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Nintendo Goes DMCA on Switch Emulation

Fake

Member
Kotaku sucks, but I’d think its more about ToTK leaking early and being downloaded by tons of people. That kinda broke the camel’s back

But the article and public response acted like a reminder to them, maybe?
 

Davevil

Member
Pretty sure Yuzu has a subscription model. If Nintendo could work out a deal with Yuzu and incorporate a licensing fee into that model, they would easily make up for any lost revenue and everyone would have legal access to the content.
triple-h-cant-stop-laughing.gif
 

SNG32

Member
If Nintendo really wants to stop the emulation scene. Simple release your games on pc. Less developers will feel the need to create emulators. Both Sony and Microsoft are reaping the benefits from it. Nintendo will always be cheap and there devices will always be cracked for emulation eventually since they like to go cheap on tech.
 

Deft Beck

Member
Nintendo gonna Nintendo. This is outside of their bounds, and if they succeed it's bad news for the emulation scene.
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
Emulator devs are like a hydra, even if you cut off it's head 2 more will reappear. Nintendo would get so much more shit done if they stopped caring about these minor flies and worried more about making their next console
 
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StereoVsn

Member
Considering distribution is the problem that Nintendo fears, the onus would be on them to prove that simply making the key would necessarily lead to illegal distribution.
Yeah, that was my thought. Key extraction is for personal use after all. Pirates don't need that.

This is how I rip games form my OG Switch to play on PC. Don't need to do that if I just download an ISO.
 

stranno

Member
PS Mini by Sony is running on an open-source PSX emulator for god’s sake!
And official Playstation 2 emulation on Playstation 4 was developed by Jacob "Air" Stine, former member of PCSX2.


Nintendo is just annoying. Switch emulation took like one year and a half to see the first game properly emulated in late-2018. Game Boy Advance was emulated DAY 1 back in March 2001, and Nintendo didn't give a crap back in the day.
 
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Yes that is why countries banned them.

Yes but that's a different type of thing, government preemptive regulates weapon usage because that presented danger to the general public.

Knifes, screwdrivers, hammers and a myriad of other things can and have been used to harm people but it's usage are not regulated.

Emulation is software and is not harmful to humans in any capacity so it should not be preemptively banned for any reason whatsoever.
 

Drew1440

Member
I wonder if this will affect Nintendo's next console, are they going to invest heavily into security or use more obscure hardware/API's that are more difficult to emulate?
 
I don't get people who think Nintendo has no rights to its own software. It doesn't matter if you can't handle 20fps, 15, or 5. You're playing their software illegally and nothing you can say justifies that, at least acknowledge that and don't give yourself excuses.

I have no idea if they have a case or not.
Just that it isn’t Nintendo software. These people are smart enough to not use any proprietary code on their implementations. You are mixing the emulator/tools development with pirating actual Nintendo developed games.
 

ADiTAR

ידע זה כוח
Just that it isn’t Nintendo software. These people are smart enough to not use any proprietary code on their implementations. You are mixing the emulator/tools development with pirating actual Nintendo developed games.
So what are those emulation tools are for?
 

Codiox

Member
I wonder if this will affect Nintendo's next console, are they going to invest heavily into security or use more obscure hardware/API's that are more difficult to emulate?
They can and will, like always. They tried since the snes days. But because it's nintendo it will have always the biggest target on his back. So we will always see hacks on nintendo hardware, sooner or later.

It's the circle of life. Nintendo will always fuck and will always get fucked.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
If Nintendo really wants to stop the emulation scene. Simple release your games on pc. Less developers will feel the need to create emulators. Both Sony and Microsoft are reaping the benefits from it. Nintendo will always be cheap and there devices will always be cracked for emulation eventually since they like to go cheap on tech.
I don't think Nintendo wants to stop the emulation scene. They want to stop the "emulation" scene, which is mostly just a bunch of leeches who want to play games on PC without paying for them. Most of us here are grown up enough to call it what it is.

Nintendo isn't targeting emulation itself. In this case they're targeting use of their IP, the keys used to authorize games to run on console, to enable rom creation. They have been ferociously attacking rom creation and distribution for years.
 
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PaintTinJr

Member
Emulation is legal yes but playing devils advect here. What if Nintendo can prove that emulation is mostly use for piracy against their games?
Mostly makes zero difference to anecdotally.

It is enshrined in every major democracy's legal system that you start from a presumption of innocence - until proven guilty.

So even in a 99.9999999% chance of using for piracy, to convict without proof would deny the accused basic human rights.
 

Kamina

Golden Boy
Ehm

https://www.nintendo.com/sg/support/switch/eula/usage_policy.html

I guess we need a lawyer to have a better opinion on this subject.
This is for Singapore, i wasn’t able to find any equivalent for hardware or software in the EU, only for the nintendo account or general terms regarding intellectual property that inform you that copying and reselling is illegal, which is covered by general law, not individual contracts,
I don’t know about you, but i never signed any document with nintendo that states that i am in a contract with them. Hell, they wouldn’t even know my name if i had not decided to also use their digital store with a credit card. And they sure as hell cant walk into my house and take my physical Zelda copy from me. Furthermore, according to german law for example, EULAs are only enforceable if agreed to before a purchase.
Now the digital store is something else however, and is covered by its own contract.

Yes a lawyer would be helpful, but keep in mind there are large differences between common law and case law, let alone the regional differences.
 
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Filben

Member
You can't say the emulation scene that also often attracts certain illegal elements wasn't provoking Nintendo... leaks, big discussion about the game and emulator performance in public space and subreddits and in great scale a week before the official release, published articles as such as Kotaku's. They really were asking for it.
 

StereoVsn

Member
You can't say the emulation scene that also often attracts certain illegal elements wasn't provoking Nintendo... leaks, big discussion about the game and emulator performance in public space and subreddits and in great scale a week before the official release, published articles as such as Kotaku's. They really were asking for it.
This shouldn't matter as Emulation is legal.
 
Wonder if Nintendo will go after yuzu and ryujinx, you never know with Nintendo, they really don’t care about the law. They will bankrupt you before you even get to court, let’s hope yuzu has been saving that patron money, they might need it soon.
 
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Morality and legality don't stop people from doing things. What stops people from doing things is convenience. If Nintendo made their game convenient to access, then the emulation scene wouldn't be big. How many people care about emulating the PS5 or Xbox? Not many because their game libraries are easy to access and their base hardware is sufficient for the games they run. Nintendo Switch is a pathetic piece of tech that was barely acceptable when it launched back in 2017 and Nintendo will never release their software on competent hardware. What a surprise that people want to play their games at decent resolutions and framerates...
 

SNG32

Member
Wonder if Nintendo will go after yuzu and ryujinx, you never know with Nintendo, they really don’t care about the law. They will bankrupt you before you even get to court, let’s hope yuzu has been saving that patron money, they might need it soon.
It’s a losing battle with Nintendo on this I remember when Altus tried to prevent persona 5 from playing on Rpcs3 and they lost that. Nintendo is going to have to invest in security measures to prevent there games from being leaked or start adding denuvo to their games.
 
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SNG32

Member
Morality and legality don't stop people from doing things. What stops people from doing things is convenience. If Nintendo made their game convenient to access, then the emulation scene wouldn't be big. How many people care about emulating the PS5 or Xbox? Not many because their game libraries are easy to access and their base hardware is sufficient for the games they run. Nintendo Switch is a pathetic piece of tech that was barely acceptable when it launched back in 2017 and Nintendo will never release their software on competent hardware. What a surprise that people want to play their games at decent resolutions and framerates...
Exactly I’m hoping the switch successor is on the level of a steam deck or a bit more powerful but I’m keeping expectations low since it will still sell well even if it’s only twice as powerful as the current switch.
 

Eotheod

Member
What is that?
Yuzu or Ryuzu, can't remember. But that literally encapsulates many who use emulators, in that they justify their "preservation" of still available titles by giving shit excuses like the prices are too high now so don't want to support, or the FPS or the limited platform availability. Those are the people who literally just want free shit, and don't care about how it was made and that there needs to be a return to continue making said games.

I sometimes feel like there's a selective amount of emulator usages where the people truly just don't want to buy a second or third platform. So what they do is pirate, under the guise of "emulating" despite this title in particular not even being released yet. Yes it's strawman theory, but what if Sony or Xbox had emulation paths for current gen and tried to prevent them? Would people throw the same reasonings/excuses for emulation?
Morality and legality don't stop people from doing things. What stops people from doing things is convenience. If Nintendo made their game convenient to access, then the emulation scene wouldn't be big. How many people care about emulating the PS5 or Xbox? Not many because their game libraries are easy to access and their base hardware is sufficient for the games they run. Nintendo Switch is a pathetic piece of tech that was barely acceptable when it launched back in 2017 and Nintendo will never release their software on competent hardware. What a surprise that people want to play their games at decent resolutions and framerates...
Please tell me how pirating modern day accessible titles is a reasonable excuse for the Switch, where it's titles are entirely accessible just like PS5 or XSX? They aren't hiding them, they are available right there in plain sight.

Also I'd love to know what your potential solution would have been to produce a better-performing piece of hardware at an affordable manufacturing cost that meets the design standards of the Switch? You have seen the price and performance of the Steam Deck, yes? Have you noted it's release date, and that it feasibly would not have been possible in 2017?

You can make all the excuses you want about the hardware and the absurd accessibility for modern games, but the point is there are people who use the tools for pirating. In this case, anyone currently playing TotK is pirating the software, no matter your stupid pre-order status. Because surprise surprise, you don't have the game yet, however are somehow justified in playing it early because "it will have shit FPS anyway."
 
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Thaedolus

Member
Yuzu or Ryuzu, can't remember. But that literally encapsulates many who use emulators, in that they justify their "preservation" of still available titles by giving shit excuses like the prices are too high now so don't want to support, or the FPS or the limited platform availability. Those are the people who literally just want free shit, and don't care about how it was made and that there needs to be a return to continue making said games.

I sometimes feel like there's a selective amount of emulator usages where the people truly just don't want to buy a second or third platform. So what they do is pirate, under the guise of "emulating" despite this title in particular not even being released yet. Yes it's strawman theory, but what if Sony or Xbox had emulation paths for current gen and tried to prevent them? Would people throw the same reasonings/excuses for emulation?
This is complete nonsense. You can agree that it’s morally right to support developers and software you want to play, and also believe it’s your right to play it how you wish.

If someone wants to play a Switch game that they paid for in an emulator, more power to them. That’s the only moral principle at play here: did you buy the software? If so, play it on saxophone for all I care, the developer got paid.
 

LordOfChaos

Member
Hey Nintendo maybe if you had some official hardware a potato couldn't just easily emulate, but in fact play things more smoothly and with better resolution and filtering than any official hardware you will sell us, that would help

I'm not using an emulator fwiw, but I also don't want to play a game that's probably great on this 8 year old underclocked TX1 turd with low resolution and muddy filtering, can't even lock 30fps consistently.
 
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In an ironical sense, Nintendo do care about its fanbase, most Nintendo fan here absolutely reject the idea of Nintendo releasing ports, Nintendo is doing exactly what its fan wants in this regard.

Just look at how many lols and negative comment these op receive for even suggesting that idea, you get the point: Example #1 Example #2 Example #3

When it comes to the other two brand I rarely see this unified reaction, its one thing from a business stand point that Nintendo won't do ports, but its another when the fans doesn't want it to be accessible to more gamers.

I guess the idea of "Nintendo doesn't care about its fanbase" doesn't hold water, its the people that cherished this idea doesn't understand what most Nintendo's fanbase truly want.

Not the best comparison, since fanboys will simply defend whatever their favorite company's strategy is at the moment. I remember shills back in the day who shat on anyone suggesting Nintendo to make mobile games. One day after Nintendo announced their first smartphone title, they were all of a sudden cheering for it. For other platforms, defenders will claim features like backwards compatability are redundant, until their console favorite actually does it, then it's an awesome feature again.
 
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I think now would be the worst time for Nintendo to consider PC ports with Steam deck and other viable handheld PC alternatives. Granted, it'll be a long, long time before Steam Deck becomes mass-market, but every one of these things will take away the novelty factor for Switch as a portable indie machine. Nintendo really needs to look into an eGPU option for their Switch 2 dock at the very least. Maybe I'm talking out of my ass though.

As much as I've been all for Nintendo staying out of porting on the basis of it affecting their vertical business structure, I've never been able to fault anyone for emulating their games (that they've purchased and dumped) for better performance on a high end PC.
 

Neofire

Member
As they should, people playing their new IP's on a emulator. It's a slap in the face to the hard working devs.
 
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daveonezero

Banned
Yeah IP legislation and control is out of control

There is no way this will work.

This is like saying if you own a mask and a gun you are clearly a bank robber.

Or more accurately if you own lock picking tools you must be doing illegal things. There is always going to be a community that hackd and cracks hardware and software. It is their hobby.
 
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LRKD

Member
ehh i'm not concerned, people will emulate no matter what nintendo does. And rn i'm sure nintendo will do anything to make it look like people can't even sending bs dmca take down letters that have no legal standing, just to try and scare some people who don't actually know the law.

Even if nintendo will manage to take down somethings, new replacements for it will pop up really quickly.
 

SNG32

Member
ehh i'm not concerned, people will emulate no matter what nintendo does. And rn i'm sure nintendo will do anything to make it look like people can't even sending bs dmca take down letters that have no legal standing, just to try and scare some people who don't actually know the law.

Even if nintendo will manage to take down somethings, new replacements for it will pop up really quickly.
Yup it’s like a never ending sink hole I’m sure skyline coders will start under a new name or eventually start up again once this dies down.
 

pepodmc_

Member
No.
If you can't use lockpick anymore, you can't extract the new keys who emulators use.
so the emulators can't emulate new games.
Doesnt matter.
It will continue to happen , but less available to the public.
For example, emuparadise "stopped" offering roms to the public after nintendo lawsuit to 2 other rom pages.
Emuparadise was not sued, but did that just in case.

But with the help of tampermonkey and a script, you can still download from emuparadise, the roms are still on the server, but a little hidden. Thats why the page is still online even if it "stopped offering roms" :pie_roffles:.And this since 2018, 5 years later, nintendo didnt did anything XD

Nintendo isnt very smart.
 
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Lasha

Member
Yeah IP legislation and control is out of control

There is no way this will work.

This is like saying if you own a mask and a gun you are clearly a bank robber.

Or more accurately if you own lock picking tools you must be doing illegal things. There is always going to be a community that hackd and cracks hardware and software. It is their hobby.

Distributing an emulator which fullly reverse engineers the encryption of the switch would be legal. Dumping your own roms and playing on the emulator is legal. Releasing software that circumvents an access control to pull keys from a switch is the issue since it's only purpose is to circumvent an access control for commerical software rather than to remove copy protection. Nintendo targeted the one aspect of switch emulation which may run afoul of existing law.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
Well, it looks like github is fighting back
kitten roar GIF



Duck Hunt Laughing GIF
GitHub users are fighting back. But GitHub itself probably isn't going to play along and will start banning people if this causes a problem for them.
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
Also I'd love to know what your potential solution would have been to produce a better-performing piece of hardware at an affordable manufacturing cost that meets the design standards of the Switch?
Simple!
Put hardware inside the dock that makes it faster and more efficient. We have thunderbolt now, so id assume nintendo could put a GPU the power of a 1050ti in the dock. add more memory, and a better cooling solution. Sell it for 100-200 dollars as an accessory, or as a bundle with the OLED switch that bumps the price up to 450/500. TOTK runs at 60fps at 1080p now, everyone's happy. People get their "pro" model (or rather, accessory) and Nintendo doesn't even need to make a whole new fucking system with improved specs in order to do so.

Literally a concept i'd thought up for YEARS now.
 
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