Basic summary is that the Yuzu developers agreed to shut down development, give their domain to Nintendo, and delete all copies that they posess of Yuzu and any other Switch hacking tools.
* how will they pay $2M?
* why did they settle for that much?
* isn't strict emulation legal? Maybe not in the US...
* is there something fishy that was hidden somewhere?
They actually made quite a bit of money, around ~$30k/mo from just Patreon, wouldn't surprise me if they had that much money.
> * why did they settle for that much?
Expensive to fight it, and if they lose they'd have to pay even more. Nintendo can go on forever, they have so much money and the best lawyers.
Probably patreon
> * why did they settle for that much?
Because Nintendo will just ruin their lives otherwise
> * isn't strict emulation legal? Maybe not in the US...
Thank you DMCA for ruining this scene. The federal government should not be the one interjecting itself into this area, but here we are. Because of the anti-circumvention rules of the DMCA, right to repair is completely broken. Heck, WV was able to hide them lying about emissions because of it.
The same way Bowser did, I suppose. Wage garnishing + whatever Patreon money they earned?
Apparently it's estimated to have made some $1.2 million from patreon so that may help
>why did they settle for that much?
Bad crooked lawyers that said they had no chance or very good lawyers that said they had no chance. IANAL, so I can't truly say which.
> isn't strict emulation legal? Maybe not in the US...
It is AFAIK, apparently the judgement's big argument here is
>Developing or distributing software, including Yuzu, that in its ordinary course functions only when cryptographic keys are integrated without authorization, violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s prohibition on trafficking in devices that circumvent effective technological measures, because the software is primarily designed for the purpose of circumventing technological measures.
Again, I don't know how much water that holds.
>is there something fishy that was hidden somewhere?
Depends on if you think whether or not it would have cost more than $2.5m dollars to fight nintendo in a full battle. I imagine Yuzu doesn't have such funds nor means to. So this was the cheapest option for them.
Hell, I just even knew about Yuzu because of that lawsuit. #streisand
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2024/feb/01/the-man-who-ow...
to be fair, they're not unique in this space. but the perception of them as "the family-friendly gaming company" has always been some very big amount of nonsense.
His own actions and the legal system are why he is where he is today. Nintendo isn’t putting him anything, unless you now think that Nintendo controls legal decisions that are handed down.
> Bowser has now managed to secure housing, and he thinks that after rent, he has a couple of hundred dollars leftover for food and other necessities. He assumes he’ll be turning to food support services.
Nintendo's not being compensated any meaningful amount. This is nothing more than a lifelong public flogging. And for what?
The point was that if you have deeper pockets than your opponent then you're able to leverage the legal system to make life hard and stressful for them.
Nintendo has deep pockets and the will to go after anyone it considers a threat to its business model.
This seems like a massive stretch to ask a judge to sign off on, since it pretty radically expands what the DMCA covers. If were to come into force, you could slap some encryption on any piece of software and block anyone from interoperating with it.
They will get the assets though. So $30k in patron money for the month, the domain, the trademark, and the copyright to the GPL'd code.
They most likely don't. Most of these settlements have another agreement made behind closed doors.
I was alleged to do stuff related to video game cheats, and was in settlement talks with a company bigger than Nintendo. I didn't end up signing, so a quick overview of what such secret agreements include (the money point is the last one):
- keep everything of the following secret
- be truthful with us and tell us everything
- hand over source code, server access, chats
- shut down social media, websites related to the cheats
- if defendant cant shut down the cheat site, defendant has to try to shut it down via other various means and email the plaintiff once every quarter for three years with the efforts made
- plaintiff will make a public announcement that defendant owes 2.5 million USD (used by the plaintiff for marketing / scaring people off). After X years, the plaintiff agrees to file a full satisfaction of the monetary award (aka plaintiff files that the defendant paid the money and so their credit score isn't totally fucked), BUT in reality the defendant only has to pay the money if they breach any of the terms above.
So, Nintendo will receive all future Yuzu's telemetry.
not probable, but that would be interesting to see
it could be wrong, totk just leaked a week before release.