TL;DR:
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They will avoid monetization
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They will avoid providing step-by-step guides to play games on the emulator (I assume they mean extracting games from the console using hacked tools)
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They will avoid providing keys or circumvent DRM, you’ll have to get everything from your Switch
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The devs are upset at how much attention they’re getting which is kind of ironic considering the article.
“We wanted to fly under the radar at the start […] It’s already much more widespread than ideal for the current stage of development.”
Which is how emulation worked the last 20 years. It flew under the radar because they weren’t doing anything explicitly illegal, while also avoiding getting paid or having anything point at you.
Yuzu flew too close to the sun. I’m sorry, but they did. They very brazenly operated like they were challenging Nintendo. They werent just emulating games from last Gen but modern Gen games that just came out. Like it or not, that is taking money from Nintendo and it was obvious they were going to get the hammer.
For me I’m mad at them. Mad because their cavalier attitude made all emulation look the same as piracy, which it isn’t. There’s a clear dividing line and Yuzu came very close to labeling all emulation as piracy.
Emulator devs deserve compensation, copyright laws are bullshit.
Nintendo lost some negligible (to them) amount of money, and in return ruined some peoples lives, and disappointed their fans.
Emulator devs deserve compensation, copyright laws are bullshit.
There’s literally nothing that legally bars emulator devs from being paid, or even releasing their emulator as a commercial product outright. Except being sued and the cost of fighting that suit burying them financially.
Bleem! eventually won, and it was a commercial emulator for a then-current gen console. The cost of winning that fight put them out of business.
Not providing encryption keys/BIOS and not directly assisting with piracy are the key things to be legally in the right. Making money on it just makes you a more likely target, even if you’re legally entirely in the right.
Exactly. They were brazen with what they were doing, making it easy to pirate games. While I want to support devs, by accepting money and assisting piracy they painted a giant target on themselves. Most emulator devs know what they’re doing and stay out of the way, yuzu did the opposite.
There’s literally nothing that legally bars emulator devs from being paid, or even releasing their emulator as a commercial product outright. Except being sued and the cost of fighting that suit burying them financially.
Bleem! eventually won, and it was a commercial emulator for a then-current gen console. The cost of winning that fight put them out of business.
So basically large corporations get to decide if unaffiliated developers can earn money. Seems reasonable.
I don’t see how your comment contradicts mine at all.
More like anyone can sue anyone for anything, even if they have no chance of winning and sometimes corps do exactly that to force a settlement so you’ll do what they want even if you did nothing wrong.
Any action you take happens only because billionaires and massive corps don’t consider you worth suing over it. Even if there is nothing resembling legitimate grounds to do so because they can tie you up in court until you are bankrupt.
I always like pointing out the fatal mistake of Gawker - they outed that a billionaire was gay while he was in a country where being gay was punishable by death. He then spent the next several years offering to fund any lawsuit that had any chance of success against them in revenge, and eventually one stuck.
Anyone can sue for any reason + large corporations can force a settlement = large corporations can decide if unaffiliated devs earn money for any reason.
large corporations can decide if unaffiliated devs earn money for any reason.
Large corporations and sufficiently rich individuals can decide if you do anything for any reason. Bringing up unaffiliated devs earning money is just narrowing the scope beyond what it actually is. Again, everything you do happens only because the exceedingly wealthy and massive corps don’t consider you worth suing over it.
I got freaking crucified for this sentiment the day the news dropped.
They very brazenly operated like they were challenging Nintendo.
This claim has the same vibe as “stand your ground” assaults.
For me I’m mad at them.
And victim blaming??
No he’s right, Yuzu’s Devs were openly encouraging piracy. It was all over their discord.
That’s why they settled so quickly, they were fucked otherwise.
Source? Is there proof to the claim? I didn’t see it, but I wasnt on the discord. Heck I didn’t even see it in the settlement info. Not saying its not possible, I just dont trust nonsourced claims.
I don’t know why you’re getting down voted, it’s completely reasonable to ask for sources.
Here’s an example, look at the tweet referenced which shows an except from the legal filing: https://twitter.com/gamr12/status/1765098920521461869
Essentially, the Devs were writing articles and posting messages about games working before they were officially released. As in, before people have legal means to purchase them.
You might argue that it’s not uncommon for people to get pre orders early, sure, but this is clearly pushing it.
Oh no, piracy in emulation. How unique.
They will avoid monetization
Funny: “suyu also needs to be a product. We need to find ways to monetise the project”
https://gitlab.com/suyu-emu/suyu/-/wikis/Contributor-License-Agreement-Policy
Could it be that they just copied the one in yuzus repo and hard-replaced the names? Three quote makes reference to 2019, which is very weird for a 2024 project, but would be more normal for the timeframe of yuzu
However, in order to compete with modern emulators in 2019 and beyond, suyu also needs to be a product.
Could it be that they just copied the one in yuzus repo and hard-replaced the names?
Yes, it’s pretty much the same text as before but contributor zqpvr also adjusted the spelling of “monetized” to “monetised”, so it’s definitively not like the document flew under the radar and it was just part of a bulk import with a search and replace of yuzu to suyu: https://gitlab.com/suyu-emu/suyu/-/wikis/Contributor-License-Agreement-Policy/diff?version_id=f4ca3a5422d153139ccc66fc4d86ccb844d937e7
So for now “2) more easily monetise the project […] 3) restrict the access of non-core parts of the suyu source code” is the policy of suyu until revoked.
Will have to see how it goes, might be some OCD as another typo was also there.
I hope they don’t get Nintendo any ammo to go after them.
Will have to see how it goes, might be some OCD as another typo was also there.
Deleting the entire thing would have gotten rid of the typo as well. At this point, that’s just stupidity.
Cloning the repo of yuzu right at Nintendo tried to make an example of them might be considered…stupid.
Don’t get me wrong, I hope the best for them. But I would not risk my future against Nintendo.
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One thing is for sure: no other fork will have a name this good.
Nuzu was a pretty good name even if it’s already dead
bullied to death literally
I’d go with Yuza, the Korean version of the Yuzu fruit. Could be verbalized as “yowza.”
I just hope the one for the next system is called tuzu lol
deleted by creator
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Wezu
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UZOO
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UZwitch
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They could start by developing in the open and not in some shitty discord group.
the Suyu development team has decided to avoid “any monetization,”
Should of always been like that
of
*have
(Or “Should’ve”)
Either emulation is legal and you’re therefore okay with devs getting payment for tgeir labor or it’s illegal and they need to keep as low a profile as they can
I hate people who try to be on both sides
The monetisation part wasn’t what fucked them over, it was merely what made their more illicit activities worse.
The Yuzu team were using leaks to tweak their code, namely the ToTK leak.
IP law is at it’s core about monetization and developer compensation. The legality of emulation absolutely hinges on whether or not the alleged infringement is monetized.
The legality of emulation absolutely hinges on whether or not the alleged infringement is monetized.
You are absolutely mistaken. See Sony’s lawsuits against Connectix and Bleem!, which were both commercial products, and Sony lost every lawsuit they filed against them.
I don’t know where you and the other thousands of people parroting this online are getting this from, but it is not true and never has been.
The legality of emulation absolutely hinges on whether or not the alleged infringement is monetized.
Sony lost all of their suits against Bleem!, sorry but it’s not illegal to monetize an emulator. The rampant piracy they were engaging in and essentially promoting is what fucked them. Including using leaks to test their emulator against and patch issues with games that hadn’t been released yet. There’s been talk that they also had a ROM stash on their discord.
Nope. There have been monetised emulators before that have been deemed legal (see Bleem!)
Also if you break copyright law, the rights holder can come after you regardless if you are making money or not.
I agree but pay walling features is just asking for trouble, I should of specified what I meant with pateron.
The features weren’t exactly paywalled, as the source code was always available. They merely provided beta builds to patreons, that were also available free of charge by someone else [1].~~[1] https://github.com/pineappleEA/pineapple-src/releases~~
Selling emulators is legal, as far as we know (been a while since the last ruling). If it’s true what others have pointed out, that yuzu devs were distributing copyrighted material in their public discord and talking open about privacy, then Nintendo has support for their argument that yuzu was intentionally designed to circumvent copy protection and purposely facilitates piracy.
Isn’t pineapple just stealing the builds from pateron and did they release the current source code or did that get released after pateron build went public. I didn’t really keep track of it.
You’re likely right, it seems like they made use of the code being open-source and distributed it freely after getting access through patreon. Each commit is quite big with all the source code changes of the specific early access build.
Switch emulation would be 1/10th of where it is now without it.
Anyone trying to make money on a licensed IP they don’t own is in hot water.
Disagree. People deserve compensation for labor, and the Yuzu devs did good work. It’s our laws that suck.
Congratulations, you’ve shown everyone how dumb you are.
Sad_face.jpg I try not to be 👉👈
Ehhh… it’s ok if there’s money involved but they definitely pushed it too far. However even if there was no money involved Yuzu made actions that shut them down.
Smart if you can self fund, but at the end of the day there’s a lot of costs that people ignore when it comes to emulation or things in the space. Working with a group called Retroachievements.org (small plug) and they accept donations for server costs but that’s it. Signed up for 1 dollar on Patreon and wanted to give them 10. They refused, which is a good sign.
SueYou is an awesome name for N**tendo emulator
Still the same Contributor License Agreement as Yuzu to make proprietary versions. They’ve learned nothing.
well they’re not completely proprietary…
ea is just latest master, merged with unspecified list of work-in-progress prs, and built together with custom branding.
there’s zero proprietary code in it…
but you don’t know what code specifically was used to build it.well they’re not completely proprietary…
The point of a CLA is to eventually sell proprietary versions. There is objectively no need for a CLA in a fully FOSS/GPL application because the GPL already clarifies everything that’s needed.
Edit: “suyu also needs to be a product. We need to find ways to monetise the project” Direct quote from https://gitlab.com/suyu-emu/suyu/-/wikis/Contributor-License-Agreement-Policy
What if both the new version and old version of the license has something you disagree with in them?
Then they should have forked different software like Ryujinx.
Oh I was thinking it was an original work.
well the limitation was against republishing the ea-branded versions. there’s nothing stopping you from doing whatever you want with the regular source tree and all the code is there, even if some of it is not merged…
some form of monetization is pretty much required (due to the hardware required to reverse engineer) and I’m really fond of the yuzu’s and skyline’s “early access” model (since it doesn’t actually paywall anything, and keeps the project fully open)
No CLA is needed to sell open source software. If fact the right to sell is a mandate by both the open source definition and the free software definition.
Also they said no monetisation. That means none at all. Do they want to get sued by Nintendo and pay millions for the rest of their lives?
well ryu do monetize their work and haven’t been sued… yet.
Suyu claims to do no monetisation to avoid getting sued but explicitly spells out to sell partially proprietary versions.
This is one of the most clever names I’ve seen for an emulator.
Reminds me of sosumi, a Linux util for one-click MacOS virtual machines. Sosumi also happens to be the name of the alert/error sound in early MacOS.
Sosumi (the alert sound) was named due to Apple having a long running court battle with a music company called Apple Corps, link here.
I was excited to see but I see is now archived. Is there a successor or new maintainer? I have to try this
Not exactly the same, but there’s quickemu which does similar things.
So how long until Nintendo tries to claim copyright to the code that was previously open source and threaten to sue the Suyu team just to scare them into settling?
They’d face a mountain of opposition from the open source community at large.
Yuzu was licensed under the GPL. Even if Nintendo are the new owners of the Yuzu code, they cannot retroactively close-source the previously open code, per the license.
If they tried that and it looked like they could set a precedent, it could spell serious trouble for other GPL projects like the Linux kernel. And they’ve got some serious financial backing.
It’s illegal for them to un GPL it, though. They could try, but they would fail. The only precedent it would set is to encourage people to not waste their time.
Exactly. And even if it did go to court, it wouldn’t be hard to get EFF and the Linux Foundation to help Suyu.
Roe v Wade was overturned.
Legally speaking, nothing is impossible if one party is motivated enough, and other parties are too apathetic to do anything about it. And by other parties, I mean the public at large. The Linux and EFF communities are small by comparison.
The only way I know of to change a GPL license is to somehow contact everyone who has ever contributed to the project to agree to re-license their code, but there is no way I see Nintendo being able to pull that off… And, even if they did somehow manage to contact every one of these individuals, there’s no way they’d get them to agree to that, no matter how much money they may have…
I mean, many thought the same of Yuzu.
In reality, Nintendo doesn’t want to go to court. They didn’t want to go to court vs Yuzu. They just wanted a settlement so they can 100% control the narrative. That’s traditional Japanese corporation 101. Yuzu’s case was never actually about piracy, copyright infringement, or anything else.
I would not be shocked to see Nintendo either attempt to un-GPL the code, claim some sort of copyright over forks, or even to maliciously inject new code in an attempt to gain access to user IP addresses and just send out letters to every Yuzu user. Nintendo really is that petty, look at what they did to Gary Bowser. They will 100% go after other emulators like this now that they know the developers will just give up in a week.
I mean, many thought the same of Yuzu.
Problem is, Yuzu team were breaking other laws. They were tweaking their codebase based on leaks.
I would not be shocked to see Nintendo either attempt to un-GPL the code, claim some sort of copyright over forks, or even to maliciously inject new code in an attempt to gain access to user IP addresses and just send out letters to every Yuzu user. Nintendo really is that petty, look at what they did to Gary Bowser. They will 100% go after other emulators like this now that they know the developers will just give up in a week.
Do you know how much of society depends on GPL code? Every Android phone, every Chromebook, most servers and many billion dollar companies rely on GPL code. Nintendo attempting to un-GPL Yuzu will wake some sleeping giants, who will realise other people might attempt to do the same to the projects they rely upon. As a result the defence fund for anyone Nintendo goes after like this will end up VERY well funded. As in, make-Disney-shit-their-pants well-funded.
As for your point on Gary Bowser, you’re kinda leaving out that Nintendo had a MUCH stronger case against him. Unlike emulators, the development of piracy modchips is very much illegal.
What are the names of these “sleeping giants” you mention, out of pure curiosity?
Linux Foundation - Linux is GPL and would be massively, negatively affected by an ability to suddenly un-GPL code
Google - their consumer OSes (Android and ChromeOS) use Linux as their base, not to mention their servers are almost entirely Linux.
IBM/Red Hat - RedHat is a billion dollar company specialising in providing Linux OSes.
Microsoft - surprising I know, but a lot of their internal and cloud stuff uses GPL code, including Linux.
Oracle - they ship a lot of GPL code, including a Linux distro.
EFF - The ability to un-GPL code would have catastrophic consequences on the internet, and this will be an issue they will weigh in on.
Apple - their servers don’t run on macOS.
And just about any company you can think of with a Linux server.
I mention Linux a lot, but that is because it can’t be understated how important it is in our global infrastructure. Linux is as much GPL as Yuzu, so if code can be retroactively un-GPL’ed from Yuzu, it can be done with one of the most important software projects in the world.
You know what’s a really good defence: Not being based in the fucking US.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“Suyu currently exists in a legal gray area we are trying to work our way out of,” contributor and Discord moderator Sharpie told Ars in a recent interview.
The Suyu project arose out of “a passion for Switch emulation” and a desire not to see “years of impressive work by the Yuzu team go to waste,” Sharpie said.
But that passion is being tempered by a cautious approach designed to avoid the legal fate that befell the project’s predecessor.
The Suyu devs have also been warned against “providing step-by-step guides” like the ones that Yuzu offered for how to play copyrighted games on their emulator.
Those guides were a major focus of Nintendo’s lawsuit, as were some examples of developer conversations in the Yuzu Discord that seemed to acknowledge and condone piracy.
Suyu, by contrast, is taking an extremely hard line against even the hint of any discussion of potential piracy on its platforms.
The original article contains 297 words, the summary contains 154 words. Saved 48%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
All that needs to be asked of them is “are you willing to pay the court costs associated with Nintendo taking you to court, and then the millions of dollars to Nintendo if you lose?”. If not then they shouldn’t even touch it, because Nintendo will come after them.
Nah it’s pretty easy to kill litigation before it starts if things step up. If you receive a cease and desist and don’t want to fight it, you can shut it down and never look back. If you’re served paperwork with a court date, the initial hearings can get the lawsuit thrown out if there are no grounds for a case on intellectual property infringement, one of which is “non-profit”. In fact, a lot of people would argue that Yuzu was completely in the right to do what they did despite having a link to their patreon, but at that point the courts might decide either way and litigation costs money.
but at that point the courts might decide either way and litigation costs money.
It also sets a precedent which makes it easier for Nintendo and other companies to sue open source developers. It would have been bad for everyone in the emulation community if they went to court and lost.
if there are no grounds for a case on intellectual property infringement, one of which is “non-profit”.
These guys have said right from the get go that they’re trying to profit off it though. Whoopsies.
Also the fact that its the exact same code that Yuzu ran, which just settled with nintendo for millions of dollars, is going to influence any future cases.
but at that point the courts might decide either way and litigation costs money.
Yeah so like I said - they have to be prepared to fight nintendo or just shut it down almost immediately.
After consulting with an unnamed “someone with legal experience” (Sharpie would only say “they claimed three years of law school”), the Suyu development team has decided to avoid “any monetization,” Sharpie said. The project’s GitLab page clearly states that “we do not intend to make money or profit from this project,” an important declaration after Nintendo cited Yuzu’s profitability a few times in its recent lawsuit.
From the article, they explicitly state they’re not trying to profit.
They are still running afowl of the anti circumvention rules in the dmca. Just saying you have to provide your own keys isn’t enough.
A switch emulator that wants to be safe from nintendo has to have no capability of circumventing the copyright protection mechanisms nintendo employs.
Look at vlc for inspiration. It can play blurays, it can’t circumvent the copyright protection of blurays. But if you provide the keys and the library that decodes the content then it can play them just fine. This keeps vlc safe.
ok but how does the bluray library stay safe? its still a similar problem. for piracy sites, a lot of them seem to deal with it by just having it be hosted in a country that doesnt care enough to shut them down.
Like you already pointed out there are ways for the library to stay safe, the important point is being disconnected from the emulator.
This appears incorrect. Multiple emulators have ways to circumvent the copyright protection mechanism. None of them are being hit. Dolphin legit has the keys in their package. It’s why Steam didn’t platform them, but Nintendo knows and Dolphin is not changing. It would be literally the cost of the letter to get Dolphin to change. Nintendo hasn’t even sent that letter.
What Yuzu did wrong was outside of “anti circumvention rules” that you seem afraid of.
Sorry but it’s not wrong. The anti circumvention clause in the drmc was the direct complaint from nintendo against yuzu. Please research that clause and the legal prior art, especially against decss. I’ve had this conversation too many times to repeat it again.
“I’ve done it too many times to repeat it again” Really?
Isn’t that kind of beneath you? That’s the type of shit someone would say on a playground.
Besides which the full complaint doesn’t appear to be available anywhere, but what has been shown has not said what you’re claiming.
However other people might have more knowledge about this situation than you seem to, besides which other pieces that have been revealed since the original complaint have shown it’s not just about the ability to circumvention technology. So you know… maybe read more, or stop acting like you have all the answers when you don’t?
On the other hand consider if it was exactly what you say it is, why isn’t Cemu and Ryujinx getting their own version of the note… hint: it’s not just about the circumvention…
I’m just tired of explaining it over ten comments in a thread, I’m sorry I can’t just give you all the answers you want. I’ve my own stuff going on. I hope I gave you enough information to go find out the answers.
That’s assuming the Suyu team is based on the USA, where the DMCA can screw them over. As they’re hosting their code on GitLab istead of GitHub, it may hint they got this covered.
It’s worth noting that many countries around the world have their own versions of the anti circumvention clause of the dmca.
Just gotta find one that doesn’t.
