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Comment by nalzok | Hacker News Reader

I wonder why Nintendo hasn't attempted to take it down. It seems that the only use of such a "Nintendo Switch Emulator" is to play pirated games?

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Sigh... they have perfectly legitimate uses too. You can't play Zelda in 4K @ 60fps on a switch...

I really wish this angle of thought would die. Stop parroting what the business fucks tell you.

Maybe make a pull request to the repo with what you said in the comment so that people like me don't have to ask this question in the first place? I assume this is a very frequently asked question.

For what? To ask them to add a disclaimer to pretty please not use it for piracy?

Emulation is completely legal in the US. Its legality has been challenged in court and it won.

This is so common it's basically ask for the sake of asking. It's just weird.

Seriously? I guess it's common sense among people living in the U.S, but as an international student I honestly didn't know it's legal to emulate a proprietary system.

I'm not from the US either. Is it illegal in your home country? I haven't heard of any country where it's illegal, so I'm surprised this is your default stance.

You've used PCs? That entire ecosystem is built upon IBM-PC clones running a reverse engineered version of IBM's proprietary BIOS. Not quite emulation, but many of the same principles at work. Sony v Bleem! solidified the status of game console emulators, though Bleem! declared bankruptcy they won.

At the moment, there's a game compilation being sold on the Switch and other platforms called Disney Classic Games Collection. It contains emulators and ROMs stripped of the trademarks of their host systems, with the emulators created without the involvement of them too.

Nintendo can't do anything about third parties emulating their hardware without also threatening the legal status of software released by their partners, which include Disney, but that's just one example. Suffice to say that even if you argue that Yuzu/Ryujinx step over the line, the foundations for all this are fragile enough that no one wants to rock the boat.

if we didn't have that, we wouldn't have wine or anything else that emulates ANY api and google wouldn't have been able to build dalvik for android. Potentially not even the free unices like freebsd or linux.

Might as well add a definition of "emulator" at that rate.

the docs exactly start by telling you how to dump your switch and absolutely do not tell you how to pirate games.

> Sigh... they have perfectly legitimate uses too.

The existence of those is a fig leaf for what Switch emulators are used in the vast majority of cases: piracy. There are much better ways to run homebrew than the Switch.

If you think piracy of currently sold games is in fact ethical, or if you simply don't care about copyright, than please say so explicitly!

I think that there's no suitable ethics system to apply to large game developers / publishers, responsible for the predatory tactics such as

    - Microtransactions
    - Pay to win, punishing players for not having ample disposable income
    - Lootboxes and the like ("baby's first casino")
    - Blatant false advertising, especially coupled with preorders

Some of these predatory practices are actually illegal in some countries, but aren't prosecuted universally enough (or harshly enough) to be considered an issue by large corpos.

If openly preying on your customers, — in no small part, children and teenagers, — for huge profits is considered ethical, then merely copying some files is downright angelic behavior, is it not?

No, you have the right to boycott a service if you don't like it, not take it for free. Apart from that, I doubt Nintendo engages in the practices you mention.

The parent comment talked about ethics, which is largely unrelated to rights (you might have the right to a thing that's entirely unethical, such as owning slaves in the American history).

Given the current laws you are correct, sure. (Whether to follow each and every law is a quite a personal choice...)

The majority of games for Switch aren't worked on by Nintendo, so that point seems tangential.

Yeah I meant the moral right.

I don't support piracy of currently sold games. I do however support piracy once a developer stops selling their game and obtaining a ROM (and bypassing any implemented DRM) becomes the only feasible way to preserve a game.

Yes emulators are unfortunately often used for pirating games. But they will also be the only way you get to enjoy your purchased games in 10-20 years when the vendor stops producing the hardware, cuts off online services and your device becomes a fancy paperweight either as a consequence of that or naturally.

Yeah, for old games that are not sold anymore piracy seems defensible.

When media is sold for more money than you make in a month, or is otherwise financially out-of-reach, piracy is ethical (they would have never gotten your sale anyway)

When media is no longer available for sale or pulled from the market, piracy is ethical (there is literally no way to pay the creators)

When media you had legit access to is now unavailable because your account got stolen or you are otherwise locked out of some required online service, piracy is ethical (they won't do business with you)

When media requires something that was stolen from you, lost, or otherwise destroyed, piracy is ethical (you already paid for it)

When media uses DRM, piracy is ethical (doctrine of first sale stipulates you cannot control something after you have sold it, and one should not recognize any "license" for which have custody of the physical bits)

Emulators are legal.

Nintendo would have the authors assassinated if they weren't. They're about as harsh as you can get on homebrew devs.

This is very true, the Sony vs Bleem and Virtual Game Station lawsuit set precedent and made Emulators legal. Roms in the other hand are not legal, but for what I have heard Game companies are too afraid that the case of Bleem and Virtual Game Station to be repeated that they prefer to not file lawsuit and make copyright claims to websites that upload roms.

Homebrew devs? The thing they are worried about is software piracy. Emulators are usually not used for homebrew.

No, Nintendo is generally harsh with homebrew dev. They don't like people running software on their hardware withouth going through them. It's unrelated to piracy.

Emulators are emulators. What they are mainly used for as absolutely no impact on their legality.

No, Nintendo is obviously mainly worried about piracy, not homebrew.

That’s not and never was the point. Nintendo is harsh with both piracy and homebrew as was rightfully pointed by all the people you are ignoring.

That absolutely was the point. Homebrew is only a minor concern for them compared to piracy, since the latter has much higher economic impact. And Switch emulators are mainly used for piracy, not homebrew, as we currently see with one particular game.

https://torrentfreak.com/nintendo-conducted-invasive-surveil...

The Wii proved that they care equally about piracy and homebrew, at most. I remember when Bushing tried to report a bug to Nintendo that was mostly only useful for piracy, as he put it. Their response? Not to patch the bug, but to continue updating IOS to find and delete the HBC title ID.

>It seems that the only use of such a "Nintendo Switch Emulator" is to play pirated games?

No, it's not the only use, it's also used play Nintendo Switch games without using a Nintendo Switch, which is a 2017 console with 2012 hardware but otherwise really, really good games.

I already prepurchased Zelda Tears of the Kingdom physical but I am debating whether I should just play it on my deck, as it will probably run better than on a Switch with all the features that come with an emulator.

Honestly I love Nintendo games but couldn't care less about the console. If I could buy their games for desktop I would have bought a ton. But they have no interest. They would rather that you also buy their hardware and rebuy their old game ports every generation.

So I use an emulator. It is such a good experience. Better quality, save states, I can backup and transfer save files. I can record and screenshots are easy to manage unlike the manual SD card shuffling required on the Switch.

I like the Switch... conceptually at least. But it's old, it's weak, and the joycons are badly built. A new version is long overdue.

Nintendo doesn't want to release a new one? Then don't mind me using Ryujinx instead. Hopefully the Nintendo ninjas will not kill me in my sleep because of th

I should have made it clear that I have no problem with the Switch in general! It's a fine console but it's not for me. I don't have much if any mobile gaming needs and for at home a higher power device suits me better.

For me personally the only reason to get a Switch would be for exclusive games, which IMHO is a bad reason to buy some specific hardware. I would much rather that people buy the hardware that suits their needs best (which may be a Switch for people who want mobile gaming) and games were largely available cross-device (resource requirements being the rare exception). I do understand the economic reason for exclusive contracts, but it is so consumer hostile.

Of course you buy all the Switch games you play on the emulator ... right? Right?

Well, yes. Mostly because I only play first party Nintendo games, and buying them is like buying gold because they never depreciate in price, if not outright appreciate in value. Hell, even the Switch itself, which I bought at launch, costs WAY more now than what I paid back then! That is absolutely crazy.

The only thing I "pirate" are Pokemon games because I want to laugh at how unfinished they are, but I usually give up one hour in.

While I'm sure it's the primary use by far, it's not the only one. Homebrew games, for example, are a legal use. And depending on your jurisdiction, ripping your own legally purchased games and playing them in an emulator is legal.

Sony vs. Bleem. Emulation is not illegal in the US.

You can dump your own games from your Switch and play them at 4K60 on PC. I've done so myself.

Not really sure what this means. There certainly aren’t 4K assets included in Switch games, which run at max 1080p resolution normally.

I know many games do drop frame rate at 1080p docked vs the 720p built-in display… so is this just getting back up to 60fps while running in 1080p on a 4K monitor?

If you have enough power on hand you can render games at up to 8K [0], and downsample to your monitor's resolution if you're exceeding it. The textures are the original 1080p assets, but it's still a huge boost in visual fidelity, especially if you're downsampling (there are also usually mods to disable a game's native antialiasing if you're doing this). If a game wasn't even attempting 60fps on the Switch in the first place, there are usually mods to unlock the framerate.

[0] https://blog.ryujinx.org/introducing-resolution-scaling/

Most console games end up having textures high res enough to look better than the original hardware if you render them at a higher internal resolution. There are some Wii and Wii U games that look spectacular if rendered at higher res, and the same applies to Switch.

If you emulate on fast enough hardware, for games that emulate well you will hit whatever the game's framerate cap is (sometimes 30, sometimes 60) flawlessly where the native hardware struggles.

Civ4 doesn't have 1080p assets but that doesn't stop me from rendering it in that resolution. I don't understand the argument. Without "good enough" textures I should render it lower and upscale after the fact?

There is legal precedent, emulation is legal

As much as they'd like to, legal precedent suggests emulators themselves are legal if not distributed with any games, BIOS, or other IP of the console maker.

There has traditionally been a pretty vibrant homebrew community with Nintendo consoles.

I have two Switches. An old glitched one, and the new LED One. I still love to play some games (that I own) on the PC.

What about people trying to archive games for historic value? What about people that want custom tools to develop games for the switch? (E.g. automating inputs for QA's sake) What about people that want to create mods for existing Nintendo games?

I know most people will use them for piracy but it's really shortsighted and I'm glad emulation is still legal.

> What about people trying to archive games for historic value?

Well, from a purely legal perspective that's not any different than "regular" piracy.

Archival isn't piracy.