[echelon]

> I'm not terribly convinced that $23k a month in donations is wrong for people putting in serious engineering work into a project that enables that.

That's not it.

Say what you will about "sales lost to piracy are not sales", but Netflix and Steam suggest otherwise.

Kids playing Zelda for free might be spending their opportunity cost money on Xbox instead because of what Yuzu enabled.

I support hardware and software emulation. The stuff Kaze [1] and others do is both amazing and inspiring. It's the correct kind of emulation.

Yuzu wasn't acting in good faith. The team saw abuse firsthand and embraced it.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCuvSqzfO_LV_QzHdmEj84SQ

[rahkiin]

Netflix, Steam, and Spotify show that the best deterrent from piracy is easy access.

Eg I would love to play Zelda or Mario but I do not feel like getting a whole switch for it that is just another console in the closet used a couple of times per month at most.

[phatfish]

You can get new Nintendo games as fast as you can download them from the E-Shop, which is as easy access as anywhere else.

Obviously you need a Switch to play them legally (it's that whole console gaming thing).

[katbyte]

I refuse to get any more switch games because you cannot do offline backups of your saves like PlayStation (and I presume Xbox)

[joshfee]

As fast as the terrible wifi on the switch will let you

[bzzzt]

You can plug an USB to ethernet adapter in the dock.

[gpspake]

For what it's worth, I did this with the PS4 to play like two or three games. On the other hand, I've played 100%ed more games on the switch than any console since probably super Nintendo or N64. It's had such an amazing run. I do wish they'd release more games though. I played all the donkey Kong country games, super Metroid, and super Mario on the emulator and it was great. I've been thinking about busting the Wii u out just to play wind waker.

[Wowfunhappy]

> Netflix, Steam, and Spotify show that the best deterrent from piracy is easy access.

Right, and the problem is that piracy in Yuzu is easy. Piracy on a real Switch is much harder (you have to track down an early model Switch if nothing else).

[skeaker]

Piracy will almost always be the more convenient option. It is up to companies to provide a better service, as is the case with Steam and (until recently) Netflix. Attacking and shutting down avenues for piracy without doing anything to make your own service more convenient is a losing strategy. Nintendo got 2 million here, but has done virtually nothing to stop the average person from pirating a Switch game. It's for that reason that I honestly don't believe their goal was to stop piracy or emulation with this case, they just saw an easy buck and took it.

[Dban1]

I think they crippled pirating new Switch games because Yuzu won't be able to update to support new titles anymore.

[Osmose]

> Kids playing Zelda for free might be spending their opportunity cost Money on Xbox instead.

...I don't follow? You're suggesting businesses have a right to attention?

> But Yuzu wasn't acting in good faith. The team saw abuse firsthand and embraced it.

As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, they had rules against ROM distribution and some of the links shared as evidence that they didn't have been by unrelated people.

[echelon]

> ...I don't follow? You're suggesting businesses have a right to attention?

Companies should be able to be paid for their products. You have the freedom of taking your money and attention elsewhere, but the illicit piracy of these products is not good for the labor and capital that went into making the product.

In a market of entertainment choices, there are a limited number of dollars that can and will be spent. Certain people are cheating the system to get free entertainment and to double dip.

A gamer that enjoys both Xbox and Nintendo games can get two for the price of one by pirating the latter. Even if there is equal demand for both products, the supply side has been illegally distorted. This doubly lowers the competitive fitness of the latter company.

If I bought and paid for the game, I should be free to emulate. But that's not what's happening here.

> As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, they had rules against ROM distribution and some of the links shared as evidence that they didn't have been by unrelated people.

As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, Yuzu embraced piracy. They knew it was happening and focused their energies on enabling new releases and getting users to pay for early access builds.

[maxrecursion]

Emulation is great because it preserves games that would be lost to time after the physical media dies off. Emulation that allows piracy of brand new games is straight up stealing. While I don't feel sorry for large corporations because they screw everyone over as well, there are plenty of cheap older games people can play, or get game pass.

People like to act like they are entitled to these new releases for free. They aren't. Play another game and get it for cheaper later, or emulate it long after its release.

[autoexec]

Copying isn't theft, and while you might personally feel that there are zero valid reasons to emulate a game other than for the preservation of old titles I'd expect plenty of others would disagree.

[sonnhy]

I think the difference between copying 1:1 game and re-creating the game is what can be the discriminator. If you get a game, raw data, and copy bit per bit you're pirating, while if someone re-creates a whole game fro scratch it's a different story.

I would argue that re-creating from scratch is more legal than a straight copy of the original data.

[pxc]

> I would argue that re-creating from scratch is more legal than a straight copy of the original data.

Maybe it should be, but it isn't. From-scratch fan remakes get shut down on copyright grounds all the time.

[echelon]

> Copying isn't theft

What about your private key?

What about your bitcoin?

What about your nude photos, sex videos, text messages, emails, and personal health information?

What about your brain and its memories?

What about your intellectual outputs for training AI and selling your skills below your wage?

What if you worked for a game company and they let you go because they didn't hit sales targets?

...

> I'd expect plenty of others would disagree.

What's your use case? That you want better wifi or faster FPS on the Switch?

Because a lot of people on this same forum argue that we need complete control over our iPhone/Android devices. No App Store, no Apple fees, no Apple control. Yet these same people get argued down by much of the audience here.

I'd imagine that many of those arguing in favor of Apple's racket are the same ones arguing it's okay to pirate Nintendo games.

Nintendo has one device that is specialized for a single purpose, and it's positioned in a marketplace full of alternatives. People have broken it and are circumventing its only revenue lever.

This isn't as inconvenient for you as it is for the company scrambling to maintain its most important revenue stream.

[autoexec]

> What about your private key? What about your bitcoin? What about your nude photos, sex videos, text messages, emails, and personal health information? What about your brain and its memories?

Those are private. Things openly for sale to the public are not. Someone copying my private data still isn't theft though, since I still possess what was "taken". Much of what you listed (text messages, emails, nudes, health info) have already been copied many times by third parties and on hardware I have no access to or control over and some will likely continue to be copied. As long as my privacy is preserved it really isn't a problem because regardless of those copies I haven't lost anything.

> What about your intellectual outputs for training AI

That may or may not be copyright infringement (we'll see), but it isn't theft.

> What if you worked for a game company and they let you go because they didn't hit sales targets?

That's just life.

> What's your use case? That you want better wifi or faster FPS on the Switch?

There are endless reasons why people might want to emulate a game. Better portability, better performance, personal backups, correcting bugs, accessibility, fan/hobbyist projects, tool assisted speed runs, etc.

> a lot of people on this same forum argue that we need complete control over our iPhone/Android devices.

I'd agree with those people

> I'd imagine that many of those arguing in favor of Apple's racket are the same ones arguing it's okay to pirate Nintendo games.

I'd imagine that a lot of people who feel that we should have control over the software we use and the environment we use it in would support emulation since it too empowers the user.

> Nintendo has one device that is specialized for a single purpose, and it's positioned in a marketplace full of alternatives. People have broken it and are circumventing its only revenue lever.

No one owes Nintendo or their bad business model anything. If I buy a game, I should have the right to do what I want with it. If I come up with a way to play that game on other hardware, or to edit the code in memory to give me extra lives, or to enable the use of a new interface/controller, I should be able to. If having the ability to do those things allows pirates to play a game without paying Nintendo for it that's not my problem. There are perfectly valid reasons beyond piracy for emulation, and that's enough to justify its existence.

It's on Nintendo to change their business model to make their products more appealing to people who currently choose not to give them money. The rest of us shouldn't be forced to have our hands tied in order to preserve Nintendo's desired profits.

[account42]

> Companies should be able to be paid for their products. You have the freedom of taking your money and attention elsewhere, but the illicit piracy of these products is not good for the labor and capital that went into making the product.

Do companies also have a moral obligation to release their creations in the public domain once their investment has been recouped? Why not?

[sifar]

What about people borrowing video games from the library ? Should we ban that too since the companies are missing on those apparent sales.

[LtdJorge]

I will never have bought a console before. Know I'm gonna get Yuzu installed on my EmuDeck as a personal fuck you to Nintendo and play all the games I find interesting (mainly Zelda).