Nintendo Is Apparently Not Involved In The New Switch DRM Initiative

Love the reply from Ryujinx: "we will continue developing an emulation platform for Switch game preservation"

Yes, let's preserve- sorry, I mean to say emulate- sorry... what I meant to say is Pirate a game that's not even out yet as someone dumped it for everyone to freely download...
Sure that's preservation!

If Denuvo was honest that they don’t give a ***** about performance problems I might have an once of respect for them but instead they continue their gaslighting which probably includes a hefty astroturfing budget.

so Nintendo's own games won't have this code inserted into them just certain games by third party companies

@Rika_Yoshitake
For the 1millionth time, Emulation does not equal piracy. You can emulate games you bought legitimately by dumping it from a game card.
And it is preservation because good luck playing digital only games like Kirbys dream buffet one the eshop inevitably shuts down

If Nintendo isn't involved, then I don't see the point. Most third-party games are multiplatform and, as such, easier to pirate on PC.

“….upon which consumers may enjoy their games both now and beyond the life cycle of the console itself.”

Well golly, why would I need an emulator for a console that’s still in the market? Oh yeah, I get to play the games for free…..sweet! 🙄

Maybe Switch exclusives then? Regardless I wonder what the performance impact is. There's always commenters who think emulation is the devil, I'm more interested in if it has any side effects on how smoothly the game runs. DRM at best can be hard to notice, but I've been around long enough to know sometimes it hurts paying customers too.

"Software publishers and Denuvo take great care to deliver the best gaming experience..."
Funny they'd say this when the best gaming experience for Switch games is on a PC.

@SalvorHardin I don't like Denuvo but I don't think they have to pay people to defend it. There's plenty of fanboys ready to fight the good fight against emulation. Sometimes Denuvo's performance impact is minimal, other times stutter, long loading times, or online checks drive me crazy. I used to view consoles as safe from those shenanigans, now I'm not sure. Hopefully this fails.

@Piyo sounds great. Did you purchase the Super Mario Odyssey game though? That’s the point I’m making.

Nobody who emulates Switch games rather than buying them is going to start buying them because of this, especially if it’s not even Nintendo games that use it. They’ll either wait for the DRM to be cracked or just play something else for free.

I don’t emulate Switch games but I’d rather there be as small a barrier to doing so as possible. One day the eShop is going to be closed and physical games will be incomplete and some will be extremely expensive so having the option to preserve and play them on PC will be a godsend in the future. It’s why (though I’m still disappointed) I’m not entirely fazed by the Wii U/3DS eShop closures because somewhere all those games will be preserved and playable either on original hardware through mods or on a PC.

@Magrane Probably not the best example, Nintendo already made money off Odyssey long ago. I do admit that I was annoyed at Metroid Dread on PC day 1 given Metroid's poor sales throughout the 2010s, but for the most part big companies aren't hurting for money. One day emulation will probably be the only way to play Switch games, especially if they get delisted and game cards get scalped, like what's happening with the 3DS right now. I would pay $20 for Snake Eater 3D if it gets relisted soon, but if it doesn't I won't have any affordable totally legit way to get it. I did rip MGS HD from my 360 this week and played it on Xenia.

@alecseus
Maybe respond to my actual point rather than using ad hominem?

@Rika_Yoshitake It's pretty stunning to me that people haven't figured out that creating an emulator is different than pirating a ROM.

just because they are "not involved" now doesn't mean they can't be involved later

Emulators will find a way around and paying customers will be left with reduced performance. Also denuvo does not require always online but be prepared to be refused access to your games on the go if you don't have access : "Denuvo games require reactivation if you haven't played them in a while or if you change any of your computer's hardware, and you must authenticate with Denuvo servers every time you receive an update" (admittedly haven't researched this too far).

@bonjong23 ah then you’ll be wanting www.Pushsquare.com

I have a feeling this won’t affect any of the games i’m actually interested in, luckily.

Again criminals claiming the "game preservation" lie. Stealing games IS NOT preserving them. It would be the same as when you steal a famous painting and place it in your filthy home to "preserve" it.

Not only do I think Nintendo aren't involved, I feel like they also won't actually endorse the use of this on their platform.

Also worrying for security purposes, anti-cheat software like denuvo requires kernel access level on your machine : "Ransomware abuses Genshin Impact's kernel mode anti-cheat to bypass antivirus protection". Just read this article, it's not old news, it's as of today.

@sanderev Emulators don't steal games though. They just let you play them beyond a consoles normal life span. You still have to obtain the games yourself first, hopefully in a legal manner.

Thanks to emulation I'm still able to enjoy all the games I've collected through out my life.

When looking at PC market, for sure Sega is one of them.

@ThePizzaCheese hi so I’m genuinely curious. Which games that you’ve collected can you now only play through emulation? And why can’t you play the original games? Scratched discs? Laser fails? Cheers

@sanderev with the difference of games existing in thousands or million copies, and a painting most often being a single item (unless you copy it, but then that’s a fake)

And before you start about piracy again, that is not the point of my reaction, but the fact your comparison doesn’t make any sense.

(I am against piracy but also against DRM.

Because DRM doesn’t solve piracy, it only punishes the paying customer.)

@beazlen1
Yeah, a lot of the older hardware I own has started to break down. I'd love to replace them, but retro gaming is so expensive, it's hard to justify spending so much on used goods.

Apart from that, my eye sight has gotten a lot worse, so I have trouble seeing smaller handheld screens.

And I totally believe it that it doesn't have any in-game performance impact, or if so, very very little.

Anti-emulation checks do not need a lot of performance when it's about trying to pick apart every imperfection of the emulators.

However I just think these gives emulator developers targets of what they can improve... just so these checks do not trigger and act more like the real console.

And if you wonder what titles are impacted:
Any publisher/developer who wants to implement it. It is not aimed to be a requirement for games going forward (because if so, then Nintendo would be involved in the deployment of it).

EDIT:
I am still annoyed at the title because it's really not a DRM.

@ThePizzaCheese Emulators never use real hardware to play copyrighted games. The only legal use of an emulator is:

1. If you own copyrights to the game. (like with the NSO emulators, the NES / SNES mini, etc)
2. If you use it for homebrew.
3. If you are able to dump the game without breaking any copy protection (DMCA).

But if you just download a rom from the internet and use that with the emulator it's 100% illegal.

@Waka_the_Prophet

So if I find a high-res scan of the Mona Lisa and print it out and hang it on my wall, did I steal it?

A rom is not a high-res scan, it's a carbon copy. Also pirates don't just hang them on their own walls. They also spread them around the internet.

Also, making a high-res scan of the Mona Lisa is in fact, illegal. They will kick you out of the Louvre faster than you can say "fair use".

@SwitchplayerJohn Copyright last the lifetime of the author / creator + 70 years.

@sanderev
Yes, I copy all my games myself.
And please don't assume that everyone online lives in the US. Circumventing copy protection to copy games I own is legal in my country.

People copying their own games isn't that uncommon, so please don't just generalize emulation as stealing.

Furthermore, there are emulators that do read from actual cartridges/discs.

@acNewUpdates how many people are playing games theyve dumped themselves? 0.01%? and thats generous

@Bustacap So? That doesn't change the fact there are people who do use emulators legally. I don't like being loped in with criminals just because we both use emulators.

@beazlen1 While I don't have any at the moment, it's a distinct possibility that that there will be soon. My Wii isn't doing too great right now, and if that breaks, emulation (or using extracted roms from the Wii on another one/a Wii U, which, while not the exact same thing, might as well be for the purpose of this argument) will be the only option for my Wiiware and Wii Virtual console games, especially since you can't get those legally anymore.

With extremely few exceptions: has there been a Nintendo console game not emulated in the entire history of videogaming?

@Rika_Yoshitake @acNewUpdates you’re both right - the trouble is that these games are being emulated while the console cycle is still in progress. The emulation should only be available once the Switch cycle is over. Most people use Switch emulation for piracy at the moment, which is bad, but it will end up being essential to game preservation, which is great. Of course this ideal scenario will never happen.

Which is fine. One of the things I constantly hear from the Steam Deck evangelical crowd is that they can play pirated switch/Nintendo games.

They claim its "not going to affect the player", yeah, doubt that.
Specially now that its confirmed Nintendo had nothing to do with this.

I like how both the Anti-Piracy and the Pro-Emulation people constantly misinterpret or misrepresent the other side's arguments. A lot of strawmen getting burned in these "arguments".

@AnnoyingFrenzy Like what?

@Rika_Yoshitake
Playing devil's advocate maybe, but you do know that all console manufacturers are gradually shutting down the online retail channels for their discontinued consoles? Even while customers have been, and are still invested in them, right? In that case I would surely call for game preservation too.

It doesn't excuse people from playing pirated games, but there should still be an option for legitimate customers to keep playing the games for which they bought the play rights for. Wouldn't you agree? Game publishers and console manufacturers don't respect these right at all.

And I'm getting really annoyed by the companies producing digital content being able to change their TOS's on the fly, denying customers their rights and criminalizing those who reclaim their rights by so called illegal means. Companies rake in the profits, customers get f-all. With a 100+ million consoles sold, you can't convince me that Nintendo is loosing big money over a dozen Switch games being pirates by only a few thousand tech savvy pirates.

As for me, I've made and downloaded backups of the the digital Wii, Wii U and 3DS games for which I have bought the rights to.

@ThePizzaCheese I mean something like this:

Anti-Pirate: I can't support emulation because piracy is bad.
Pro-Emulation: Emulation is not piracy. You can copy the game you bought legally yadayada
Anti-Pirate: Can't believe you'd support literal theft.

And then they go on like that. Obviously a very paraphrased discussion, but this is essentially the brass tacks of most "discussions" on the topic I see. Neither side in this conversation actually was discussing the other's points. Most obviously with the Anti-Pirate, blatantly ignoring the legality of emulation. However, the Pro-Emulator side ignores the point of the Anti-Pirate. Emulation is most commonly used to pirate games, even brand new ones, but they ignore this in favor of attacking the generalization of the statement. Really discussion should be about how companies or emulation sites could encourage the purchase of the media being emulated in question, but that will never happen. So instead both sides will take their own moral high ground on the issue and restate what is essentially a pro-con list. It's especially funny imo, because both sides actually agree that piracy is bad.

It's obvious what we have to do, protest against this.

We all know the bad timeline this will lead too if we give them an inch.

As with all attempts at denuvo, it will be cracked. I remember when this first came out and they claimed it was impossible to crack and they got cracked within a week. No software is impenetrable

@AnnoyingFrenzy I think you're sort of missing the point of the conversations then. Both sides know that both are against piracy. The discussions on here at least tend to focus on whether or not emulation is in fact used for legal purposes or if people just use that as an excuse. The discussion is about the generalization, not about piracy.

I betcha EA is one of those client, just as long as I am not force to go online to play my single player games like RPGs, fighting games, beat em up, racing, shmups, fps, tactics, strategy, platformers, and puzzler games then I'm good.

"Software publishers and Denuvo take great care to deliver the best gaming experience...The protection is designed not to affect the gamer’s experience, and it does not have any in-game performance impact."

Bull----. Don't forget that this is the same exact crap they've spewed about their DRM on PC for years. It is an obvious lie.

"Denuvo also mentioned how the tech for Switch would not require online checks and was a solution designed to be fully offline."

Maybe in its current "version pre-1.0" incarnation, but I don't trust them one damn bit to keep to their word. As soon as publishers start asking for more "features," they will be more than happy to oblige and change the "role" of their trash product.

"According to Kotaku, a Denuvo spokesperson has clarified that Nintendo is not involved in this new Switch DRM initiative."

This is great news, and I hope it does not change. If I have to start refusing to buy Nintendo games because of this garbage, then why should I even own a Nintendo console? Hopefully this remains the case, because Nintendo's games are very big reason to own their consoles--and if they ever begin to support Denuvo, then I won't touch. But I will keep following this one--and as soon as Nintendo changes their mind, hopefully they don't, I am done.

"Because of NDAs, we are not allowed to disclose company names, but we can say this solution comes from strong demand from publishing partners."

Okay, that's fine--so I'll just be extra cautious in the future when I choose to buy any new Switch game. Eventually your full partner list will come out, but until then, I will have to do the extra research to make sure that any game I want does not come weighed down by this Denuvo garbage. Until a full list is provided and managed somewhere, I will just create my own blacklist of Denuvo-supporting Switch publishers.

Does Nintendo still have their classic Nintendo Seal of Quality? If not, now would be a great time to bring it back--and deny any product using this cursed software the privilege of using its mark.

Disclaimer: I own two Switch consoles, not modded, and probably 850+ games, at least. I have never felt the need to emulate any of my Switch games. I will not pay for a game to waste my already old hardware's precious resources just to prevent me from doing something that I have no plans of doing in the first place.

In reality the only effect this will have is developers of Switch emulators will write an anti-Denuvo mechanism to build into their emulators, which will disable it and allow the game to be run probably better than it could on a native system to begin with, due to the lack of wasted resources inddition to the surplus of extra power.

Your only inconvenience? Maybe you'd have to wait a day or two, possibly a week after a newly-released Denuvo game to be patched into your emulator and then you're good to go. Actual Switch purchasers... who knows, you'll probably suffer weeks or even months of required updates before they either get around to fixing to performance, or removing the DRM entirely.

DRM check is the reason I will not consider XBOX ONE and XBOX Series X.
Just keep playing the games from Nintendo and PlayStation machines.

@sanderev it’s more like I ctrl-c a copy of the famous painting and keep that in my filthy home. There’s no objective loss, there’s the potential loss of a sale.

@Rika_Yoshitake yup. These people are acting like they are trying to save gameboy era games and not pirating day 1 brand new Switch games lol.

Sure “game preservation” aka “I don’t want to support the developers I’m entitled to free videogame”.

@acNewUpdates sure man all those pirated Xenoblade 3 copies that were leaked before the game even launched online [So don’t BS with “they used their own legal purchased copies” nonsense] was TOTALLY all about “game preservation” and all those people with copies totally bought the game. Lol.

Stop trying to justify pirating as anything more then lazy/cheap people that feel entitled to free videogames. Sorry they are not “game preservative” game boy era games that stoped being sold decades ago.

Face the facts that most people that emulate do it for free video gaming especially the brand new games so they can save money

@sanderev What if the person left that painting in a filthy shed in their back yard tthat had a tin roof under the hot summer sun. You stole it to put in a nice cooled vault that others could come and appreciate it. Because lets be fair, a lot of publisher treat their games in this way. Physical copies go away, digital copies get taken down, the hardware it's self becomes unusable, evenutally you're left without any options than to use the pirated copy that someone had the since to clone decades earlier. Meanwhile the company in question has been sold off multiple times if not vanished completely from existence with no clue as to what happened to the actually titles, as the acquistion its self was more concerned what it could do with the IP as opposed to remaster, remaking, or redistributiing the software that had been created prior. Where the servers themselves were not well maintained and the code source and assets were not preserved and vaulted properly.

The problem is the audience using these emulators to play them for free. nott the audience buying the game, dumping it to a drive, then installing it on a steamdeck or pc. Let's be fair here, none of this DRM ***** has ever worked. Not even in the short term. When Denuvo is involved,its the paying customers that pay, not the paitent pirates who will go play something else till your game is cracked.

Hey look, that exact thing I said.

Reminding you again I work commissions!

@MythTgr honestly, you are not entitled to "preserve" a game. So yeah, even when a digital store closes, pirating the game is still not done.

But I do feel that there should be legislation that forces companies to support official preservation projects. (one example is archive.org) when their games/software are no longer sold or supported.

People seem to think that I'm against game preservation, but that is not true. I am against game piracy. And like I said, piracy is not preservation.

I don't understand all the deflection and acting like it's just fine, saying that it's not stealing even if it's a newly released game. I've played emulators and roms, pirated all sorts of stuff, piracy is great. I stole that software because I wanted to get it for free and I hate spending money. You shouldn't need to justify every action as being some holier than thou crusade against the big corporate bad guys robbing everyone blind like bandits. People just get curious and download things because there's very little retribution from such crimes. No reason to make excuses.

Game exists, you want game, you download game. That's it. It's not that complicated.

Here's their Damage control PR

First, the company says that the program came about due to “strong demand from publishing partners”, though Nintendo has had no involvement. It’s also claimed that in-game performance will not be impacted.

Does anyone believe this crapp from them....they tried to hide "SPWYARE" and got caught and now trying to blame Publisher and Developers what a lame bunch of people whom are Clearly Idiots..

From:
https://nintendoeverything.com/denuvo-responds-to-concerns-about-its-new-switch-drm-initiative/

@Nintendo_Thumb Those whom do Pirating should go and pay the Software Developers whom spent Blood/Sweat creating those games. If one does that then they can dispel their name as Pirates.

Oh sure, I do that plenty. Get a game I like, end up buying it on Steam. Though I really take no offense to the word pirate, I think if I did, I'd stop doing it. Which is why it's funny seeing all these people that need excuses, I mean, if you can't handle the idea that you just stole software, maybe don't steal software.

I really hate people that won't pay for the games they want to play during a console cycle, and especially when they want niche games. Weak sales is the reason we barely get F-Zero, Star Fox, Advance Wars, Metroid, Pikmin etc. If you must steal, stealing Mario Kart, Smash Bros., Pokemon etc. hurts no one. But if Advance Wars, Pikmin 4, and Metroid Prime 4 ever come out, and you want to play them, buy them, because you're not screwing the man, you're screwing the fans.

@chucksneed it's on the switch not PC fake fan

@ArcticEcho that is why people attack Jim sterling for supporting a koutaku article on metriod dread. The will hurt the series to stay relevant in the mainstream

@Nintendo_Thumb it's like the song "don't download this song" by weird al and when I saw him perform this month after it I yeld buy the album support the artist

@ArcticEcho hear hear 👏

@acNewUpdates but it does, a few bad apples ruin it for the rest of us. Cause people fo rip games and freely share. That's why dev teams are into drm. Especially on PC.

@SwitchForce @BloodNinja @SwitchplayerJohn

If you are talking about doom eternal drm... it wasn't that bad. Most anticheats do it lol. Almost every online game has anticheats lol

Honestly, any article on this site that could start a discussion about piracy should have its comments section locked. People who are anti-emulation would really benefit to learn about how the homebrew and rom dumping scene is the primary reason why Nintendo had rom files for the virtual console, dating back to the Wii era's Super Mario Bros. Rom having the hash ID of a public dump, and not an internal one.

Anybody defending these "anti-piracy" issues have no idea how much the industry has benefited from the piracy scene, and made money from the efforts of the homebrew community, who often have a staunch rule about homebrew being free and accessible.

It's heartbreaking that people making themselves out to be Defenders of All Things Holy are unaware of how self-destructive their closed-minded views are, and how deeply this mindset hurts not just the community, but the gaming industry as a whole.

Anyone defending emulation clearly doesn't understand how it absolutely leads to piracy, purely because of the mechanisms involved.

As far as this DRM system goes, it could be as simple as performing real world timing on critical sections of code or graphics routines. If it runs too fast or to slow ... It may not be real switch hardware.

This is risky though, as it may not work on an updated switch model either, and may need to be patched.

Again, seeing people preach about the "damage" that gets done as if they have an actual investment in the history of the game industry as a whole. Nintendo pirated their own roms and sold them to people because they didn't preserve their own code.

It's neither black nor white. It's a really muddled mess, and to claim otherwise is simple ignorance.

The root of it is that companies aren't held accountable for their practices, and it doesn't matter if it's Denuvo or Nintendo. They both lie to make money at our expense.

That, and Day One piracy didn't stop games like Metroid Dread from overtaking Metroid Prime as the top-selling game in the series. If anything, it further solidifies the data in the Valve piracy study that clearly outlined how piracy comes up as a service and price point issue. They ran the study to show that pirates in general are willing to purchase things legitimately if it's affordable, and if the experience is generally positive when done legitimately.

This would also contrast with Denuvo's DRM impacting sales negatively for games like Resident Evil VIII and Sonic Mania due to game crashes and performance issues that Denuvo repeatedly denied were the case. The pirated versions ran correctly, and the retail-purchased games did not function until the Denuvo code had been removed through an update. Then, sales went UP as prospective purchasers (which includes people who pirated the games) learned the issues with the retail release were fixed.

There is simply so much history and data that the people who are whining on here are completely ignoring to support their own White Knighting of things they know less than nothing of, because all they're pushing is misinformation, falsehoods, or otherwise misguided opinions just because someone did something they didn't approve of.

I know it's my fault for looking in the comments section in the first place, but too many of these bad takes is bound to give me an aneurysm.

It will be broken and I will play new Switch games on release date on the Razr Laptop.

@SirAileron please provide Factual Documentations for this with real name and faces. It pretty clear DRM or No DRM. Where is the Documentations of Nintendo selling their ROMs. Otherwise why is Nintendo taking pirates to court. Your failing pretty badly here.

You don't have leave the site, mate. It was famous enough of a discovery to be published here, and there was evidence of Konami doing something similar with some collection on GBA if I recall the details right. Something about pirating and selling an emulator without so much as crediting the author, and switching two lines of code around that consequently made the emulator less efficient. The homebrew community had a field day with that one.

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2017/01/video_the_surprising_origins_of_the_wii_virtual_console_super_mario_bros_rom

People are misunderstanding how Denuvo works and they think it affects performance because of poor implementation by developers in the past. It's down to the individual developer to use Denuvo correctly for their game so that it virtually has no effect on performance.

Moreover, developers often patch their games a little while after launch to remove the Denuvo check, it's mainly there to make the game difficult or impossible to pirate in the first few weeks.

Good to see Nintendo themselves don’t agree with the practice of DRM.

Piracy has always been in the gray zone, thus the fiery conversations in this comments section.

I personally see stealing as analogous to taking someone's one-of-a-kind apple tree. Piracy, on the other hand, is buying an apple from the tree's owner and planting one of the apple seeds to grow my own apple tree. It just gets legally complicated if Person Two then decides to also sell the apples.

Not a perfect analogy, but it works for me and how I self-impose rules when I emulate.

@calbeau Piracy is not a "gray area". Its straight up illegal in most countries.

Neither is selling apples "legally complicated". Apple seed are patented and growing varieties you don't have rights to is, again, straight up illegal.

@ThePizzaCheese Wrong assumption then. I stand corrected. Thanks.

@Rika_Yoshitake I don't know why people always have take that emulation is always piracy. I literally buy every game that I like when it comes out. I own tons of carts all the way back to nes. These are same things I put on emulator to enjoy years later with new replayability through graphics enhancement and upscaling and being able to replay them on platforms through emulation....even still, when nintendo or other companies add official means like virtual console I prefer that still. Can't tell you how many times I've rebought same games just to keep them on latest gen hardware.

TL/DR, many people do use emulation too play games they physically own but with new life such as modding or graphics enhancement. I own two copies of BOTW, yet still utterly impressed by what mods have been able to do to it graphically in emulators.

@Vriess You didn't buy "the rights" to, you bought access to a non-exclusive licence that gave you permission to use one copy of the game on authorised hardware.

People may not like this distinction but it is the truth. With all this happening there is no wonder that the gaming industry is moving towards digital only. From there the next step will be online streaming only which will end emulation and licenced copies once and for all.