made emulation legal, but it wasn’t heard by the supreme court. PS1 games weren’t encrypted and relied on other methods like disc wobble to prevent piracy…so without proactively violating any measures you could just not include that check in your competing emulator and play retail discs without breaking any laws.
In steps the DMCA anti-circumvention laws for bypassing video game / console encryption measures, which is an even bigger untested minefield without precedent in favor of emulation. And since games are default encrypted on new consoles and arguably not subject to exemption (at least while still supported) it really might be a disaster to fight it.
Nintendo is a dick but it’s not in our interest or theirs to really push the boundary on the status quo. The get to slap suit whatever they want taken down, we get to play the emulation hydra game where it’s still legally grey.
Personally I don’t give a flying Fuck what the law says, breaking copyright is the only thing preventing the world from being more of a dystopian nightmare with subscription mice and trains that break down if you take them to a mechanic and I can’t wait for someone in china or India to take the Open source code and make a better emulator.
I care what the law says if it’s wrong.
If they had an actual plan or history of preserving games I’d not care about emulator development. But with the industry track record being so poor we need emulators if for nothing else for preservation.
So much culturally interesting data has already been lost to time which I bet future historians would absolutely love to have access to. The internet archive is missing much of the early internet, while old iPhone and Android apps are largely unable to be run even if you have the APK/IPA required,
As with Yuzu, I won’t be buying any more switch games. I’ll still be playing switch games, and so will my friends, but we won’t my buying them.
Honestly, I’ve lived watching emulators for decades. They can come and go and there’s always more, even ones that aren’t forks. Just today I was reminiscing on my first emulators, zsnes, no$gmb and nesticle. Y’all remember the peaceful zsnes snowfall? Good times.
I used all of those. Nesticle had that bloody hand as a cursor. Also, Genecyst for Sega Genesis/Master System emulation.
Remember when emulation really blew up after UltraHLE successfully ran Ocarina of Time? That was when I first became aware of emulators (IIRC, it was front page news on IGN). Nintendo filed a lawsuit and took UltraHLE down, but we all know how that turned out (at this point, I believe I’ve lost count of how many N64 emulators were developed in the ensuing years). This recent Yuzu/Ryujinx drama is just history repeating itself. Emulation will never die.
There’s a very very interesting story about nesticle but unfortunately I’ve forgotten it. Some kind of drama, a bit edge lord stuff, and I think someone died? It’s actually one of the first emulators, ever, though.
It was a very niche community back then though, long before IGN caught wind. Weird I only found out because of a crazy conspiracy theory uncle, though. Thanks for reminding me about UltraHLE, though!
I have a vague recollection about the Nesticle drama, but also don’t recall the details.
I know the emulator scene precedes UltraHLE by at least several years. Publicity around UltraHLE just made it somewhat mainstream, and Nintendo learned first-hand about the Streisand effect, lol!
I own a Nintendo, and I haven’t used it in years. I bought some games which were ridiculously priced compared to what I was used to on steam. I’m rather annoyed they keep their games console exclusive for this reason, they have like a monopoly of a market they control, it feels.
I was gonna get some more games to put on it, but with then shutting down these emulators, I think I’ll use one of those instead. Fuck Nintendo.
Yeah I haven’t used my switch in a long time. I think I might have power surged it, but I don’t really care enough to even double check.
I have a switch emulator on my external HD along with a bunch of other emulators. When I get my next PC I’ll just play whatever switch games I want on that.
Even having a switch, I still prefer to dump the games and play them on steamdeck. That way, I can just bring one device for gaming.
Even is emulation is not perfect on the steamdeck, I’m still happy to play at lower performance or with some graphical glitches for the convenience.
I have a bunch of emus. Does the deck let you put them in your library as a non steam game and play them? That’s how I have them setup on my PC.
Yes. There are a couple different ways to do that.
Ok cool. That’s one of my main concerns with it.
Just hack it
It’s supported by LineageOS lol. You could repurpose it as a tablet to stream steam games.
No need to install Android for that, there is a native Moonlight port for the switch. Will get you better performance and battery life than trying to do the same thing with Android
Oh I didn’t realize that’d be an option. Where shall I start?
Thanks!
Obligatory fuck Nintendo, but I also blame the selfish dumbfucks who keep posting videos of themselves playing unreleased games on YouTube and Reddit. If you want nice things contingent on having software which exists in a legal gray area, don’t openly poke the litigious hornets’ nest.
That’s inevitable though, blame them all you want those people will always exist
I know it’s not happening, but I’d love it if Nintendo went the way of Sega, and just made games. They’ve always been hit and miss with their consoles anyway, it’s the games people love. Just fuck it, start releasing games for multiple platforms and focus on what you’re actually fucking good. Pipe dream, I know
I imagine Nintendo could make a tonne selling Zelda games for PC for 1.5x what they normally charge, simply for performance and controller compatibility.
Right?
If they hate emulators so much, why aren’t they selling native x86 versions?
"Hey we released this new game buuuuut you’re going to need to purchase an entire separate computer system we call a ‘console’ because we refuse to compile the game binary for PC OSes, nor provide the source for you to do so yourself”
I interpret distributors and publishers treating me as a second (or third) class citizen as carte blanche to acquire your content and make the necessary changes to make it work on my environment of choice.
an entire separate computer system we call a ‘console’
I get it; I even tend to like their consoles. The Switch is fantastic for what it is, when it came out (though admittedly: I am more likely to buy a Steam Deck than a Switch 2, at least as of now, not knowing the Switch 2’s specs).
But either sell an x86 build, or get over emulators. Or develop a taste for my favourite cocktail, if you can’t pick between the other two options
they could even sell a VM image as they’ve proven it still runs better virtualised on other machines than it does native on theirs
I don’t think a lot of people would buy e.g. BotW for 100 bucks.
Nintendo DS and Switch are the second and third most sold consoles ever, respectively. Gameboy and GB Colour comes in fourth of you count them together. Wii is sixth or seventh depending on if you group the above.
I think people like their consoles.
Oh I know they do great on some (most?) of their consoles, but I still think they do better at actual games than they do at consoles. Also, aren’t consoles almost always money losers, anyway? Like, they take a hit so that they can sell more games, which actually make them the money? Or is Nintendo the exception to that rule or thumb?
They’ve had some flops…Wii U, DSi, Virtualboy…but they ain’t no game.com. Way more hits than misses in the console realm.
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I think anyone still in the scene will want to lay low for a while and work in the shadows. Only releasing after a few years.
I hope they dont go for dolphin or cemu claiming that certain games are in their e-shop for the switch 2 release.
Either way I think we should start backing up emulators and their source and require files regularly as a fallback.
I hope they dont go for dolphin or cemu claiming that certain games are in their e-shop for the switch 2 release.
That’s exactly what I’m afraid of
I mean, all of these emulators are already very well archived and available from several sources, not to mention downloaded to the devices of millions of people. I highly doubt we would be in danger of losing any of them even if Nintendo were to sue literally all of them overnight. Well, except for things like Github issues and pull requests, nobody bothers to archive those unfortunately.
But yeah, IMO the danger is moreso that the attacks are leading to a massive chilling effect and loss of developer talent in the emulation community.
What do they think they achieve with this?
Forcing people to purchase the Switch 2 for their handheld needs, obviously </sarcasm>
@nichtburningturtle @mr_MADAFAKA not sure, there’s already like 500 forks up, may the one with the coolest name win.
it’s in the repo for basically any linux distribution too so the source and executables are mirrored on literally thousands of servers and easily downloadable, so absolute worst case scenario it’s version froze at 1.1.1388 for the time being.
all that happened to yuzu is a slight name change so i don’t expect much more here.
all that happened to yuzu is a slight name change so i don’t expect much more here.
All of the commits for Suyu, the most active yuzu “fork” this year is like 20 different readme/URL changes, lol. Nintendo 100% succeeded in killing it.
@nichtburningturtle @mr_MADAFAKA confirmed, the full git history up to yesterday is preserved and already mirrored all over, so it’s all good 👍
What kinda question is that? Mobbing the developers out of switch emulation.
The only two options where you and ryujinx and they are both taken out, all the forks are jokes because the developers that had real abilities worked on the main projects.
And then nobody ever made another emulator for Nintendo products again and this definitely does not foreshadow an endless game of whack-a-mole powered by spite.
Surely not.
Imagine not developing a controversial emulator anonymously…
doesn’t matter if they don’t know who you are, Nintendo can still offer you a ton of money to delete it. it wasn’t necessarily legal threats or I assume they would have sent the cease and desist to GitHub and gotten the repo removed first
You’re not wrong. I just think that if you believe there is a good chance of having legal problems for your project (I don’t see why they wouldn’t have thought that), then it makes the most sense to do it anonymously from the beginning to avoid getting sued. Yes they can still possibly offer you money, but it might not be worth revealing your identity at that point either, as any continued development could be assumed to be you, and then you must defend yourself in court if they sue, even if it was never you.
Emulators have been legal in the past I thought. Sure, there’s something to be said about common sense and developing emulators for current generation platforms.
IIRC, they’re legal as long as they don’t explicitly distribute any of the copyright owner’s own code or files. That’s why, for example, PCSX2 requires you to dump “your own” PS2 BIOS and doesn’t provide any itself. Because PCSX2 doesn’t distribute the PS2 BIOS and because its way of talking to the BIOS doesn’t copy the source code, that emulator is in the clear.
Some modern emulators (ex. Ryujinx) don’t even need BIOS files (or whatever they’re called on Switch) to be able to run games. But they also don’t use Nintendo’s original code to run the game.
Take all this with a grain of salt. I’m saying it from memory.
You wouldn’t download the PS2 BIOS 🎸🎸🎸
Yes, I wasn’t trying to refute that. But Nintendo can still ruin your life fighting a losing battle if they wanted to. To me it’s just not worth the risk of putting your name on it.
Whole reimplementations have survived. IBM BIOS was the only original BIOS for PCs. Phoenix Technologies had a team read the source code for IBM BIOS (it was published in the user manual for troubleshooting) and wrote a specification for it which a different team wrote software from, making IBM compatible machines possible
I don’t know what law an emulator could be killed under, unless a license holder breached the user license as part of the development
I’ve always wondered that. Why not just throw a git repo behind I2P or onto IPFS? It’s like they want to be attacked.
Attention and recognition.
