Might be a good time for any "risky" emulation projects (including any new forks) to think about detaching themselves from the US as much as possible. It's a big world and the DMCA only exists in one country
Like ultimately this case wasn't about the money and probably not *really* about Yuzu itself either, given the timing the intent was probably to pre-empt any future attempt at Switch 2 emulation by the team and scare off anyone else from trying it
So I think it's important to figure out what's safe for emulation in the legal climate that exists & not just allow a general chilling effect to set in
Another thing worth noting is that they didn't explicitly target Citra at all, despite the same lead dev, it was only mentioned once in the complaint as background context and not mentioned in the final judgement and injunction at all
Whether this was because they didn't believe they had as strong a case against it, or they just weren't bothered about pursuing an emu for a dead system, I don't know, but it does suggest Citra forks and other older system emus would not be in their crosshairs
Their case primarily hinged on their characterisation of Yuzu as a "circumvention device" by virtue of the fact that it decrypts Switch games at runtime as a core part of its functionality. This is not really a common factor for most older system emulators which either play games that were never encrypted in the first place, or require pre-decrypted ROMs (as Citra does). So I don't believe this case would've affected the standing of emulation in general even if it went to trial and they won
I do think there's a fair chance if Yuzu had required decrypted ROMs they would've figured out some other grounds to attack it though. So I couldn't say another Switch / Switch 2 emu would be safe in the US if it had no decryption functionality. But as things stand I do think non-current-platform emulators are generally not at risk
Also the Patreon had nothing to do with it
Anyway sorry I've been dumping my thoughts about this case into this thread over the course of like 24 hours now. It will happen again
It would probably be useful if I'd posted this on Twitter where there's a whole load of hyperbole going round about this case and not much sober analysis but I also can't be fucked to deal with the responses I'd get on there so I'm not going to
@lion Yeah honestly that’s reasonable. I wouldn’t want to throw myself into that either
@lion why be sorry for writing. its stuff you like
they advertised as being for playing commercial switch games, and supported people trying to do the same.
to play commercial switch games requires decrypting them via whatever means which involves 1201 violations no matter if you implement the crypto or not.
basically a [current-platform] emulator would have to say they're a research project for debugging, documentation and interop, or something like that. and not mention the ability to play games at all, or even support anyone trying to do that.
and when fixing bugs, the dev team could only touch clean-roomed simple test cases.
@lion It MAY not protect them:
In some cases, individuals associated with a company, such as owners or officers, may be held personally liable for certain debts if there is evidence of fraudulent or wrongful conduct. This is often referred to as "piercing the corporate veil."
If a court determines that you engaged in fraudulent or intentional wrongdoing that caused harm to others, you could be held personally responsible for those debts, and they may not be dischargeable through bankruptcy.
@lion Also I feel like taking Patreon money is not a good idea, I feel like there was a reason why I've never really seen emulators doing it
Except for Drastic and I never liked that either admittedly
@Devourer_ITA Yeah people bring that up but it wasn't even mentioned in the case as far as I can see. I feel like Nintendo would've gone after the project regardless, it wasn't about the money it was about the existence of the emulator itself. And tbh I think emulator developers *should* be able to be compensated for their work, it is important and valuable
@Devourer_ITA Actually I stand corrected, it was mentioned in the background of the original complaint but it wasn't the basis for it, more like supporting evidence for the usage and popularity of the emulator
So it didn't help but I still 100% think the case would've been brought regardless if they had it or not
I also noticed in the Yuzu case that the defendant is an LLC which I guess was used to manage the project and funding and (big "not a lawyer and not American" caveat here) I think that shields the individuals involved from personal liability? Meaning the LLC is liable for the 2.4mil they settled on, which it probably doesn't have, so in practice will just hand over whatever assets it has & then declare bankruptcy & the individuals get to walk away
That was a smart move if so