Forum - View topicNEWS: Switch Emulator Yuzu's Developers Cease Work, Pay Nintendo US$2.4 Million in Settlement
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Fluwm
 Posts: 1061 |
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Well, this sure is... something. I wonder how long it'll take not-Yuzu to resurface under a different name. I know Nintendo can be stubborn, but I really don't see them ever achieving more than a very temporary victory against emulation.
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Raebo101
 Posts: 818 |
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Holy Moly! $2.4 Million Dollars?? I can understand Nintendo wanting to shut down Yuzu, but having the developers pay millions in settlement seems a bit overkill to me, even with the whole Patreon thing. Obviously, this won't stop Switch emulation entirely, but I'm a little worried about how other emulation developers are gonna take this news, and if other big corporations will see this and feel like maybe they should start throwing some lawsuits around at the people that just want to preserve gaming history.
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WANNFH
 Posts: 1864 |
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But at this point, it's really hard to know how it gonna affect the emulation scene at all - because the settlement was made out of the court, it is not capable of creating any real legal precedent beyond what has already existed since the early '00s. Nintendo just made a good scarecrow out of Yuzu (whose devs probably chickened out because of other additional stuff that they did outside of just creating the emulator) - but it's not gonna scare all of the crows, if not worse. |
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chronos02
Posts: 272 |
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I was surprised at first by the result of this lawsuit, but after digging a little deeper, it makes sense that they decided for settlement, since Yuzu did a few not-so-good things that could have made them lose in court, so this is the lesser evil result.
From what the documents have revealed so far, the Switch decryption keys were linked directly in Yuzu's page, besides the $360,000 yearly income Yuzu's company made (reported as $30,000 Monthly). But this means they made a profit off of piggy backing on Nintendo's IPs, and these two reasons are likely what had them on Nintendo's hit list until they developed a proper strategy to take them down. Betting this is not what Nintendo wanted though, since they were probably looking to create a precedent to hamper emulation in the future, which is the real silver lining here. Anyway, 3, 2, 1... for a bunch of Yuzu clones using the public repository code popping like mushrooms that Mario will never be able to pluck... Edited the income data, since I got confused and that gave a very different picture of Yuzu's situation. Last edited by chronos02 on Tue Mar 05, 2024 10:29 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Mune
Posts: 383 Location: Minnesota |
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As much as people like to claim that piracy is actually game preservation, Yuzu was caught red handed distributing pirated copies of Tears of the Kingdom before the official release. Not sure how they managed this. Generally, for game preservation, it needs to be at least a generation ago for consoles and no longer supported by the current consoles. Some may even say 2 or more generations to be on the safe side.
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WANNFH
Posts: 1864 |
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Also I dunno where you picked that astronomical sum report, because 30k was not a daily income of Yuzu devs - it was a monthly income from their Patreon page, and that does not even count the cuts. |
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chronos02
Posts: 272 |
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Nevermind what I said, got confused by some other stuff. It's MONTHLY as you well said, so the 11M is just nope. They would've needed almost 7 years to pay off the 2.4M. It's still a hefty monthly sum gained off piggybacking though, which would be no problem as you well said, but given the ease access they provided tot the keys, as well as other allegations, it's likely that most of that money would not have come their way, and that is likely one of Nintendo's footholds on this case. Corrected on the previous post too. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4671 |
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Nintendo was more focused on both the money that Tropic Haze was bringing in, and that Yuzu affected sales of new games. Both of those things differentiated it from something that lets you play a game that hasn't seen the light of day in 30 years.
Some of the very recent reporting has said that something you got for Patreon were things like update support for those new games, which, if accurate, sort of flies in the face of their official statement about not intending to promote piracy. |
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Minos_Kurumada
Posts: 1193 |
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Well, the concense in Twitter was that Nintendo had no case, I knew they wouldn't go to court without one.
Looks like I was right because Yuzu would have made a Patreon to pay for the defence and you can bet your pantsu it would have been successful. What I find really weird is that everybody that tries to "stick it to the man Nintendo" always do it in such a clumsy/greedy/moronic way and then get shut down and happens again and again, people who messes with Sony and Microsoft are way smarter. |
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Greed1914
Posts: 4671 |
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Most likely. Apparently, right after the suit was announced, their Patreon had an influx of money beyond what was normal. |
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Dr. Wily
Posts: 385 |
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2.4 mil is nothing compared to some of the other stuff Nintendo's done in the past. You should read up on the one dude who's in the hole for 14 mil for modding consoles (which is way less of a gray area than emulators but still, damn). Nintendo takes a real "fudge around, find out" attitude to their stuff, but with "find out" in 100-pt bold print.
The thing with settlements is that most lawyers will tell you, anything can happen in a courtroom. So while Nintendo might not have had a case, the safe bet for Tropic Haze was to just take the L before it could potentially get so much worse. |
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Vanadise
 Posts: 535 |
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At first I thought it was curious that Yuzu settled almost immediately after getting a lawyer, since there have been multiple cases in the past confirming the legality of commercial emulators... but: https://twitter.com/HikikomoriMedia/status/1764894963194597458
Digging into the court documents reveals that Nintendo had an agent in Yuzu's Discord server who reasonably believed the devs had been ripping games prior to release and sharing them with each other, and the settlement likely happened so quickly because the developers did not want to risk going into the discovery phase of a lawsuit, because they would've been screwed. So, good news, the Yuzu devs messed up hard and brought this on themselves, but this does not set any kind of precedent regarding the legality of emulators. |
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Leviathonlx1
Posts: 211 |
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Nintendo would have went off the fact that they used leaked ROM's to improve their emulator before ToTK was officially released. |
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oilers2007
Posts: 130 |
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I suppose as long as people don't mind being the scapegoat for a 2 million dollar fine every time. |
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Glordit
 Posts: 692 |
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It's always funny, how people use Discord, of all the instant messaging programs out there to run their illegal empire from. Nintendo would not have taken this to court if they were not 1000% certain it would result in a conviction. The settlement is more akin to a "we see you and now this is your chance to stop before we ruin your life" deal. |
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