The emulator forks which are being taken down are as follows:
Despite this, the one fork that continues, and will continue without takedown is Ryubing - by Greemdev. This is created by an original member of the Ryujinx team. It’s safe, the code is beyond reproach (and violates zero laws or Nintendo code) and actually brings helpful updates.
Still…shitty news. And more indication that the Switch 2’s architecture will be damn similar to that of this current Switch. Them taking emulators down means the upcoming games have a solid chance of being emulatable on release. But…that’s my own (and others’) conjecture, so we’ll see when the time comes.
Just legal bullying. Good luck fighting an army of lawyers that are also lobbying the system. That being said all of that would be civil suits so if emulator creators don’t earn money they don’t have much to lose but the ability to continue the work.
They threaten a crap ton to scare devs into not entering court, but tbf I’m pretty sure the guy they got was for actual piracy, and the court ordered the millions in alleged damages to be paid in $40 installments to Nintendo per month for the rest of his life.
Edit:
It was set at 20-30% of his salary so yeah I guess that’s still a pretty hefty chunk of change.
IIRC, part of the argument is that Switch games are encrypted, and the emulator uses real Switch keys to read the games. So Nintendo claims that by using official Nintendo Switch keys, it is violating Nintendo’s copyright and is subject to DMCA claims.
The argument is shaky at best. But the problem with DMCA is that combating it actually requires taking the claimant to court. So that’s a prohibitively long and difficult process, just to be able to go “hey Nintendo doesn’t actually have any claim here. Restore my repo.” Especially when Nintendo has a known history of drawing out long legal battles to exhaust defendants’ time+resources.
From my understanding the repos wouldn’t include the keys (or if they did then they definitely shouldn’t). But yeah I understand the long legal battle thing.
Right, Dolphin had an encryption key in there for the Wii that was hardcoded in. That is apparently the one bit of legal leverage Nintendo has to keep it off Steam, though being Nintendo, they would likely fight it, anyway.
In any case, the key could be a user provided configuration option, or tools for ripping games could do the decryption on their own. Either should keep the code safe from Nintendo being able to win a case. Though again, doesn’t stop Nintendo from trying and exhausting your ability to fight it.
Repos wouldn’t include the keys, but they’d include instructions on how to obtain them. Those instructions (according to Nintendo’s legal team) are enough to say that Yuzu violates the DMCA.
The patents on the Game Boy hardware expired years ago, so that’s what gives Analogue the right to do what they do. As for these Switch emulators, I have no idea, but I’ll guess it’s just Nintendo trying to scare people without their own legal departments into complying.
Why are they hosting their code on Github? Switch to Codeberg or maybe self host. And yes I know Github has the most users but they’re dealing with something radioactive.
Codeberg can suffer from the same DMCA requests but at least is not managed by Microsoft.
To really avoid(or ignore) DMCAs you need to self-host/use a vps for your own version control tool like Forgejo/GitLab or use a decentralized one like Radicle.
Just a reminder don’t have emulators on GitHub. They work with big companies to make sure they are taken down. Forks do nothing to help since it’s easy for them to find now.
I don’t like GitHub, but this is simply untrue. We host the PCSX2 project on GitHub, and GitHub even donated some amount at one point to the project. The following major, top-of-class video game console emulators (non-exhaustive) are officially hosted on GitHub:
Keep in mind that I’ve only chosen what I believe is the top one or one of the top ones from major consoles. If I could pick multiple per console, this list would be a mile long.
We are literally in a thread about a takedown in GH. But if you go to other sites, they have the repo up.
Suyu, Nuzu, Uzuy, Torzu, and Sudachi have all been taken down. Youtube-dl got taken down until public outcry. The number of takedowns since 2022 have only increased over the years. 2024 being the highest amount.
I’m glad the repos above are not yet being taken down, I truly am. But GitHub is just Microsoft at the end of the day.
We are also on platforms (Lemmy/piefed) that have chosen codeberg over GitHub for their main git hosting.
The issue is more with recent consoles e.g. Switch and Ps5/xbox
Well…If you want to emulate current gen, prepare to deal with consequences.
I believe Sony/MS turn a sort of blind eye to emulators of old gen if they arent hurting sales and being egregious with their presence (e.g. promote what it can do rather than word of mouth)
Bruh what? 💀 I chose the highest-profile and arguably best emulators for each major system, let alone that almost every other modern one uses GitHub too. If all of these emulators are flying under the corporate radar, I will deliberately inject myself with rabies and die a slow, agonizing death. I couldn’t come up with this shit if I got cross-faded on meth and fentanyl.
Legitimately shocked that this abject fucking nonsense got three upvotes. Want to know how I know Sony knows PCSX2 exists? Two former PCSX2 developers are working on “ports” (read: shitty, subpar emulation) of PS2 games to the PS5. They got their jobs because of their work on PCSX2.
Edit: I’m going to go off a bit more, actually, because I’m sick of living in an era where zero-information dipshits can just say any unresearched, unsubstantiated bullshit online and put it into immediate contention with obvious, demonstrable facts presented with sourcing by a subject matter expert:
I’ve included a Wikipedia article where applicable; these articles will often have links to these emulators being discussed in popular gaming outlets.
This doesn’t even count emulators like Snes9x, PCSX-Reloaded, and Project64 which are no longer top-of-class but which have their own Wikipedia articles, were wildly popular in their day, and host their code on GitHub.
These are known, and you’d better believe Nintendo knows everything there is to know about each and every emulator that exists. They tried pressuring the team behind Cemu years ago, but it ended up being pointless.
Nah… I suspect that Sony simply doesn’t want to anger hackers again. The cost of downtime is likely to be higher than the imaginary profits they get from harassing emulator communities. I doubt they think their reputation is worth much but maybe they have started to see some value on it.
Japanese gaming companies often don’t seem to understand the value of the reputation / honor which is really weird considering that it’s one of the things japanese culture is supposed to value.
I can’t wait for federation with codeberg/forgeo. PRs from different instances sound great. Git is already set up. It will hopefully be a game changer.
Technically, you’re allowed to make copies for personal use unless doing so requires bypassing DRM, encryption, or some other lockout mechanism.
Emulation is still not piracy and neither is making a personal backup, but if making that backup requires anything more than a standard disc drive or a cart reader then it is a DMCA violation.
You honestly believe people download emulators to play games they own already? That means they have the console still… Sooooo… Oh no you’re right. People buy tears of the kingdom and then buy a $1200 PC to run it instead of a switch. My bad. You’re totally right. Emulation is in no way linked to liracy whatsoever. Even I haven’t pirated 3 million games from all systems. In fact I purchased ALL of my games super legally just so I could emulate them 🫠
I didn’t buy a $1200 PC to play TotK. I already had a $1200 PC and decided I wanted to use it to play the game I paid for (and dumped with my own console) with better performance.
So if I want to run some of my old games from before 2000, I need to run a Windows 98 or XP computer, because you think emulators should be illegal? I’m not going to install windows 98 on an actual computer, I emulate it so I can run the games I legally own.
Quote “you understand the only reason people get an emulator is to pirate roms?” is your statement. You’re referencing all emulators, hence my comment.
Now, it does facilitate it because all you need is a ROM from any source.
However, saying emulators should be prosecuted for it would be the same as arguing that Steam’s Proton should be banned because you can launch pirated games through it.
The real perpetrators are those who distribute pirated content. But going against those would be much more difficult, so they target emulators instead.
lets say you have spend 10 years making a game. and you put it on steam for $10. but wait. you are making $0 dollars because everyone is just pirating it, and then demanding you make a second one.
The reality is that Nintendo removed your ability to buy those old games for $10, because they’d rather rent you those games forever on their subscription service. If they were on Steam for $10, I’d have bought those old ROMs.
Emulation =/= online piracy. You need to stop equating them. I emulate games I bought all the time. They were legally acquired ROMs and emulation is legal. I’m not doing anything wrong, legally/ethically/whatever metric you want to use.
Emulation is the legal act (in the US and many countries) of running games on a virtual instance of their respective consoles. Piracy is in no way required to participate in this activity. You can download emulators from the Apple App Store, that’s how legal it is.
I also find it laughable that you want to compare Nintendo to some scrappy artist spending a decade on their game. You need data to show the harm here.
I have no issue with emulating games. But I also have no issue of a company trying to stop their games from being emulated.
This was literally your starting argument and what I was objecting to. You have talked about piracy in all follow ups. How else am I supposed to read this? You are equating them. You use them interchangeably to defend Nintendo’s behavior.
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What gives them the right to take down emulators? It’s just code someone wrote that happens to be able to interpret bytes from a switch cartridge?
Why wouldn’t they take down a company like analogue for example for making a hardware level gameboy emulator?
Just legal bullying. Good luck fighting an army of lawyers that are also lobbying the system. That being said all of that would be civil suits so if emulator creators don’t earn money they don’t have much to lose but the ability to continue the work.
Nintendo got one guy’s paychecks garnished for the rest of his life. So even if you have no money there is a lot to lose.
They threaten a crap ton to scare devs into not entering court, but tbf I’m pretty sure the guy they got was for actual piracy, and the court ordered the millions in alleged damages to be paid in $40 installments to Nintendo per month for the rest of his life.
Edit:
It was set at 20-30% of his salary so yeah I guess that’s still a pretty hefty chunk of change.
IIRC, part of the argument is that Switch games are encrypted, and the emulator uses real Switch keys to read the games. So Nintendo claims that by using official Nintendo Switch keys, it is violating Nintendo’s copyright and is subject to DMCA claims.
The argument is shaky at best. But the problem with DMCA is that combating it actually requires taking the claimant to court. So that’s a prohibitively long and difficult process, just to be able to go “hey Nintendo doesn’t actually have any claim here. Restore my repo.” Especially when Nintendo has a known history of drawing out long legal battles to exhaust defendants’ time+resources.
From my understanding the repos wouldn’t include the keys (or if they did then they definitely shouldn’t). But yeah I understand the long legal battle thing.
Right, Dolphin had an encryption key in there for the Wii that was hardcoded in. That is apparently the one bit of legal leverage Nintendo has to keep it off Steam, though being Nintendo, they would likely fight it, anyway.
In any case, the key could be a user provided configuration option, or tools for ripping games could do the decryption on their own. Either should keep the code safe from Nintendo being able to win a case. Though again, doesn’t stop Nintendo from trying and exhausting your ability to fight it.
Repos wouldn’t include the keys, but they’d include instructions on how to obtain them. Those instructions (according to Nintendo’s legal team) are enough to say that Yuzu violates the DMCA.
The patents on the Game Boy hardware expired years ago, so that’s what gives Analogue the right to do what they do. As for these Switch emulators, I have no idea, but I’ll guess it’s just Nintendo trying to scare people without their own legal departments into complying.
Why are they hosting their code on Github? Switch to Codeberg or maybe self host. And yes I know Github has the most users but they’re dealing with something radioactive.
Codeberg can suffer from the same DMCA requests but at least is not managed by Microsoft. To really avoid(or ignore) DMCAs you need to self-host/use a vps for your own version control tool like Forgejo/GitLab or use a decentralized one like Radicle.
Just a reminder don’t have emulators on GitHub. They work with big companies to make sure they are taken down. Forks do nothing to help since it’s easy for them to find now.
I don’t like GitHub, but this is simply untrue. We host the PCSX2 project on GitHub, and GitHub even donated some amount at one point to the project. The following major, top-of-class video game console emulators (non-exhaustive) are officially hosted on GitHub:
PlayStation:
Xbox:
Nintendo:
Sega:
Atari:
Misc:
Keep in mind that I’ve only chosen what I believe is the top one or one of the top ones from major consoles. If I could pick multiple per console, this list would be a mile long.
We are literally in a thread about a takedown in GH. But if you go to other sites, they have the repo up.
Suyu, Nuzu, Uzuy, Torzu, and Sudachi have all been taken down. Youtube-dl got taken down until public outcry. The number of takedowns since 2022 have only increased over the years. 2024 being the highest amount.
I’m glad the repos above are not yet being taken down, I truly am. But GitHub is just Microsoft at the end of the day.
We are also on platforms (Lemmy/piefed) that have chosen codeberg over GitHub for their main git hosting.
The issue is more with recent consoles e.g. Switch and Ps5/xbox
Well…If you want to emulate current gen, prepare to deal with consequences.
I believe Sony/MS turn a sort of blind eye to emulators of old gen if they arent hurting sales and being egregious with their presence (e.g. promote what it can do rather than word of mouth)
I think your right as well. Most manufacturers don’t actively go after such projects unless they hit the bottom line.
Notable exceptions are old licenced games that may hit rerelease and someone came up with a way to decomp it. The policies are all over the place.
duckstation works damn fine on my pixel. favorite psx emulator
Probably just a case of the corporate lawyers haven’t noticed those ones yet.
Bruh what? 💀 I chose the highest-profile and arguably best emulators for each major system, let alone that almost every other modern one uses GitHub too. If all of these emulators are flying under the corporate radar, I will deliberately inject myself with rabies and die a slow, agonizing death. I couldn’t come up with this shit if I got cross-faded on meth and fentanyl.
Legitimately shocked that this abject fucking nonsense got three upvotes. Want to know how I know Sony knows PCSX2 exists? Two former PCSX2 developers are working on “ports” (read: shitty, subpar emulation) of PS2 games to the PS5. They got their jobs because of their work on PCSX2.
Edit: I’m going to go off a bit more, actually, because I’m sick of living in an era where zero-information dipshits can just say any unresearched, unsubstantiated bullshit online and put it into immediate contention with obvious, demonstrable facts presented with sourcing by a subject matter expert:
Sorry I accidently insulted your mother or something 😅
Simply untrue.
These are known, and you’d better believe Nintendo knows everything there is to know about each and every emulator that exists. They tried pressuring the team behind Cemu years ago, but it ended up being pointless.
Some of these are years and years and years old.
Nah… I suspect that Sony simply doesn’t want to anger hackers again. The cost of downtime is likely to be higher than the imaginary profits they get from harassing emulator communities. I doubt they think their reputation is worth much but maybe they have started to see some value on it.
Japanese gaming companies often don’t seem to understand the value of the reputation / honor which is really weird considering that it’s one of the things japanese culture is supposed to value.
Self host, codeberg, make mirrors everywhere
I can’t wait for federation with codeberg/forgeo. PRs from different instances sound great. Git is already set up. It will hopefully be a game changer.
Didn’t Nintendo just come out and say emulators weren’t illegal?
Yah cuz they use them on official hardware hahaha
Why is Ryubing beyond reproach? I don’t see them doing anything differently than Ryujinx.
Nintendo playing whac-a-mole with these forks
Anybody got a link to a codeberg fork that looks reliable ?
I have no issue with emulating games. But I also have no issue of a company trying to stop their games from being emulated.
You have no issue with a company trying to illegally prevent people doing something legal?
Is it only for emulation? Stopping emulation is the illegal part.
how is pirating games legal?
Emulation isn’t piracy and you’re allowed to back up physical games you own. That’s legally your right.
Technically, you’re allowed to make copies for personal use unless doing so requires bypassing DRM, encryption, or some other lockout mechanism.
Emulation is still not piracy and neither is making a personal backup, but if making that backup requires anything more than a standard disc drive or a cart reader then it is a DMCA violation.
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yep. why? do you understand the only reason people get an emulator is to pirate roms?
To play games they own on other systems? To make official rereleases of old games, which now happens pretty often?
You honestly believe people download emulators to play games they own already? That means they have the console still… Sooooo… Oh no you’re right. People buy tears of the kingdom and then buy a $1200 PC to run it instead of a switch. My bad. You’re totally right. Emulation is in no way linked to liracy whatsoever. Even I haven’t pirated 3 million games from all systems. In fact I purchased ALL of my games super legally just so I could emulate them 🫠
You are wrong. PS4 Emulator is used by most of the Legal Bloodborne Gamer who own game and PS4. To get 60 FPS patches.
I didn’t buy a $1200 PC to play TotK. I already had a $1200 PC and decided I wanted to use it to play the game I paid for (and dumped with my own console) with better performance.
So if I want to run some of my old games from before 2000, I need to run a Windows 98 or XP computer, because you think emulators should be illegal? I’m not going to install windows 98 on an actual computer, I emulate it so I can run the games I legally own.
That’s vastly different. No one is buying a Nintendo game and then downloading ryujinx to play it since you don’t download Nintendo games on your PC.
Quote “you understand the only reason people get an emulator is to pirate roms?” is your statement. You’re referencing all emulators, hence my comment.
Emulation itself doesn’t constitute piracy.
Now, it does facilitate it because all you need is a ROM from any source.
However, saying emulators should be prosecuted for it would be the same as arguing that Steam’s Proton should be banned because you can launch pirated games through it.
The real perpetrators are those who distribute pirated content. But going against those would be much more difficult, so they target emulators instead.
If that’s the limit of your knowledge, I can’t help you. Read more on the subject maybe.
deleted by creator
Why?
Genuinely asking. Why do you think companies should do this?
lets say you have spend 10 years making a game. and you put it on steam for $10. but wait. you are making $0 dollars because everyone is just pirating it, and then demanding you make a second one.
Nobody is talking about piracy.
Right… Because not one person ever uses emulators for privacy… Because it isn’t, You know, obviously used for that.
Steam is not a console? What are you on? If someone is broke he never gonna buy it. After all. I think Piracy make game more popular instead.
Oh sorry I thought OP was talking about Nintendo.
You literallly said “put it on steam”.
Show me how this is happening to Nintendo.
The reality is that Nintendo removed your ability to buy those old games for $10, because they’d rather rent you those games forever on their subscription service. If they were on Steam for $10, I’d have bought those old ROMs.
Didn’t tears of the kingdom got pirated in like 1 week within release? That must have affected sales in some degree
Emulation =/= online piracy. You need to stop equating them. I emulate games I bought all the time. They were legally acquired ROMs and emulation is legal. I’m not doing anything wrong, legally/ethically/whatever metric you want to use.
Emulation is the legal act (in the US and many countries) of running games on a virtual instance of their respective consoles. Piracy is in no way required to participate in this activity. You can download emulators from the Apple App Store, that’s how legal it is.
I also find it laughable that you want to compare Nintendo to some scrappy artist spending a decade on their game. You need data to show the harm here.
Did I say that? I did not. I said the game was pirated in 1 week which it definitely happened unless everyone who emulated it was using it legally.
This was literally your starting argument and what I was objecting to. You have talked about piracy in all follow ups. How else am I supposed to read this? You are equating them. You use them interchangeably to defend Nintendo’s behavior.
Fuck Nintendo
If you’re going to sit on a fence, what’s the point in doing it on a public forum? What does that do?