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Comment by ApolloFortyNine | Hacker News Reader

When the game isn't be sold any more, along with the console, emulation makes sense.

But the switch emulation for at least 2 years now has been more than good enough to run games of a current gen system, and you're absolutely kidding yourself if you think any meaningful percentage own the game.

The emulator also requires Nintendo data they're not actually allowed to ship (there's a number of resources to download it though), but they specifically coded to support it.

Imo switch 2 is coming and it'll likely be almost the same system just beefier, so going after the emulators makes sense for them.

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> and you're absolutely kidding yourself if you think any meaningful percentage own the game.

respectfully disagree. nintendo has fought hard to capture the casual/normie demographic and they have consistently sold more switches than M$ has sold xbox ones every month since launch.

switch emulation is alive and well but doesn't jeopardize their position as the non-techie's console of choice. therefore they have taken to only pursuing legal action when an emulator is being packaged up for the masses to one-click install on steam

Is "well they sold a lot I can just take it" ever a good defense?

>they have taken to only pursuing legal action when an emulator is being packaged up for the masses to one-click install on steam

Well, this breaks that trend. AFAIK Yuzu has none of that. Their general argument is that it made too much patreon money over Tears of the Kingdom.

The GP meant that they postulate a meaningful percentage within the scope of people who emulate don’t own the game they emulate.

and the implied assumption is that all those who did use the emulator without buying would've bought them.

Surely not all would have, but similarly not zero either. I think this is the real implied assumption.

Normie here. I will not be buying any more switch games now that I heard about this emulation thing.

if you own a pc that can run emulated switch games and you can use it well enough to actually do it, you aren't a normie.

Or maybe your understanding of what common users are capable of are wildly out of date. Switch games are available as one click installers now, compete with game and emulator.

it isn't. the average person doesn't even own a computer, ease of installation doesn't matter when you still have to own a computer powerful enough to run the emulator and also find roms.

I know plenty of normies who own computers. What are you talking about? It's not 1996 my dude. Also pro tip, plenty of people emulate on their other devices as well and equally have no problem finding either emulators, or roms. I was doing this stuff when I was a child, i'm in my late 30's now. None of this is rocket science and it hasnt been for a long time.

> for at least 2 years now has been more than good enough to run games of a current gen system

To be fair that's impressive but nothing new. I 'member running N64 games with my Voodoo card in 1999 when GameCube wouldn't be out for two more years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UltraHLE

Legally it doesn't really matter at all whether or not the console is currently commercialized, at least from precedents like Sony v. Connectix (Connectix was selling a commercial (literally in shelves) emulator directly competing with the PlayStation while it was being commercialized and won the lawsuit Sony filed against them)

A quick glance shows that they developed their own Bios to do this, Yuzu specifically requires you to insert a copy of the Switch's firmware, it won't work otherwise.

It seems a bit grey as that would mean it's really the users who broke the law, but at the same time, the piece of software is quite literally useless without it. Even if they had their own absolutely terrible firmware with bad compatibility it'd be an easier defense to me. As is, their code is useless without an illegal-to-add addition.

> When the game isn't be sold any more, along with the console, emulation makes sense.

Emulation makes sense since day one. Frankly, good emulation is straight up better than the console. Accuracy is high and you get a lot more features. Truth is they should have released the games in this format to begin with but they insist on creating little digital fiefdoms with "exclusives" and DRM instead.

If anything doesn't make sense it's all this copyright nonsense which should be abolished.

> you're absolutely kidding yourself if you think any meaningful percentage own the game

Not really their problem. It's the players who are infringing copyright, not them.

> The emulator also requires Nintendo data they're not actually allowed to ship

That's called adversarial interoperability and it's required for the system to function.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interopera...

If anyone is to blame it's Nintendo for coming up with a system where it's impossible to not infringe on their precious "IP" while interoperating.

Just like Sega was blamed when it tried to work their trademarks into their "security systems" in order to deny their competitors their rights:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade

> The court's written opinion followed on October 20 and noted that the use of the software was non-exploitative, despite being commercial

> and that the trademark infringement, being required by the TMSS for a Genesis game to run on the system, was inadvertently triggered by a fair use act and the fault of Sega for causing false labeling

>all this copyright nonsense which should be abolished.

I wonder what the Venn diagram of people who think all IP rights should be abolished, and people who say "ideas are nothing, execution is everything" looks like?

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