Switch Emulator Adds Online Support, Then Loses It Double-Quick In Embarrassing U-Turn

Incur the wrath of the Nintendo Ninja and win dumb prices.

The point about preservation makes sense, as a Yuzu user this isn't an issue to me. Even the best emulators like Dolphin typically have no online outside of netplay. Locking features of emulators behind paywalls is a bit sus though, I'm aware a lot goes into them but that raises all sorts of legal issues.

Good decision though. Though I greatly admire the emu and homebrew community and preservation efforts, there is still a large chunk of people who use that as a facade to pirate games. So you can't really blame the emu devs for the U-turn and even Nintendo for being aggressive against these efforts.

Abundantly easy to see why they would ditch this. And honestly they should keep their fingers crossed that it’s enough to keep Nintendo from coming after them for any money they may have made in that short amount of time and crushing them into dust even if it is a piddling sum that they brought in. Because even if it wasn’t their aim, this treads dangerously close to the worst kind of piracy possible.

"(...) because online play was only made available to paying Patreon supporters, yuzu goes from being a freely-distributed piece of code to a paid service – which would place it firmly in the sights of Nintendo's legal team."

They could just make the feature available for everyone if that was the fear. I doubt they couldn't afford the increased server capacity when they're earning (just checked) upwards of 13,000€ a month in Patreon subscriptions.

If it is their Code, how will Nintendo sue them?
No Copyright used, no Problem.

"Know when to hold 'em...
Know when to fold 'em...
Know when to walk away..."

@Azuris Copyright aside? For the simple fact that it harms a core component of Nintendo’s business. But if we’re talking copyright, even if they did use all their own code, Nintendo could sue them to make them prove it’s their own code, and the cost of that defense alone could ruin them.

NintendoLife is supporting emulations, in other words, hackers, in other words, illegal stuff. Bravo!!

@Cosats I agree they are so two faced, they will talk of their support for games developers and how much love they have for the likes of playtonic. Such stupid logic from seemingly intelligent people.

@Cosats zzzzzzz ... there’s always THAT guy in these articles

@Cosats Yeah and that's super awesome, sue me. I emulated No More Heroes 2 because you can only buy it pre-owned anyway, no money goes to the devs. Then I bought it when it came out on Switch. But sure, get worked up about the illegality (or lack thereof) about people who care more about preservation than Nintendo do with their 3D all-stars BS. Ever wonder why it's always Nintendo fanboys doing their moral grandstanding?
FWIW they aren't even supporting it, just reporting on it non-judgmentally.

@TheDavyStar While they aren't directly "supporting" it, level with me for a second.

Does reporting on the existence of this emulator increase the likelihood of more people using it? Yes.

Does knowledge of the existence of an emulator increase the likelihood of more people pirating games? Also yes.

In short: Does the existence of this article reporting on and spreading information about the emulator and what it can do (and how you can support its devs)... Support them?

Yes, yes it does.

Therefore, without being too unreasonable, one could claim that NintendoLife is supporting the creators of the emulator, and therefore the risk of increased piracy as well.

Of course you could counter and say that increased knowledge of the existence of the emulator could lead to a swifter demise for it, since Nintendo will find out about it earlier... But until they do something about it, well, this article does, albeit indirectly, support the creators of the emulator.

Emulating alive systems will always be iffy.
I'm a big fan of emulators and especially the scene behind.
Plenty of super enthusiastic and clever people that oftentimes not only find ways to preserve old hard/software but also make it better.

That said, emulating a live system is a big no no for me.
And drawing this much attentions is probably get them in trouble now :/
If you're moving in legal gray areas, so it under the radar.

@Cosats Nothing illegal about emulation as long as it doesn't use copyrighted code. Decades of lawsuits have proven this. That's why Dolphin and CEMU are untouchable.

I like the idea about emulation for consoles that do not longer exist, but for a actual gaming system like hte switch...? Just makes sense if you think in one direction: which is in this case not about game preserving, but about playing a stolen rom.

Another great article of nintendolife about the grey area of hombrew, emulation and downloading roms in another place but not the oficial store....

How is this embarrassing?
These guys tread uncharted ground and get out before it kills them.
It's smart.
Anyone of you that can code these highly difficult things?

@Cosats Emulation is not a t hacking, they don't even mean the same thing.

@fafonio lol I’ve notice the same thing. It’s always THAT guy and he loves these articles

@Rika_Yoshitake If the Nintendo ninjas cared that much Dolphin would be off the web by now

@Cosats That’s a strange string of logic, how did you get to that conclusion?

@TheFrenchiestFry I think they care nonetheless but I think they are super careful about the switch emulation because it’s their current consle.

@Blizzia I understand that train of thought, that people finding out about emulators through NL articles may then download the emulator. I personally don't think that makes reporting on the emulator unethical. The notion that NL shouldn't report on a development in the Switch community because of the business interests of a company that they are not owned by, such an idea is more problematic.

@TheDavyStar Whether it is unethical or not is another matter entirely - but if we just think of the train of thought I presented as realistic, that still means that they do indirectly support these emulator devs, whether they like it or not.

I agree that it is a problematic idea, but sometimes, instead of considering everything from the standpoint of "is it right or wrong", maybe it's better to think of it as "We could report on this... But if we reported on it, would it benefit our readers?"

If the answer to that is "no" (like in this case) - maybe they shouldn't be so busy thinking about whether they can report on emulators, but more whether they should.

People, in general, come here for Nintendo stuff. That someone made an emulator mimicking the Switch which nobody should be using anyway coz, well, they should be using their Switch (until it goes out of production)... is kinda pointless and not something that matters to people who play on Nintendo Switch, aka their readers.

In other words they got a heads up that they were on the chopping block and decide to go dark instead. NL should only approve such stories if they can provide they support the Developers and Software Developers whom will get some financial benefits. Stealing codes is Stealing regardless of how anyone wants to make it. You need the Source to make the emulation and if you didn't pay for it then your doing Privacy regardless. Anyone trying to say otherwise is just fooling themselves. If that was the case why did they wait til someone else released it before they said oh now we can emulate the game. That just basically Theft of IP from someone else blood/sweet that produced the game. Notice how the emulators never mentioned they talked to or got approval from the Source Creator. That in itself should tell you it's illegal.

@WhoTFLol Actually I own every game I play on Yuzu, I use Yuzu solely for modding cause I don't want Nintendo to brick my switch for having fun in a way they don't like. How about you get a job to give you something better to do than pretend to be better than people you don't know.

a Nintendo Switch emulator... i didn't even know there was one until now, and honestly I hate the fact that there is one...

Damn those filthy pirates! 😠

@SwitchForce Dude you know you can reverse engineer the code to then make an emulator which you don't need the source code for. Reverse Engineering code is 100% legal.

@Cosats I haven't used it, but it's not like an emulator of a new console like the Switch is going to really compare in quality to the real console in its lifetime, especially if you don't want to invest in new PC hardware costing far more than the Switch itself.

I probably first tried PCSX2 in the mid 2000s with an okay-ish PC and if it could boot some of the games I had, it would run them at like 2fps.
I had similar experience when people were talking about using Dolphin to run Smash Bros. Brawl in HD when the Wii was new.
I could get about as far as loading the Super Mario Sunshine titlescreen with glitches, don't know how those other people were doing it then. Either they had some really beefy hardware or they too were stomaching playing at 2fps and sped up the recording to make it look like real gameplay.

Huh I didn't know there was a mistake..

They're programmers, not lawyers so obviously they wouldn't have thought this through properly. Also it might have to do with the backlash from fans.

@KingMike lol a few months ago I tried using dolphin because me and my friend wanted to play Smash Melee with each other online, and I was lucky if it got to 4 FPS in training mode lol

I love when people say it's about preservation, when it's just an excuse for them to not pay anything, playing path of radiance on dolphin is one thing, playing Odyssey on an emulator is another.

They did this as nintendo would seriously wanna shut them down otherwise, especially if the emulators servers were better then nintendos

@Charinzardon The devs of the emulator wanted to charge a little more then what it cost for a nintendo subscription, yuzu wanted £5 a month iirc, official nintendo sub is £4 a month

What was you saying about just an excuse to not pay anything?

@BeastMode44 Smash Melee on dolphin has smoother online experience then smash ultimate on official nintendo servers

@Doktor-Mandrake we never got that far because my computer is trash lol.

@SilentHunter382 Reverse engineering code isn't legal if you agreed to a E.U.L.A. or other license/contract that prohibits reverse engineering. I don't know off hand what people have to agree to when starting up and owning a Switch but I'm going to bet that the contracts/licenses/agreements that Nintendo has in place for the Switch prevent copying, selling or reverse engineering the code.

@SilentHunter382 someone that uses homebrew is my guess here and since they don't understand EULA/IP/TOS and the legality behind this would make dumb comments as such. Try to reverse engineer Windows or MS Office and see where that gets you.

@SwitchForce @Tourtus Yes a company can say in their TOS that you can't reverse engineer their software but that doesn't mean it is illegal.

And no I don't homebrew my consoles.

@SilentHunter382 Violating any contract or legal agreement is in fact illegal. (At least it is here in the U.S.) If it wasn't no company or business would bother implementing them. What kind of punishment or whether the punishment is enforceable or not is another matter entirely. Some punishments can be small, like losing the right to use the product or service, or the punishment can be severe like jail time or hefty fees. It all depends on what's in the document, if the right holder decides to pursue, and how a court rules over the case.

@Tourtus sigh Yes if it is in the contract or agreement that you can't reverse engineer then they can sue you for breaking the contract or agreement by doing it but they can't sue you for reverse engineering because it is legal to do so.

There is a difference.

@Tourtus
EULA is a statement, not a contract. It's not worth the paper it's written on.

@LinkSword

An easier Way would be to just let People run their own dedicated Servers
Many old Games will be playable in Decades.
It is really a shame that many newer Games just die in a couple of Years.

@Doktor-Mandrake Not talking about online, talking about emulating something that is available to buy right now, but doing it for free, people are giving moral excuses for playing something like Mario Odyssey in a emulator.

@SwitchForce Pretty sure both Windows and MS Office have been cloned already. (I haven't used it but I've heard of Open Office, which I thought supported the Microsoft document formats.)
How do you think that happened?

Game preservation my foot, avoiding to pay Nintendo money has always been the main goal of emulation. I mean this is a Switch emulator for crying out loud, you know, Nintendo’s current console on the market.