Steam deck emulator specifically. Nintendo tends to not care about old gen stuff being emulated. If Yuzu was released after the switch 2 comes out, then I wouldn’t imagine Nintendo going that hard after it
Nintendo cares a lot about killing off emulation and ROM hosting wherever they can, actually. They send out cease and desist letters all the time and many projects and websites have been killed because of it. Thousands, I think, from single-person projects like “Another Metroid 2 Remake” all the way up to Team Xecuter. I think one of the Switch emulators that was in progress a couple years ago got killed off by the lawyers.
The catch is that reverse-engineered emulators being made without any Nintendo code, and made without the intention of profit, are not a violation of copyright law or Nintendo licensing and Nintendo has no grounds to sue the makers. But they’re always keeping an eye on such projects waiting for something actionable.
This is why any given Nintendo emulator website or Github repository you can find will have zero links to any ROMs or any sources for them – because anything like that will get an immediate letter and possible lawsuit.
Yeah the folks behind Yuzu made some really bad calls as the emu got more popular.
Do these devs ABSOLUTELY deserve to get paid for their incredible work, allowing me to play BOTW at 4k60? Of course!
Adding in code that allows a new, UNRELEASED, Zelda game to run, then paywalling the latest version of the emulator with this code, puts you directly in a lawsuit’s crosshairs.
Then on top of that they didn’t cover their tracks of discussing their testing of TotK in dev discord (might have been a different platform, can’t remember) chats, providing a clear paper trail that they were breaking the law to Nintendo the second they could get a subpoena.
Here’s to hoping that Switch 1 emulation is easier and better
you mean as a feature on the new console? or like PC emulation?
Steam deck emulator specifically. Nintendo tends to not care about old gen stuff being emulated. If Yuzu was released after the switch 2 comes out, then I wouldn’t imagine Nintendo going that hard after it
Nintendo cares a lot about killing off emulation and ROM hosting wherever they can, actually. They send out cease and desist letters all the time and many projects and websites have been killed because of it. Thousands, I think, from single-person projects like “Another Metroid 2 Remake” all the way up to Team Xecuter. I think one of the Switch emulators that was in progress a couple years ago got killed off by the lawyers.
The catch is that reverse-engineered emulators being made without any Nintendo code, and made without the intention of profit, are not a violation of copyright law or Nintendo licensing and Nintendo has no grounds to sue the makers. But they’re always keeping an eye on such projects waiting for something actionable.
This is why any given Nintendo emulator website or Github repository you can find will have zero links to any ROMs or any sources for them – because anything like that will get an immediate letter and possible lawsuit.
Edit: I remembered right, Yuzu actually got sued and had to pay Nintendo 2.4 million USD. It’s also dead in the water. https://www.pcgamer.com/software/nintendo-v-yuzu-switch-emulator-shut-down-settlement/
Yuzu was accepting money for early access and also had compatibility specifically for leaked games before their release
Yeah the folks behind Yuzu made some really bad calls as the emu got more popular.
Do these devs ABSOLUTELY deserve to get paid for their incredible work, allowing me to play BOTW at 4k60? Of course!
Adding in code that allows a new, UNRELEASED, Zelda game to run, then paywalling the latest version of the emulator with this code, puts you directly in a lawsuit’s crosshairs.
Then on top of that they didn’t cover their tracks of discussing their testing of TotK in dev discord (might have been a different platform, can’t remember) chats, providing a clear paper trail that they were breaking the law to Nintendo the second they could get a subpoena.
I use Ryujinx https://flathub.org/apps/org.ryujinx.Ryujinx on my steam deck. It mostly works.
Also if you don’t already know. Emudeck https://www.emudeck.com/ will install any emulator you want.
I installed yuzu on my deck. Worked better than Ryujinx, at least for BotW. Just sad there won’t be any additional updates.
The switch 2 will have switch compatibility