this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2024

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Here’s how the makers of the “Suyu” Switch emulator plan to avoid getting sued (arstechnica.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 169 points 7 months ago (2 children)

TL;DR:

They will avoid monetization
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)
They will avoid providing keys or circumvent DRM, you'll have to get everything from your Switch
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."

[–] [email protected] 78 points 7 months ago (7 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago (5 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago

I got freaking crucified for this sentiment the day the news dropped.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 84 points 7 months ago (4 children)

One thing is for sure: no other fork will have a name this good.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Nuzu was a pretty good name even if it's already dead

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

I'd go with Yuza, the Korean version of the Yuzu fruit. Could be verbalized as "yowza."

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I just hope the one for the next system is called tuzu lol

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 7 months ago

They could start by developing in the open and not in some shitty discord group.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (9 children)

the Suyu development team has decided to avoid "any monetization,"

Should of always been like that

[–] [email protected] 75 points 7 months ago

of

*have

(Or "Should've")

[–] [email protected] 26 points 7 months ago (5 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 19 points 7 months ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

Switch emulation would be 1/10th of where it is now without it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Disagree. People deserve compensation for labor, and the Yuzu devs did good work. It's our laws that suck.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Anyone trying to make money on a licensed IP they don’t own is in hot water.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 7 months ago

SueYou is an awesome name for N**tendo emulator

[–] [email protected] 31 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Still the same Contributor License Agreement as Yuzu to make proprietary versions. They've learned nothing.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (8 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

And that's what's gonna fuck them; making money off it. Unless they have enough money to actually go to court and fight Nintendo.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago (1 children)

This is one of the most clever names I've seen for an emulator.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Sosumi (the alert sound) was named due to Apple having a long running court battle with a music company called Apple Corps, link here.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 40 points 7 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Exactly. And even if it did go to court, it wouldn't be hard to get EFF and the Linux Foundation to help Suyu.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

You know what's a really good defence: Not being based in the fucking US.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

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!

[–] Whirlybird 5 points 7 months ago (4 children)

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.

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