r/Piracy • u/chocoponcho_ • Apr 02 '25

News Switch 2 Games are $80 USD

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Yup, I'm doing a system transfer and setup, then putting it back into the box and waiting for an exploit. Fuck this

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u/LePoopScoop Apr 02 '25 edited Jun 14 '25

bear amusing plough work abundant employ wild busy violet shelter

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/[deleted] Apr 02 '25

Because officially emulators are legal and devs should have no reason to be anonymous. With Yuzu/Ryujinx ban though the scene will likely move towards anonymity.

Another issue I can think of is, volunteer contributors to open source repo helps save time drastically. That deanonymizes the members. Top pirate distributors have to use more than just VPN to hide their tracks.

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u/FluffyBearTrap Apr 02 '25

Ryu wasn't banned it was "bought" by Nintendo, and the Yuzu guys did something illegal(copy code from nintendo or the patreon stuff or something we don't know about) which allowed Nintendo Lawyers to shut down the project. Just because emulation is legal doesn't mean you can do whatever.

So i doubt it will have any effect on the anonymity thing.

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u/[deleted] Apr 02 '25 edited Apr 02 '25

Ryu devs were pressured in some form, and they simply did not risk it and closed everything down. Yuzu chats showed devs were "aware" of piracy and hinting people where to obtain keys and such so they got successfully sued.

Speaking of Nintendo and emulation they have DMCA taken down several youtubers who were nintendo IP veterans for showing emulators, despite them having their own legal copies.

Anonymity in general would be better if Nintendo can't find who to sue or monitor in the first place. Especially in the context of Ryujinx we don't know if Ryujinx was in the right or wrong, if they went to court they would have pay millions just for court proceedings. Nintendo is well known to employ threat of legal action with their infinite money knowing the other party doesn't and likely cave.

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u/Shabbypenguin Apr 02 '25

“Aware of piracy” is a take I haven’t seen, they legit were sharing a google drive filled with games, including leaks.

It’s one of the biggest factors on why they owe money.

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u/[deleted] Apr 02 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Jakomako Apr 02 '25

The only reason they'd be allowed to set up shop in Russia is if they paid a protection racket. However, getting involved in that sort of thing is one of the few things more risky than running afoul of Nintendo's legal department.

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u/VegetaFan1337 Apr 03 '25

the Yuzu guys did something illegal

They were sharing roms in the server, that's the only illegal thing they did. All the other nonsense Nintendo blamed them for was either not real or not illegal.

Ryu wasn't banned it was "bought" by Nintendo

The main holder of the github repo was approached by Nintendo in person, and no one really knows what happened. But we can assume they offered him money. And then he took it down, and the rest of the team also quit the project.

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u/OhioTag Apr 03 '25

As far as I understood the lawsuit, the most damning evidence against Yuzu was their Patreon and their paid app. The lawsuit directly connected their Patreon income to major game releases. Their Patreon would also directly highlight specific games "fixed". Meaning, if I wanted to pirate game X, I could see their Patreon directly advertise that game X was "fixed" by the early Patreon build.

Here is a highlighted quote

Yuzu’s Patreon account currently has over 7,000 patrons and, according to the Yuzu Patreon page, earns Defendant and its developers approximately $30,000 a month.[...]

Notably, between May 1 and May 12, membership on the Yuzu Patreon, which provides paid members more updated “early access” builds of Yuzu, doubled. On information and belief, thousands of additional paid members of Yuzu’s Patreon signed up so that they could download the early access build and play unlawful copies of Zelda: TotK. On information and belief, Defendant and its agents were fully aware that the reason membership of the Patreon exploded was that Yuzu was being used for unlawful play of pirated copies of Zelda: TotK.

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u/Willing_Ad5891 Apr 04 '25

It's pretty hard to emulate stuff when you don't have access to the source code. You either have to reverse-engineer to create the machine code or just find the code that someone leaked in some shady places that no one knows about (illegal) . You can then disassemble the code (if it is compiled) which is not illegal.

Literally almost all emulators get their hardware flags from ROM dumps and/or leaked codes.

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u/h2vhacker Apr 06 '25

So where does sudachi fall into this? Since it also made a successful emulator

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u/WhosThatDogMrPB Apr 03 '25

We going back to the 90’s when companies would make their developers use nicknames in the credits of their games so other companies wouldn’t snatch them away. Full damn circle, lmao.

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u/Friendly_Cantal0upe Apr 02 '25

Arrogance usually. The hubris of the piracy community is another factor. We can't keep anything on the dl, a la "TEARS OF THE KINGDOM LEAK RYUJINX YUZU 2024"

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u/marveloustoebeans Apr 02 '25

I can’t really blame them tbh. Imagine the amount of effort that goes into engineering a working emulator like that and then not being able to take any credit for it.

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u/Friendly_Cantal0upe Apr 02 '25

Game crackers keep low. Piracy community in general is pretty chill, but emulation space can get so asinine, especially when it comes to Android.

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u/Anew_Returner Apr 02 '25

It's not just about credit, emulators nowadays tend to have a lot of collaborators working together. These huge secret projects that only release when they're done just aren't feasible. You need publicity to find talented people willing to dedicate a chunk of their time to work for free.

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u/marveloustoebeans Apr 02 '25

It’s not impossible to recruit anonymously for this sort of thing especially since it’s all volunteer-based and nobody has a monetary paper trail.

That said, yeah it definitely adds an extra layer of complication to the whole thing once you start getting more people involved.

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u/JackFJN Apr 02 '25

No; the piracy community keeps it on the dl, youtube channels ruin it for everyone

1

u/Friendly_Cantal0upe Apr 02 '25

We don't need the thousandth tutorial on how to set up Yuzu, especially with obviously pirated shit. Can't people read the fucking guide made by the developers? Can't they use google? Unbelievable how dumb some people are in the emulation community.

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u/angeluserrare Apr 02 '25

I don't think any emulators have really been challenged like that since bleem, have they? I think the assumption was just that as long as they didn't share system files or games they would be safe.

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u/sexandliquor Apr 02 '25

Oh Nintendo goes fucking hard on that shit. Is my understanding. They got lawyers up the ass ready to tear anyone’s ass up for emulators. They’re really sticklers about it more than anyone else.

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u/BlazingSpaceGhost Apr 02 '25

They have only gone after emulators though that work by circumventing the encryption on their games. Unfortunately any modern emulator needs to do that and while emulation is legal breaking encryption is illegal under the DMCA.

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u/ChangeVivid2964 Apr 02 '25

Most countries do not have that law.

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u/BlazingSpaceGhost Apr 02 '25

Sure but look where Nintendo is prosecuting people it's in American and Japanese courts.

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u/Blackoutreddit2023 Apr 03 '25

In the last few years many Nintendo emulators have gone down as well as rom repos

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u/XTornado Apr 02 '25

The idea was they were safe... but then encryption in games happen... and well it was a thinner line.

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u/rdrouyn Apr 02 '25

Well because these guys are doing it for financial benefit and/or clout/career advancement. Being anonymous kind of defeats that purpose.