Yuzu to pay $2.4 Million Dollars in Damage to Nintendo. Citra also affected. Asks Judge to set Legal Precedent against other Emulators.

[rcmaehl]

Summary

Yuzu and Nintendo have settled the case. Ending Citra and Yuzu, including a 2.4 Million Dollar payment to Nintendo

 

Quotes

Quote

A week ago, Nintendo sued the developers of... Nintendo Switch emulator, Yuzu, for “facilitating piracy at a colossal scale.”... It appears that Yuzu will give up without a fight...And it’ll affect the Nintendo 3DS emulator Citra as well. Tropic Haze has not only agreed to pay $2,400,000 to Nintendo but also says Yuzu is “primarily designed to circumvent and play Nintendo Switch games.” It will surrender the yuzu-emu.org domain name to Nintendo, agree to delete... its copies of Yuzu but also “all circumvention tools used for developing or using Yuzu—such as TegraRcmGUI, Hekate, Atmosphère, Lockpick_RCM, NDDumpTool, nxDumpFuse, and TegraExplorer,” and hand over any “physical circumvention devices” and “modified Nintendo hardware” to Nintendo. It also agrees to not delete any other “evidence” that infringes Nintendo’s IP rights. Yuzu and Citra developer Bunnei confirmed in the Yuzu discord that both the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo 3DS emulators are affected.

Hello yuz-ers and Citra fans: We write today to inform you that yuzu and yuzu’s support of Citra are being discontinued, effective immediately.

yuzu and its team have always been against piracy. We started the projects in good faith, out of passion for Nintendo and its consoles and games, and were not intending to cause harm. But we see now that because our projects can circumvent Nintendo’s technological protection measures and allow users to play games outside of authorized hardware, they have led to extensive piracy. In particular, we have been deeply disappointed when users have used our software to leak game content prior to its release and ruin the experience for legitimate purchasers and fans.

We have come to the decision that we cannot continue to allow this to occur. Piracy was never our intention, and we believe that piracy of video games and on video game consoles should end. Effective today, we will be pulling our code repositories offline, discontinuing our Patreon accounts and Discord servers, and, soon, shutting down our websites. We hope our actions will be a small step toward ending piracy of all creators’ works.

Thank you for your years of support and for understanding our decision.

It's unclear on whether this result could impact other emulators. If Yuzu had fought this lawsuit in court, one of the biggest questions would have been whether Yuzu is actually circumventing Nintendo’s protections since the emulator itself does not contain Nintendo’s keys. (Yuzu is a “bring-your-own-BIOS” emulator.) ...Now, Nintendo and Tropic Haze are asking a judge to specifically find that Yuzu circumvents its copyright protections by using those keys, even if it doesn’t come with them.
 

Specifically:
 

Developing or distributing software, including Yuzu, that in its ordinary course functions only when cryptographic keys are integrated without authorization, violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s prohibition on trafficking in devices that circumvent effective technological measures, because the software is primarily designed for the purpose of circumventing technological measures.

 

My thoughts

It may be over for emulation. You'd have to create entirely new BIOSes from scratch for any device you want to emulate or the legal precedent this may set will likely make it illegal. I feel like Linus Torvalds and his hatred of Nvidia, only at Nintendo at this point. It is a sad day for Emulators.

 

Sources

IGN

The Verge (quote source)

 

[PROPOSED] FINAL JUDGMENT AND PERMANENT INJUNCTION

JOINT MOTION FOR ENTRY OF FINAL JUDGMENT AND PERMANENT INJUNCTION

Edited March 5 by rcmaehl
Add court docs linked by OhYou_

[jaslion]

Well this sucks. This is going to severely hamper emulator development.

[TetraSky]

They just gave up without a fight...

Because Nintendo 100% would've dragged this on, costing them way too much in legal fees.

 

I went ahead and saved the latest version of Yuzu when this whole thing started. Considering it's open source, though.... Cut one head and 10 more will spawn from it. They will just be more careful about it.

[Mark Kaine]

21 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

Ending Citra and Yuzu,

not sure if typo?  why it ended, isn't it open source?

 

22 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

You'd have to create entirely new BIOSes

why? cant you freely download "bios" (which is typically called firmware btw) from most manufacturers websites? 

 

or if all fails extract it from your own machine?  

 

 

i get it, this is bad news, apparently, but sounds more like the judge had no idea how any of this works,  because why would they. 

 

 

[rcmaehl]

4 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

why? cant you freely download "bios" (which is typically called firmware btw) from most manufacturers websites? 

For Nintendo Devices? Xboxes? Playstations? Not usually 

[Mark Kaine]

5 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

For Nintendo Devices? Xboxes? Playstations? Not usually 

https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/hardware/ps3/system-software/

 

?

 

ps4 is the same procedure, ps5 probably too (tho no emus tho lol)

 

ps:

 

xbox 

 

https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/xbox-360/console/system-updates-info

[manikyath]

nintendo: we're pure evil, and you'll buy our games anyways.

[KnoT]

2 minutes ago, manikyath said:

nintendo: we're pure evil, and you'll buy our games anyways.

I never did and never will, to this day I don't understand the Nintendo hype in USA 

[starsmine]

1 hour ago, jaslion said:

Well this sucks. This is going to severely hamper emulator development.

it was a settlement, there was no court case, there was no ruling.

Im baffled by yuzu not taking this to court though, even if yuzu lost anything, there is no chance in hell this would not have been anything other then a super narrow ruling of hey, dont talk about other software on your website.

I wonder what advice the lawyers gave them other then court cases will cost money (which the community would have likely raised)
 

  

1 hour ago, rcmaehl said:

My thoughts

It may be over for emulation. You'd have to create entirely new BIOSes from scratch for any device you want to emulate or the legal precedent this may set will likely make it illegal. I feel like Linus Torvalds and his hatred of Nvidia, only at Nintendo at this point. It is a sad day for Emulators.

There is NO legal precedent set here.  

54 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

not sure if typo?  why it ended, isn't it open source?

 

why? cant you freely download "bios" (which is typically called firmware btw) from most manufacturers websites? 

 

or if all fails extract it from your own machine?  

 

 

i get it, this is bad news, apparently, but sounds more like the judge had no idea how any of this works,  because why would they. 

 

 

Plenty of Open source software has been shut down. The yuzu team at the very least will not be working on it and that repository will be nuked. 
Again, no judge was involved here. They settled. 

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, starsmine said:

Im baffled by yuzu not taking this to court though, even if yuzu lost anything, there is no chance in hell this would not have been anything other then a super narrow ruling of hey, dont talk about other software on your website.

I wonder what advice the lawyers gave them other then court cases will cost money (which the community would have likely raised)

here's the advice they got: nintendo literally has infinite money, which results in infinite lawyers, and the chance of *anyone* in the court having any understanding of what emulation is is essentially zero.

 

it might actually be better for them to settle, because (to my understanding) settlement means no case, and thus no case law for nintendo to use in the future.

[starsmine]

1 minute ago, manikyath said:

here's the advice they got: nintendo literally has infinite money, which results in infinite lawyers, and the chance of *anyone* in the court having any understanding of what emulation is is essentially zero.

Which explains why the courts have historically totally been against emulation. (they have not been)
Nintendo does not have infinite money
You can only drag out a case for so long. Like I do not dismiss out of hand the cost, but you can only appeal rulings you cant sue the same thing twice. Dragging it out only costs more if it causes more billable hours. 

 

1 minute ago, manikyath said:

it might actually be better for them to settle, because (to my understanding) settlement means no case, and thus no case law for nintendo to use in the future.

There have been historical cases here, the only precedent Nintendo could have realistically presented was directing people to software (which wasn't even yuzu's software) that can crack the console to extract the bios was over the line. If Yuzu was black boxed reverse engineered, they are protected along all other lines of attack. 

[Beskamir]

Thank you Nintendo for letting me know about this cool open source emulator! Can't wait to see what future developments from other teams/individuals will be like. Especially now that there won't be any reason to try being legal or even ethical in how the emulator is setup. Considering Yuzu tried to be legal, but that clearly didn't stop Nintendo from going after them.

[gjsman]

According to most lawyers I've watched (e.g. Hoeg Law), the supposed historical precedents for emulation are way, way weaker than most people think.

 

1. Almost all the emulation cases, were decided before the DMCA took effect (1998), or were decided before the relevant sections in the DMCA took effect (because some sections, like the critical 1201, were delayed a few years into 2000-2001).

 

2. Bleem!, one of the most famous pro-emulation cases, has two weaknesses:
A. It was started before the DMCA could have had any effect on the case;

B. The PlayStation did not actually have true copy protection - but rather, the code was for preventing the playing of copies on the original device. Thus, extracting and decrypting protected ROMs was never in the scope.

 

Thus, because the pro-emulation cases were decided before the law Nintendo is invoking was even available, there is a chance they would all fall apart under modern law. This is because, as Nintendo alleged, while emulation may be legal, breaking cryptographic locks under the DMCA is an issue that has never been litigated in regard to video games. It has, however, been litigated in regards to Blu-ray discs and DVDs, with the Motion Picture Association winning every time. It was also famously litigated in Apple v Psystar, where Psystar was basically emulating MacOS on non-Macs, and they were annihilated legally. 

[manikyath]

4 minutes ago, starsmine said:

Nintendo does not have infinite money

nintendo has over 11 billion 'in cash assets'

nintendo's expenses for 2023 were 5.4 billion.

nintendo's profits for 2023 were roughly 5 billion.

tears of the kingdom has sold 20 million copies, even if we assume only a tenner per copy makes it to nintendo's pocket (that's a LOW estimate), that's still 100x the money they decided to settle for.

 

nintendo, for the scope of a court case against a bunch of enthousiasts building an emulator, has infinite money.

[Lightwreather]

Ah, citra was the one decent 3DS emulator on the market, and it was going on for so long at this point…

Why now?

ありがとうございました Nintendo

and a sincere ありがとうございます Citra and Yuzu

[Mark Kaine]

34 minutes ago, starsmine said:

it was a settlement, there was no court case, there was no ruling.

Im baffled by yuzu not taking this to court though, even if yuzu lost anything, there is no chance in hell this would not have been anything other then a super narrow ruling of hey, dont talk about other software on your website.

I wonder what advice the lawyers gave them other then court cases will cost money (which the community would have likely raised)
 

  

There is NO legal precedent set here.  

Plenty of Open source software has been shut down. The yuzu team at the very least will not be working on it and that repository will be nuked. 
Again, no judge was involved here. They settled. 

ah, ok, its quite a bit misleading then isnt it ... my answer would have been similar but with more emphasis on "not a precedent" even tho that seems like an obvious endgoal for nintendo.

 

36 minutes ago, starsmine said:

Im baffled by yuzu not taking this to court though

i was baffled that they apparently did...!

 

 

well, truth is they probably can't afford such a thing, doubt they make much money with yuzu, and evil nintendo knows it.  

 

 

 

[Mark Kaine]

45 minutes ago, manikyath said:

nintendo: we're pure evil, and you'll buy our games anyways.

as a kid i did... i mostly rented back then tho tbf... but since 20+ years or so? nuh huh... they're worse than EA! 

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, Mark Kaine said:

as a kid i did... i mostly rented back then tho tbf... but since 20+ years or so? nuh huh... they're worse than EA! 

i havent bought anything nintendo since the DSi was still relevant (other than a second hand 3DS because it was basicly free at the local second hand store), and i havent bought anything EA since all 3 of my EA accounts got looped in a single hack, and i needed an account to contact support to get them reinstated.

 

Spoiler

i had 3 EA accounts because:

- one was for the sims 2 exchange

- when the sims 3 was announced you needed a separate account to register for something on that end

- when the sims 3's content sharing thing came out it required a separate account from the two before mentioned.

- those eventually all got merged into EA accounts.

 

[Mark Kaine]

2 hours ago, rcmaehl said:

It may be over for emulation

look, I'll be honest,  if you post news from such *well known* outlets like ign or "the verge"... you should think a bit more critical.

"asks judge"  

 

who asked?

 

did the judge agree?

 

or did maybe something totally different happen and it doesn't really matter what [.......] asked for?

 

im not directly blaming you for the content presented here at all, i just want to put your focus on how poorly formulated these articles are, and how vague their statements are.

 

over for emulators? well if the authors have a say then yes, but luckily they don't.  although they surely trying their hardest!  daddy nintendo pays good afterall,  probably,  maybe, eh? 

 

 

39 minutes ago, Beskamir said:

Thank you Nintendo for letting me know about this cool open source emulator! Can't wait to see what future developments from other teams/individuals will be like.

tbf OP was right in their assessments of it "ending" you can't actually dl 'em anymore and future development of this particular emulator will probably be a mess. 

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

look, I'll be honest,  if you post news from such *well known* outlets like ign or "the verge"... you should think a bit more critical.

"asks judge"  

 

who asked?

 

did the judge agree?

 

or did maybe something totally different happen and it doesn't really matter what [.......] asked for?

 

im not directly blaming you for the content presented here at all, i just want to put your focus on how poorly formulated these articles are, and how vague their statements are.

 

over for emulators? well if the authors have a say then yes, but luckily they don't.  although they surely trying their hardest!  daddy nintendo pays good afterall,  probably,  maybe, eh? 

to add to this - any case law that may come of this is only valid in the US. if, let's say, an entity from a location that is not bound by the US runs off with the yuzu code and makes "yuzu revived".. as long as it's hosted somewhere equally difficult for nintendo's lawyers to get to.. they essentially have no way to stop it.

 

yes - they could have the domains seized.. but we all know how effective that is.

[OhYou_]

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.rid.56980/gov.uscourts.rid.56980.10.1.pdf
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.rid.56980/gov.uscourts.rid.56980.10.0.pdf
 

[starsmine]

20 minutes ago, manikyath said:

to add to this - any case law that may come of this is only valid in the US. if, let's say, an entity from a location that is not bound by the US runs off with the yuzu code and makes "yuzu revived".. as long as it's hosted somewhere equally difficult for nintendo's lawyers to get to.. they essentially have no way to stop it.

 

yes - they could have the domains seized.. but we all know how effective that is.

it would be hard to host it on github though, which is standard for open source.
I know other options exist, but which ones are not US based? 
Not saying solutions don't exist, but it greatly will increase the barrier of entry to use or develop it. 

[manikyath]

4 minutes ago, starsmine said:

it would be hard to host it on github though, which is standard for open source.

standard, but not required. it's standard because it's the easy way to deal with things.

[BachChain]

3 hours ago, rcmaehl said:

the legal precedent this may set will likely make it illegal

Uhh, there has to be an actual ruling to do that. This was settled out of court before there was even a trial.

[Godlygamer23]

2 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/hardware/ps3/system-software/

 

?

 

ps4 is the same procedure, ps5 probably too (tho no emus tho lol)

 

ps:

 

xbox 

 

https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/xbox-360/console/system-updates-info

System software is not really the same as the BIOS. System software may come bundled with BIOS updates, and the software itself may be considered 'firmware', but does it impact the board level firmware? I'm not an expert here, so if I'm wrong, hit me with the information. But it seems they are NOT the same thing. The PS3 System Software is literally the operating system, and an advanced one at that, and seems far too advanced to be considered a 'BIOS'.