 Nintendo really doesn't like people who pirate video games, whether you are the folks making the emulators or the people distributing ROMs. Nintendo has one multiple lawsuits against ROM distributors and yeah, even got one in jail. In fact, multiple in jail when it came to even hacking devices for the Nintendo Switch because they were profiting off of that. In addition to distributing ROMs and storing ROMs, it was a wild story and Nintendo's done a lot of the stuff over the years. This video is not about the MIG Switch, you might assume that maybe Nintendo is going to go after them. After all, Nintendo has one MANY lawsuits against flashcards over the years. And yeah, we already know they technically are against the law, their precedence already been set. But because of the way the MIG Switch was being sold, maybe Nintendo does not have hands on it yet. Also, the MIG Switch, while it arrived for some people, we've seen some independent reviews of it, it didn't arrive for most consumers, so there's actually some controversy around the MIG Switch, possibly just stealing people's money or at least taking way more orders than they could actually produce and who the hell knows if you'll ever get your product because you're buying it through a pretty shady website. It is what it is folks, Nintendo's not doing anything about that yet. That could change. But today Nintendo is doing something we haven't seen since 1998. Back in 1998, Sony filed a lawsuit against an emulator claiming the emulator was violating its copyright. And while Sony did lose that case, they bought the emulator anyways and shut it down. Now here's the big thing though, that case is often referenced to say that emulation is legal. As it turns out, emulation aka emulators themselves are actually a legally gray area because while that lawsuit happened, that lawsuit only defined one minor point that Sony lost on in the case and didn't blanket okay emulators existing. That being said, hey, it's been a legal gray area for a long time. And apparently that legal gray area is finally going to be settled in court because Nintendo has dropped the hammer and they're coming after the most popular Nintendo Switch emulator in the world. What are we talking about? We're going to go through a Nintendo Everything article on this because they went through all the legal documents as did I and I found their summary to be the best. So we're just going to go with theirs versus what I was typing up. So Nintendo Everything over here has this article says Nintendo's Switch creators of the Nintendo assuming the creators of the Switch emulator Yuzu. Nintendo has filed a lawsuit against the creators of Yuzu, an emulator used for Switch. The document notes that the tech illegally circumvent its software encryption and facilitates piracy. Nintendo's lawsuit points out that the Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom saw over 1 million copies downloaded before the official launch. Also highlighted is that Yuzu's Patreon support doubled during that time. This is actually quite notable because Yuzu had a hard time playing Tears of the Kingdom but through that Patreon support, a.k.a. making money, they were able to put the dev time in to quickly make Yuzu work directly with Tears of the Kingdom. Pretty interesting. It's alleged that Yuzumakers accessed Switch games from a hacked console which Nintendo claims would be a DMCA violation which is quite interesting because again hacking your systems has long been held in the United States to be legal in some ways but it depends on the use case. Like you can legally make backup files for your own use but can you then use those backup files to modify things in an emulator so other people can enjoy that emulation? That is something that again is a very legal gray area. So it's interesting how Nintendo is approaching this. Then by making at least one copy of each, that would actually be a direct copyright violation which is entirely true. If they make any copies of the files that they dumped, if they dump a ROM and they copy it and give it to another developer, you can't do that. That's literally against the law. That part's black and white so if Nintendo thinks that has happened and they can prove it that's already a big win for them legally. Additionally, while not directly related to the crime, Nintendo does note that fans that look forward to Tears of the Kingdom were spoiled on the whole game which is absolutely true. Now the argument here is that Nintendo of these Yuzus business model helps piracy flourish, the company is seeking damages for the alleged violations and wants the emulator to be shut down. Now it's no secret Nintendo has gone to great lengths over the years to pursue legal action relating to piracy however whether or not anything happens from this latest case remains to be seen. Now we'll link to the legal documents and this article down below. One thing I find fascinating when talking about this and a lot of people always want to know my stance on this whole emulation thing because it's very, very controversial. You know, staunch fans that are going to go rah rah Nintendo you go get them and you're going to also have staunch fans going boo you don't understand blah blah blah blah look here's the way I look at it. There's a couple sides to this one. I've been pretty clear on my stance on emulation over the years. Whatever you're doing I do not care. That is for your business. For my personal business I think emulation just when I'm talking from a moral standpoint or not legally, morally I find if you're emulating older consoles with hard to get games I don't really find that to be a problem. Most of these games aren't for sale anymore and even the services that exist like Nintendo Switch Online it doesn't have the entire NES and SNES and Genesis libraries right? So there are just some games that are hard to get and even on the second hand market could cost hundreds of thousands sometimes millions of dollars. So I understand that like just for the ability to play these games that existed at one point in some form I'm actually okay with most of those older school emulation. I do kind of draw the line though as something like Nintendo Switch. All the games are easily able to be had now a few exceptions like Mario 35 and a couple others that were temporarily available but for the most part a vast majority of the emulation we're seeing out there is of commercially available games that you can buy physically, digitally or both. So to me I don't actually feel bad for that level of emulation potentially getting shut down because again it is dealing with commercially available products. I understand they run better on PC and all of these mods you can do and how crazy it is but look at the end this is a commercially available current product I can understand why you know I'm just not okay with that I don't emulate so there you go. That being said that's my stance. Now when we talk about this on a broader scope it is true that emulation is a legally gray area and it's been beneficial both ways. Let's think about this for a moment. Just one moment emulators right? Are they 100% legal? Well it's never actually been defended in court. Now are they illegal? Again never really been pursued in court because the way Sony pursued the case back in the 90s was over one particular thing not emulation on the whole so this is actually a massive lawsuit because right now here's why it benefited. If people who made emulators lost it would make emulation illegal which would then shut it down industry wide. You can understand why that could be a bad thing especially for certain consumers. Also a bad thing were some of those Chinese companies making those android knockoff devices. But if Nintendo aka the big business loses it means emulation is actually 100% legal and no longer legally gray and because of that it's just going to become even more rampant. So there was a almost understood feeling between Nintendo and emulators and other companies and emulators that you know what it's not worth pursuing it further because no matter which way it goes it could be really really bad and there is the chances could go really bad for Nintendo. But Nintendo is doing it anyways. So is this entire lawsuit going to determine if emulators themselves are actually 100% legal? That we don't know but if the methods used to create the emulation such as being able to read decrypted keys, being able to decrypt the keys possibly again I'm not 100% sure how this all works. I don't think it actually decrypts the keys. I don't think I'd be pretty decrypted could be wrong either way being able to read decrypted keys could be an issue and obviously if they're determining that the development of Yuzu is happening with copies of games being shared around that could just make the entire development null and void legally because hey you had to use illegal copies of games to develop your software you can't do that. That would actually be a massive violation and yeah they'll lose the case of that if Nintendo can prove that. Now I don't know what evidence Nintendo has that Yuzu emulators have been around a long time but it appears tears of the kingdom really made Nintendo dig their heels in. So we're going to have to wait and see what happens. In the end there's some negatives here obviously what if it gets determined that you can no longer hack your systems. I know it's technically illegal now but what if they're determining that hey hacking systems is actually leading to much more piracy than it's leading to positive things for consumers. What if that ruling gets turned around. There's a lot of crazy stuff here and a lot of people are going to be mad at Nintendo and a lot of people are going to be on Nintendo's side. We'll talk more about this on a live stream later and probably tomorrow on the Nintendo Prime podcast as well because I'm very interested in other people's thoughts on this. I could ramble on and on about this particular topic for hours so I'm going to let it stand there very little editing this is just an open conversation on this big thing Nintendo is doing maybe the biggest video game lawsuit since the Sony one back in the 90s because if Sony had won that people might be really afraid to make emulators even though it didn't determine emulators were illegal so very interesting anyways guys thank you so much for being here and I will catch you in the next video.