Games

As I heard it, the fact that they were heavily implying (and often delivering) versions of the emulator that worked with as yet unreleased games for Patreon backers exclusively while the 'open to everyone' version was not as compatible, is what probably did them in.

It would have been pretty hard for them to argue that their emulator was for legal means when they were constantly telling people to pay up for the Patreon to get access to builds optimized for games that hadn't yet gone on sale. If they had just kept the public in parity with the Patreon and just coincidentally had performance uplifts on upcoming games before they dropped, they'd probably have been fine. As it is, they painted a pretty compelling picture that they were "pay for piracy" and that's where the lawyers probably told them to take a deal and get out.

Not that surprising an outcome given it was either this or go bankrupt through legal fees as the case dragged on. At least there's still Ryujinx.

The headline undersells the outcome by a lot.

As part of the judgment by the US District Court of Rhode Island, Tropic Haze was issued with a permanent injunction preventing it from offering or marketing Yuzu or any of its source code in the future.

Its members are also prevented from creating any future software that circumvents Nintendo’s technical protection, and Tropic Haze must surrender all website domains and information related to its emulator.

Ownership of all related websites and domains must be turned over, and the developers are barred from further participation in "creating any future software that circumvents Nintendo's technical protection".

The wording of the actual settlement will be key here, which we are unlikely to ever see. At a minimum it puts significant controls on how the individual developers can interact with the Nintendo emulation community, if not outright prevents them from contributing code to most Nintendo based emulators. It almost certainly increases their individual liabilities if they are caught assisting such a project again, as they will be forced defend how their contributions don't violate the settlement. And that's just to avoid stiffer penalties being thrown at them.

What a lovely fucking precedent to have.

F

Well, so much for Yuzu. Wonder how long Ryujinx will last?

I wonder why they settled, I thought emulators were protected as long as they don't contain any copyrighted stuff. Was it because they circumvented DRM?