 Hello, there. Very quick note before the video starts proper. This was supposed to be online a week ago, and unfortunately, life just got in the way of me finishing it until now. Very recently, the Nintendo Switch emulator that I speak about in this video, SUYU, has been hit by a DMCA takedown from Nintendo, and the developers behind it are currently sourcing alternative hosting solutions. I don't think that this negates the premise of the video. If anything, I think it supports my argument that emulation enthusiasts are not going to be deterred just because Nintendo leans on them quite hard. With that said, here's the video I hope you enjoy. Emulation is not going away just yet, but the community has been given a bit of a scare. Despite not making it to court, Nintendo's lawsuit against Tropic Haze's Yuzu emulator has proven to be a turning point for video game emulation. Following legal advice, Tropic Haze opted to settle out of court, agreeing to pay Nintendo $2.4 million, and cease all work on both Yuzu and the 3DS emulator Citra. Shortly thereafter, developer David Berra pulled his Game Boy emulator, Pizza Emulator, from the Google Play app store, citing a desire to, quote, prioritize his family over the development of his apps. In the wake of such a large settlement for the Nintendo, there is no doubt that emulator developers across the Internet are considering their positions, and whether their projects are worth the potential monumental danger that comes from angering the House of Mario. That said, I'm firmly of the opinion that game emulation, even Nintendo emulation, is here to stay. Indeed, even in the wake of Yuzu's devastating settlement, a group of emulation enthusiasts are already working on a spiritual successor that builds on Yuzu's code, cheekily named SUYU. There are two big factors to consider here. One, what the law actually says, because emulation in certain circumstances is actually perfectly legal, and Nintendo knows this, and is trying very hard not to rock the boat on that front. Two, quite aside from the laws of any given country, we need to factor in human behavior, which even at the best of times is more than a little messy. It's crucially important to understand that the Yuzu settlement has actually absolutely nothing to do with emulation. No, really. In the phrasing of the initial lawsuit, which I covered in a previous video, Nintendo spends a lot of time waffling about how evil emulators are, but the issue at the heart of the lawsuit was actually all to do with the circumventing of Nintendo Switch's security measures. The legal challenge wasn't really about the emulator at all, but rather the duplication of Nintendo's unique prod keys that are designed to prevent piracy. In a fascinating article from Ars Technica, many players within the wider emulation community weigh in on why basically they think that Yuzu actually just got sloppy by not shutting down the sharing of these keys, and even worse providing clear instructions on how users can extract keys themselves. According to one anonymous developer, I think Yuzu definitely crossed some line when they started explaining how to actually pirate games. Developer Lai Koda explains further, saying, I can assure you experienced emulator developers are very aware of copyright issues. I've personally always maintained strict rules about how I deal with copyrighted content in my project, and most other people I know from the emulation scene do the same thing. I've personally experienced how strict most emulator communities' Discord servers' forums are regarding copyright and piracy, so it's really weird to me that Yuzu devs wouldn't be like that. With my own experience of emulators, I've personally seen the same thing. Emulators exist and have a wide variety of purposes. If you have troubleshooting concerns, there are plenty of Discords and forums and subreddits full of people who are willing to help you. But if you ask where to get ROMs or ISOs or actual copies of games, your questions will be deleted and you risk being banned. This is because, as Lai Koda points out, emulation communities know the rules. Emulation is legal. Piracy is not. It's a subtle distinction in some cases depending on your use, but it's a line that Nintendo does not want to push. There are three major lawsuits that come up when we discuss the legality of emulators. Sega v. Accolade, in 1991, was hotly contested, but the ultimate outcome was that Accolade reverse-engineering the code to run Mega Drive games was deemed fair use. I'm not going through all the details here, by the way. If you want a more in-depth explanation of the legality of emulation, I recommend you check out Moon Channel. Many of you probably already have. In 2000, Sony v. Kinetics saw Sony attempt to prevent the sale of a PC PlayStation emulator. In this case, the emulator was not deemed to infringe on Sony's copyright, but in a case of emulation proponents winning the war but losing the battle, Sony was able to drag things out long enough to basically bankrupt kinetics. Sony v. Blem, also in 2000, was, well, for the sake of simplicity, I'll just say that it was vaguely similar and did involve a judge issuing a protective order to try and, quote, protect David from Goliath, that it didn't work. Essentially, Sony kept hitting Blem with lawsuits until they ran out of money, even at one point trying to sue them for using PlayStation screenshots in their advertising, which was ultimately ruled to be fair use as it constituted comparative advertising. In all three of these lawsuits, big gaming companies went to bat against smaller companies in an attempt to prove that emulation was illegal. And in all three cases, and again, I'm keeping things nice and simple here, not running through all the details, in all three cases, the big companies lost. And with that, we have a decent body of precedent making emulation legal, which means Nintendo absolutely does not want to sue an emulator for emulating. While there's a chance that Nintendo's lawyers might be able to establish a new precedent and in so doing basically kill off emulation forever, that's a slim chance. And there's a danger for Nintendo that any lawsuit might backfire the way that Sony and Sega's lawsuits backfired on them because there are still a lot of gray areas in the law, one of which I'm going to talk about in just a minute. First though, I want to reiterate. This is why Nintendo used the prod keys approach with Yuzu. They can't just make emulation illegal without a big fight. They can, however, go after you for the loophole in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that I spoke about in my last video on the subject. This means that, especially for older consoles, it's hard to shut down emulators using the legal system because there's far less complex copy protection and it's easier for coders to work around them. According to LightCoder, for most older emulators, users don't have to break copyright or encryption at all. A lot of talented people have worked on methods to dump copyrighted boot ROMs, firmware, etc. out of original hardware. Any user that owns an original system should be able to dump these files themselves. The comments on my last video about emulation and lawsuits were tremendously varied and I thank you all for them. While I don't tend to respond to comments, I do read them all, even ones where people complain that I am not Breton Stripes. I'm sorry. Her work schedule has gone from part-time to basically full-time lately. She records a video whenever she can, but things are just very hectic for her at the moment. Some people, commenting on the Yuzu lawsuit video, are glad that pirates are going to have a harder time of things now. On the other side of the spectrum, there's this comment about how Nintendo controllers are physically inaccessible for some players. An emulation offers a way to play games pain-free. Another common reason given for using an emulator over original hardware is that, well, emulators are just plain better. Nintendo's never been spectacular at keeping up to date with screen resolutions. And as noted with this comment, a PC emulator will let players enjoy the games they've purchased legitimately in 4K. And yes, if you're watching this video after the Switch's successor has been announced, you might know a thing or two about screen resolutions on Nintendo consoles that I don't know right now as of March in 2024. Please forgive me for not being psychic. This kind of practice, often known as format shifting, is generally agreed as a perfectly respectable practice. Much like ripping music from a CD and putting it onto an iPod in 2005, nobody's ever going to get too upset about it. Except, format shifting isn't actually legal in many parts of the world. Nor is it necessarily illegal. It is, well, unlawful to bring back a word from a previous video. There's no definitive answer in the US as to whether or not a person copying their own purchased media is legal. It's just that no music company has ever been brazen and vindictive enough to try and sue anybody over it. Format shifting was briefly legal in the UK in 2014, but big music pressured the government to rescind this. As noted in our video on piracy, the UK government website will still tell you that it's legal, even though it isn't. In practice, though, there's a difference between a law that is enforced and a law that is just on the books. Entirely ignored by basically everyone. As said, you'd have to be incredibly brazen and vindictive to try and sue someone over format shifting. Yup. Here we come nicely to the second part of the challenge of stopping emulation. Just because something is against the law, it doesn't mean that people will stop doing it. Let me show you something. This is the Google Trends search traffic for the phrase Nintendo ROMs, how often people have searched for this over the past few years. Here's another one, Nintendo emulator. I'm keeping things broad so that we can compare like for like over the history of Nintendo piracy slash emulation. There are two things worth noting here. First, Google searches for Nintendo ROMs is on the rise at the moment, but it is nowhere near its peak. Interest in pirating these games is significantly down from what we might call the golden age of ROMs. Second, I went into this graph with a goal in mind. I had a theory that if you compared the Google Trends searches with major milestones in Nintendo lawsuit history, you'd see a rise, not a drop, in search terms in the aftermath of say, Nintendo suing love ROMs. My theory was incorrect. According to Google Trends, Nintendo's various efforts to shut down and remove ROM hosting websites from the internet has made absolutely zero impact on the number of searches for Nintendo ROMs and emulators, which in some way actually proves my point a little better. Nintendo's efforts to stem video game piracy are like trying to bail out a sinking ship with a thimble. Well resourced and litigious as they may be, they can't stop game piracy because they can't possibly prosecute every single user who ever illegally downloads games. When it comes to emulators, Nintendo is simply outgunned. As mentioned, up top, a group of coders have taken the open source work done on Yuzu and are continuing it, not for profit, but for the simple love of emulation. The team behind Suyu, yes, the name is deliberate, claim to be taking every possible step to keep their project nice and legal. This includes a much harsher line against discussion of piracy and security key techniques on Discord and in forums. It means making sure absolutely no money changes hands over the emulator and it even means getting potential contributors to sign a contract relating to copyright infringement before joining the project. Whether or not this works, I have my doubts. The team at Suyu showed just how passionate some fans are about making emulators. Regardless of what the law may say, regardless of Nintendo's mighty legal team, humans cannot be forced to follow the rules when they don't agree with the rules. Even leaving aside issues of emulation and piracy entirely, history is filled with cases of people refusing to obey laws they don't agree with, even when doing so is extremely dangerous. That's the moral of the story. Laws do not govern people. People govern people. Thank you for watching.