If Nintendo had to pay a few billion dollars for their games to not be available on PC ever again they would do it.
Nintendo sue creators of emulator "Yuzu".
- Thread starter Jim Ryan
- Start date
At low cost? You can't emulate those games on your turbo tax laptop, and then there's shader cache stuttering and bugs as most recent emulators are still WIP.
Emulators are great but not sure how many people actually game on the regular with them when they are on an early stage of development.
Emulators are great but not sure how many people actually game on the regular with them when they are on an early stage of development.
That makes no reason to sue those guys.
They don't distribute the game, and they also does not leak it either. The leak comes from logistics issue led to early copies being shipped for release date. So shouldn't they sue the chain provider, provided they could track it.
Also in my country unlocking hardware of a Switch is already a felony. That is kinda funny when you think about it.
Interesting, I think it's somewhat the opposite. Not much of a legal argument, but certainly more of a "moral" one. Why should old arcade and console games that are otherwise impossible to play simply disappear?
This is dumb. It has nothing to do with being run like "Yakuza" and more like taking necessary steps to protect your legal property. No company can just let this stuff slide and Nintendo is far from the only one that protects their IP. For whatever reason they just get targeted by certain fan contingents (not all of them of course, just some) like it's some gangster crap when it's just companies being responsible.
Really childish take that demonstrates a lack of understanding how things actually work. "They are like Yakuza!" Come on man lol.
Stop dude, Switch emulator is really refined and easy to run at this point. PC APUs that you'll find in office computers and notebooks can run it well.
Why wouldn't the enablers of piracy be punished? Running switch games on your PC is not some "preservation" play, it's a means to steal software at a large scale. If you're caught making drugs, but "not distributing them" are you not liable? Defending this on any platform is dumb. If you want to play games, go pay the people who made them.
Im not talking about games released in 2024
Try looking at other games that aren't produced anymore or had their licenses expired.
Well actively spying on non-users data should criminal offense, but appearently rules not applied Nintendo.
Also by that logic, should government outlaw syringes and go after syringes manufacture? Because emulators devs DO NOT LEAK actual games, they also don't include any Nintendo software's codes inside emulators.
They haven't disappeared though. For old physical releases they are easy to find on ebay, you just have to pay for them (and if a game costs "too much" then that is a you problem, I think the SMRPG remake costs too much, that doesn't give me moral imperative to steal it.) Even digital only releases can be found for sale, non-pirated, if you know where to look. Nobody owes you access anyway.
As to the legal argument, this is settled law in the US, going back to Game Genie and DV64 cases in the US, as long as a device has a legitimate use AND wasn't made with illicit materials, such as code taken through an NDA violation, then it is legally acceptable.
Millions of copies of Heart Gold are out there, its one of the most common carts ever produced, literally more common than 99.5 percent of all cart releases. And it was published by literally the best archival company in games, Nintendo, so its never going to get accidentally deleted. And you listed an artificially high price anyway, Pricecharting says it shold go for 149 loose or 40 if you take JP, 80 if you take European. You're just proving my point that you don't want to pay for them.Im not talking about games released in 2024
Try looking at other games that aren't produced anymore or had their licenses expired.
Imagine if Nintendo was in the music business...they would be gunning down kids that shared their mixtapes. That would be right in 80s Nintendo's alley.
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Plenty of moral arguments for emulation. The first you already hit on is monetary. There isn't any money going to publishers in second hand rare games, as such emulating one instead of buying a second hand copy has no tangible effect on the producer of said game. It is moral to do something that has no effect on anyone else. Second as a broader social morality "ease of access at low cost" is just reducing barriers to entry for people to consume media. If you live in any Western country, you likely live under a socio-political system that allows people to access goods and services outside of the regular cost because that's the so called social contract that liberalism thrives on. Anti-emulation stances rub up against right to repair and other consumer-centric issues regarding purchases, since anti-emulation contends you don't have a right to do what you want with the console/games you purchase. How is there not a moral argument in that?
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You certainly do hurt people by emulating over buying used. It decreases the value of the item for people who already own, and could sell, a physical version. So, for instance, I own a copy of Soul Silver (I think, I certainly have the box and manual anyway) and would be able to sell it for way more if people only had the option of playing it legitimately. It also hurts TPMC/Nintendo since they could, in theory, release and sell new copies for way more if pirated versions weren't keeping the price low. They also have a strategy of purposely not selling their old games, so that you buy the new ones instead. They want you buying S/V, have the right to not compete with themselves and would probably get a lot more normie dollars if, lacking piracy, the o ly alternatives were tracking down old hardware and games, buying the Switch games or buying shitty clone games.
In regards to having a moral access to games, games are more plentiful, more diverse, found in more places and often cheaper (free, even!,) than they ever have been before. No-one is restricted from playing games, but they do not have a right to free or cheap access to their most desired title either.
As to right to repair, we're talking PC emulators here, you're talking about jailbreaking, which is both totally different and, I think, perfectly legal in the US. I've also already mentioned that stuff like using emulators to test games or back up save data is totally legal and morally fine.
So your argument is when people don't decide to buy from you, it's harm, and as such options that allow others not to buy from you are immoral? Come on, this is ridiculous. You don't have a legal or moral claim to holding value in used video games that you purchased. I'll defend your right to have a working copy of your purchase, and to do what you want with said purchase, but since this is strictly a discussion of morals this makes no sense. If it's harmful to have the price of your purchase reduced, it must be harmful for Nintendo to reprint it. Maybe they have a right to reprint it and that offsets said harm, but harm would still be done.
So you're making two arguments here. 1. Nintendo could sell them if emulation wasn't keeping prices low. 2. Nintendo deliberately doesn't re-release titles so you purchase new products. Which one is it? If Nintendo deliberately doesn't re-release them, then it's as I said no harm to emulate since Nintendo can't claim the opportunity cost of emulating games decreases sales of new series because it's actually an issue of consumers wanting different products, it's not axiomatic that a company ought sell more of something new than something older. What you're arguing here is that companies ought be able to strong arm consumers into buying products that are inferior to their wants because they prevent accessibility elsewhere. If people were only buying new games because they are unable to do otherwise, I think that is a net negative for consumers. Obvious answer is to stop consuming, and money dries up, so emulating post-that fact again has no impact since the money never would have gone to Nintendo.
As for argument 1, I agree they could sell more copies if they re-released but that's not due to emulated versions keeping the prices low, it's due to no supply of the game at a price people want to pay. Nobody wants to pay 2x the MSRP for a 15 year old game, they'll pay $70 for it on an official store though I bet.
I agree they don't have a right to playing whatever they want, but Yuzu is an emulator, they don't have any files from Nintendo's products if I'm not wrong. Am I allowed to take the firmware off the Switch I own and dump the game file from the cart I own and emulate that software after my Switch breaks and no longer works? Or should Nintendo have the right to implement planned obsolescence so they can force you into future purchases by invalidating old ones?
It's about owning what you purchase, PC emulators use jailbreaking of the device. Can I do that? If I purchase a Switch can I dump my prod keys or do I not have the right to that? If using emulators to test games is legal, and therefore morally fine then why are you saying suing Yuzu is good when, as far as I know, they don't do anything except provide a legal emulation program that you're fine with?
It is far from ridiculous, part and parcel of buying physical is having the ability to then resell the game. People factor it in when buying games. While Nintendo could undercut the value of used Nintendo games by selling them again (and, indeed, often have in the past with virtual console, NES mini and NES, among others) they would also be taking away sales of their own, new, franchise iterations when doing so, which is why they don't do it.
Which one is it? Its both, Nintendo is the child that waits five minutes to get two marshmallows instead of eatting their one immediately. It makes financial sense for them to not re-release their old titles in general. But it is a card they hold and can play when times are tough, as they were in the Wii U era when they released the minis. Having third parties give that away for free does hurt them.
Nintendo thinks differently and have the sales data to back it up. Its not Nintendo's, or any producer's, duty to give consumers cheaper alternatives to their own premium products.
Well, thats not an emulator, thats stealing code. And emulator accomplishes the same functions through alternate code. If you're asking what Yuzu is allowed to do, I've said all along that their emulator appears to be US-legal, NoA is on shakey legal ground here.
An emulation program that properly emulates a device would be great for developing, especially if dev kits are hard to come by or the manufacturer refuses to sell you one. The case study for this is the Dr. Video 64, a physical game copying device that was purchased by legitimate developers early in the N64's life (the Turok devs used some, among others,) was sued by Nintendo, and ruled to be a legal product with legitimate uses. Were they made for that intended purpose? Fuck no, they were for making pirate carts, but the fact that they had a legitimate use meant they were fine to import.
But the issue is you're saying it's immoral to do an action that doesn't effect the creator because of a supposed obligation to the secondary market that they get preference in purchasing habits. I don't think that is a fair claim to make, and yes purchasing physical goods enables you to resell them but prices don't enter in to that equation. You have the ability to resell PC parts, but in 10y they may be next to worthless, hence we know that ability/right to property isn't contingent on making money. So how can then emulators be immoral on the basis that they don't provide the second hand market money? They can't, they're not on this front.
True the holding a card aspect is certainly fair. Create scarcity so you can sell goods in the future when times are tough. Businesses like Nintendo certainly do this, but again nobody is under any obligation to buy new products (so money hypothetically lost from emulation isn't owed to Nintendo for those future games) and money lost from not supplying the market is money they're foregoing (so no harm is done immediately). The only circumstance left here is emulating a game now denies Nintendo money from when they sell you the game in the future, which maybe is true, but I'm not sure whether using such causality as a metric to actions is a fair method.
But the "stealing code" part comes back to whether or not you have a moral right to use the code of products that you've purchased to use the product that you've purchased. We aren't talking about stealing code in the sense of taking it and using it for your own application, or to sell it, we are talking about dumping the code of a game you own and have the right to play. If you want to get into the "licensing" side of arguments fair enough but again I don't see how we cannot make a moral claim to owning what you purchase? If you back up your switch cart and then it gets damaged and doesn't work, should you be forced to buy another? Should you be forced to buy second hand? I don't think you should as you already own the right to play the game, and all you're circumventing is requiring a physical piece to access what you own.
This just demonstrates emulation is fine as long as it's not being used in crimes. So suing Yuzu over emulation is stupid, suing people that commit crimes better.
