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this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2024
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I'm sure something else will eventually come along. The only way to stop emulators from existing is to not have a system at all. I.e., if Nintendo were to stop making video game hardware, then there would be no new emulators except for ones developed for previous/existing hardware.
It probably will soon. They have a Patreon and also use
prod.keys
to decrypt games, and now Nintendo knows they can succeed on forcing settlements over this.Their problem is - as always with this - the fact that they accept money for it. Granted in Ryujinx's case Nintendo has a far far far bigger barrier to climb as they weren't idiots who created a whole bloody LLC for it, which trivially proved commercial interest.
You have to use prod.keys, don't you? There shouldn't be anything illegal about using prod.keys as long as you don't distribute the file.
Decrypting the ROM ahead of time and requiring that to be used would be the safe alternative.
It would require a separate tool to do that first, but decoupling the steps would prevent Nintendo from going after the much-harder-to-develop emulator using the argument they used here. If they kill the decryption tool, another one pops up.
I don't know if this would 'satisfy' them (I know it wouldn't, I'm referring strictly to the legal stuff). From what I've heard, the point Nintendo was making wrt the encryption is that aquiring
prod.keys
in any way, shape or form is illegal. Of course, creating an emulator for a system that only runs games that contain encryption which can only be undone withprod.keys
requires the developers to have this file. Since they've successfully made an emulator, this implies that the Yuzu team has in fact obtained a copy of this file and done something naughty.The problem is that, regardless of whether or not the decryption happens in Yuzu or in another completely separate program, modern Nintendo games do not come unencrypted. This means that someone at some point has to decrypt the files, and thus has to use
prod.keys
to do so. According to Nintendo, using and creating any emulator for a modern system requires someone to do something illegal at one point in the chain, and therefore emulation (by parties not explicitly authorized by Nintendo) cannot legally exist.I say that Nintendo should piss off after I've bought something from them and that I should be allowed to do with my property as I please, but even the most legally and morally correct way to emulate is not okay with them.
This raises the following question: if Nintendo does not respect in the slightest our property rights by pulling such stunts, why should we as end users respect their intellectual property rights? Why go through all the effort of clean room reverse engineering a console instead of blatantly copying as much of the official code base as possible if the legal system punishes you all the same? Why limit yourself to only emulating games you personally ripped from your own cartridges if the act of ripping has already placed your actions into the "illegal" category?
The emulator itself doesn't necessarily have to exist only to run retail games. It could be used to develop or debug homebrew and marketed as such. They wouldn't even need to have decrypted the operating system to understand it, as Atmosphère is a complete reimplementation untainted by Nintendo code.
If it ran retail games as a consequence of being accurate to real hardware, that would just be a happy accident. And as long as the developers don't acknowledge running retail games and don't directly assist in fixing them, they have plausible deniability.
I'm a big fan of the "buy a game and crack it right after" philosophy. Respect property rights until something is in one's legitimate possession, and then remove any encumbrances preventing it from being used in the way the purchaser wanted.
Ryujinx devs are probably sweating right now. Might want to grab the latest version in case it goes away soon.
Ryujinx still exists...though probably not for long.