Yuzu is dead 

F*** Nintendo

Citra getting caught in the crossfire really hurts.

If anything, this has ignited a massive spark in the Switch emulation scene. Thousands of people cloned and archived the Yuzu and Citra repos yesterday and many of the support communities saw massive influxes of new users. There's already a 'new' Yuzu repo being setup. Nintendo got $2.4M and temporarily stopped progress of the foremost Switch emulator - nothing more.

You find Citra and Yuzu in the Internet archive. Enjoy.

what's truly fucked up is that Citra is now dead purely as collateral damage

Once an open source project exists on the web, it will never not exist. Long live emulation!

part of me is completely pissed because i had citra on my resume since i worked on it in the past.

As soon as you mentioned that they had a Patreon, I knew that is how they lost against Nintendo. As soon as you start monetizing something that directly or indirectly was developed by Nintendo, that's when Nintendo's lawyers get _really_ vicious. Sure, they'll probably go after anything regardless, but profiting from it, even in the form of donations, is a big no-no.

It's citra that hurts the most. The 3ds has a fantastic library.

Already 6 forks, open source community is like a hydra when attacked.

Since Yuzu didn't take it to court, they took one for the team. Them settling out of court is the best thing that could have happened for the emulation scene.

Downloaded the Yuzu Source before takedown. And i'm sure many developers did the same. This will not be the day they captured Jack sparrow.

Don't forget about 2 years ago Yuzu tried to put the multiplayer feature behind a paywall as well but cancelled it entirely in the last minute for fear that Nintendo might sue them. It's for real this time.

Looking forward to the day someone will identify Yuzu code running some future Nintendo-Switch-Mini or similar.

2:35 I imagine a video of a yuzu dev nervously reading that message from a piece of rustling paper, occaisonally glancing to the side as though a mustached plumper is standing just off camera, pointing a gun at him.

Since the eShop closure, Shin Megami Tensei IV is a lost media in Europe, now with Citra's death, it's now difficult to play the game, you need a modded 3DS and access to the cia files + you lost access to all the mods to improve the QOL

If I'm honest, I was always nervous about how 'loud' YUZU was getting, not just because of their Patreon but also the spotlight it was getting from places like Linus Tech Tips or that pulled SteamDeck ad. I just felt that was all flying too close to the sun. It's better that projects like this try and avoid the mainstream spotlight.

This sets a really bad precedent. I hope other hardware manufacturers don't see blood in the water

Honestly, Yuzu was asking for it with paywalls and ads. This isn't a real surprise. Let's just hope it doesn't doesn't start a trend for all emulators.

Any word on Yuzu actually using the decoding keys? I sort of recall them having those on the source and, as such, them having a (them being being Nintendo) a grounds for copyright. I may be wrong. Correct me if I am!

The worst part of this is that this will only reaffirm in Nintendo's mind the false belief that emulation is illegal, when in reality, it isn’t.

Citra is honestly the bigger loss, there is no other 3DS emulator out on the market Mikage is still doesn’t have a public build

Very excited for the rebranded version of the emulator to launch!

Its times like these when we should never forget the wise words from a truly wise man, Gabe N... "Dear Nintendo, It had come to our attention that Dolphin emulation made an announcement of releasing their emulator in Steam. Just letting you know. Toodles. Sincerely, Gabe N."

Emulation can never truly be stopped no matter any legal outcome.

The devs "handed over" the source code to Nintendo. Which makes me think Nintendo might try to use copyright suits to stifle any attempts to restart Yuzu development under a different name. But, as far as I understand, that's not how open-source licenses work. The code released under a license is always covered by that license. Like, if version 1.5 of a project is under one license, and for version 1.6 they switch to a different license, all the code contained in 1.5 is still under that old license, and only 1.6 and later is under the new license. You can still fork 1.5 under the terms of the old license. Nintendo can't just "own" the Yuzu or Citra code. The code that was in the repositories before they were taken down is still under the license that the team used, and can be used as the basis for a "new" project.

Shutting down emulators only makes me want to pirate.

regarding your point at 2:25, the early access actually was never behind a paywall, what was behind a paywall was the ability to update your current build to the Early Access version and to have it be automatically updated. But the source for the Early Access version was always publicly available and available for anyone to compile themselves!

I think this behavior from Nintendo pretty much confirms a Switch 2 is going to just be a souped-up Switch. May the unofficial forks never die.

Ryujinx creator is Brazilian, the Brazil legal justice is know for making big companies like Apple(fined them for not including the charger) and Playstation(forced them to restore a user's banned console and account) fold, so If Ryujinx doesn't do anything illegal since Emulation is 100% legal in Brazil , they are safe to go. Ryujinx code is clean-room and they don't circumvent the Switch's firmware unlike Yuzu that only needed prodkeys. Nintendo doesn't even have a Brazilian office since they left in 2015, making a business in Brazil and a legal case is such a hassle Nintendo won't bother, since unlike in the US they can easily lose the case here.

I haven't been up to date with the emulation scene, but my first thoughts were ... they painted a target on themselves by having a paywalled version of their app. This just reminds me of that suit from around 2018(?) when that emulation site lost when Nintendo went after them, who were making money off having rom site and using pictures of Mario and other I.Ps on their site (and i think they also had some sort of a paywall/sub thing?). I don't remember much else around that case besides sites like emuParadise and possibly others decided to go dormant to avoid being next in Nintendo's firing line. On the topic of Nintendo being so mixed about what they say and what they do, when it comes to emulation... I feel like its pretty much the situation where, if it takes money out of the pockets of Nintendo, it's bad. If its putting money in their pocket then its good. Its the only justification on why they offer their own emulation virtual consoles. That ideology though still leaves the window open for argument that Nintendo needs to put up or shut up, when it comes to retro. There's so much of their back catalogue they aren't offering to people who's only option is to emulate, and its not like they make money off the second hand market of physical sales.

Can the builds we laready have on our pcs , still work?? And the games we already downloaded ??

Now that's one force-fed farewell message if i've ever seen one

Hydra effect, others emulations will rise after this

Citra hurts way more out of this settlement, tons of games that I finally get to enjoy there due 3DS being difficult to mod and simply too expensive to play normally nowadays you know, using real hardware and hunting for real game carts. I still have launch model I bought from Japan years ago and just sits in my closet due to how hard and expensive it is to get for its games and its region locked.

I agree with what you said, if you cut the head off a hydra it will grow. Great video ! I humbly thank Yuzu team for all their effort to the community.

This will lead to an explosion in the switch hacking scene

Honestly this is a raw kick in the nuts. All I want is a GOG-like service but for classic console games, charge like 5 bucks a game or whatever and have the money go to the publisher or whoever the IP holder is and you get the ISO, boom piracy mostly solved I would think.

Don't forget that Nintendo repackaged NES roms ripped with iNES emulator tools, and put those ROMs in their Wii Virtual Console. The game files still had the iNES header inside 🙄

Emulating current gen systems and getting a large amount of cash flow from doing it is never going to end well.

watch nintendo use the code to emulate switch games on future consoles. And make people pay a subscription if they want to play them

it's open source and already been forked, nothing has changed whatsoever besides Yuzu's owners bank accounts have been drained

1:29 "precedent of emulation" sounded like "priesthood of emulation" to me at first which sounded really cool. i was hoping there was a way to use "priesthood" in casual speech

if I have yuzu downloaded already on my android with games, will I keep it? or will it get auto uninstalled/stop working overall?

I think the main thing nintendo went after yuzu for is because not only was it paywalled, but also because they paywalled a patch that made tears of the kingdom playable before it released. Yuzu's stupidity in that regard took two emulators down in one swoop

This will just make people want to pirate more

I feel like this is the beginning for Nintendo in terms of targeting emulation entities. I'm pretty sure this is all in line with their pre-release strategy for the Switch 2. I wouldn't be surprised if they are going after emulation in general to lock things down before their new hardware is released.

How does one even kill an open source project?

you see the worst of nintendo when you see them taking citra off too when the 3ds has been dead for quite the while now, cringe company that hates its own games being preserved while only providing the shittest possible ports and no backwards compatibility

Mutahar is going to be so pissed.

Did you change your camera? The picture is so...soft. I loved your setup. Maybe the lights are messing it up 🤔

The Patreon was the key point - they were making money off it. Yes, it's open source and can be developed further. But there was no way Nintendo was going to let Yuzu keep making money in this way. We have to hope that Switch 2 does have robust and working backwards compatibility, however they achieve it.

I grew up a Nintendo fan in the 80's but its becoming easier with each passing year to become anti Nintendo

I would not be shocked if there's a cyber attack against Nintendo after this

I'm just scared of the precedent this potentially sets. Other lawyers, juries and judges will look back at this case and quote it, potentially take things out of context and things start to spiral for us emulation enthusiast and companies like Nintendo and Sony start getting their way more and more. The law is already messy as it is. Not looking forward to any of this...

Looking good Mr MVG, great video.

This is the whole RIAA vs MP3s situation all over again.

Nintendo needs to get the 2011 PSN hack treatment.

If only Nintendo would let us play our old games 🤦🏼

I'm very disappointed in Citra being discontinued. They were working on a version for the Lume Pad 2 (a 12.4" Android tablet with a glasses-free 3D screen). It would have been nice to play 3DS games on a big 3D display.

I just hope Ryujinx stays okay for now.

I'm sure they really needed the 2.4 million; they must be going through hard times!

Isn't it open source? So if someones feels like rebooting it later, and removing the decryption function, perhaps in the future sometime?

This means I have to delete Yuzu from my Odin 2 then? :(

i feel lately that the gaming industry is a cess pit thats not worth my time anymore

Man we need better consumer protection laws

Thankfully ryujinx is still available and Citra has such as a large community that it will be remade or continuned in some form.

This is the internet, nothing can be taken down. It will just go underground and be back under a different name once the heat has settled.

I think a really key point mentioned in this video is that NINTENDO need to sort out their leaks. People are going to find a way to play them regardless of emulation - that's NOT on Yuzu (nor any other emulator). Heck, people were dumping PS3 games long before they were playable on an emulator. Nintendo's arguments are nonsense, obviously. Yuzu shouldn't have charged money for any type of build though. The early access Patreon thing was a bad idea, as was advertising which of the latest games it could play. I dare say they got as greedy as Nintendo, and their double standards regarding piracy just makes them look hypocritical now.

F**k Nintendo. TOTK was playable on Ryujinx day one not Yuzu. If Nintendo don't want their stuff pirated, then they should have not have released such an anemic system. I'm also pissed that Citra is gone.

what's the resson attacking on citra there network do not work anymore and they do not sell the copys anymore what's the point

it's a bit late though. i don't think they're gonna release anything big before the next console comes out and i can already play any switch game on the latest yuzu build. i might not even have to install ryujinx at all at this point, assuming princess peach showtime runs fine on yuzu does citra even need further updates?

Let me see if I can shed some light here on Nintendo's antics. I used to work for a Japanese game studio in the past, and am also Japanese so I get the culture a bit here. Japanese companies are relatively old school and do not change with the times unless absolutely forced to. This is why there is the running gag of Japanese businesses still using and preferring fax machines to this day. With that said, Japan, while they are getting more advanced in internet businesses and software, still lag behind the US and other parts of the world (hence why both Nintendo and PlayStation online stuff is not quite there). Japanese businesses are still used to the boxed products and physical goods selling mindset, and translated that mindset onto virtual and digital goods. If you look at it through that lens, it makes sense. When Nintendo went on their RU-vid video takedowns, it was because they viewed it as "allowing other people to see the contents of the game without paying for it." I have had executives at said Japanese studio literally say this to me in meetings in the past, and us Western folks trying to get them to understand the Western thought process that showing gameplay can and will attract more buyers and fans, but to no avail. To them, sharing gameplay unless they dictated the terms (like a demo) was a lost sale. It was frustrating. With Gary Bowser and his pretty unfair sentencing, Nintendo went overboard protecting their stolen assets as if each hacked Switch cost them a physical, boxed product sale for each download of a title, whether the owner legitimately bought a copy or not. So to me, I was honestly surprised that a Switch emulator like Yuzu existed. That's playing with fire and I'm surprised it wasn't taken down sooner. Although it's Nintendo's own fault for having lax security or encryption that made the games easy to crack and pirate, Nintendo can't go after the pirates, so they went after the easiest outfit that was making money (in the form of donations) because it's a lot easier to convince the court to say "these people are illegally making money off our technology that was stolen. vs. the effort in trying to go after individual pirates for providing the roms." My personal stance as a consumer (to be on the safe side) is that previous console generations and their games are fair to emulate if there are no reasonable ways to purchase and keep the game any more (so if a physical copy is out of print and/or costs ridiculous sums of money, and a downloadable version is not available on a current gen console, then to me that is fair game). Current gen is absolutely out of bounds for me, since that is how these game studios and corporations make money. It's easier when PlayStation and Xbox hardware is harder to emulate and they have PC/Steam versions to download and play. Since there aren't those kinds of hacking limits with a Nintendo Switch , it makes it that much easier to hack and pirate, and then play on an emulator with higher resolutions and performance. So they have to protect their IP's the old fashion way - with lawyers and lawsuits. As for them using emulators for their own projects, I'm not Nintendo, but I would probably see it as them thinking that since it's open source, it's fair game to use it for their own projects? Considering that every project takes time that is limited to x-months or x-years, it's easier to use an emulator that works vs. making their own for current gen hardware.

I hate that Citra is gone too...

What was the last and final version of yuzu?

Nintendo will probably use the source code for backwards compatibility on their next console

What happened to Yuzu is unfortunate, because even though emulation will never be taken down, with this attack it was definitely slowed down, and I was hoping that Yuzu devs had just followed through with a counter sue or something, so that emulation could have gotten another win, just like what had happened with the Sony vs Connectix case in regards to Bleem, because thanks to that case its how emulation kind of fell between a gray area, even though the acquisition of the ROMS was the thing that had remained illegal, but it really sucks that Yuzu folded because most of the things that Nintendo mentioned, wasn't even stuff that Yuzu did but rather it was the users that wanted to use Yuzu that needed to do it, so unless Nintendo had a way to sue everyone that hacked their Switch and dumped their roms, they literally had no case whatsoever, and honestly if something like the Game Genie long ago had actually managed to win against Nintendo, then I believe that Yuzu devs also had a good chance to win too, but obviously they would have needed to pay a lot of legal fees in order to work with a lawyer and such, but no matter how costly it would have been, emulation needed to get this win, because it could have done so much more for the community, since Nintendo is the type of company that didn't even want to take responsibility for their faulty Joycon drift issues, which was basically a manufacturing defect, and like Microsoft with the Xbox 360 they should have taken ownership to the fault and given people options to fix it for free, but instead Nintendo had to be sued by people before they actually started repairing the Joycons for free, which again just shows how scummy they are, and the reason why a lot of people don't even cover much of Nintendo stuff in their RU-vid channels, is because they are afraid of how crazy Nintendo goes with their copyright claims, so its why a lot of people just don't play the games or show them, and even when they made that crappy partnership program that didn't last long, it was complete and utter garbage and some youtubers even actually got copyright strikes, after the program was over because the videos were still up, so thats why since Nintendo doesn't feel like catching up to the times, they needed a big blow that would have made them worrisome so they don't keep doing this crap, but alas Yuzu devs just got scared and backed down without even putting a fight, so even though this action will not kill emulation, the community lost a big chance to put Nintendo in their place.

Internet archive says no

I remember starting off my emulation with the good old zsnes from rom sites that are surprisingly still up today.

What if I already have it installed and playing games on it? Will the software stop working?

All this will do is draw more attention to the emulator and the community will carry it on.

Honestly, they probably would have gotten more sales on totk if it wasnt 70 for a dlc

Honestly, it was probably their shareholders who told them that they had to "take action" because god forbid that shareholders "miss out" on 1 million copies worth of sales from TotK (even though I'm sure many of those also purchased legitimate copies a week later once it released). So logically, the best way to appease them was going after something that they could point a finger at as being blame-worthy-enough. And it's easy enough to point to the biggest emulator as being the boogey-man. Of course though, as you mentioned, the REAL problem is definitely whoever is leaking all these games to begin with. Thanks for giving such a level-headed response. I think you nailed it on the head when you said that Nintendo can't publicly endorse emulation, when they obviously have been building their own emulators since at least the Wii (or maybe even Gamecube, not sure how the Zelda Collection worked under the hood). This is definitely not "the death of emulation" by any means, and I agree, there's no reason to expect that they're suddenly going to be going after any and all emulators.

Let's give a salute to Citra

As a loyal customer of Nintendo, this sort of aggressive behaviour to go after emulation, while offering the worst alternatives is for me absolute disgraceful and makes me reduce my support for this company indefinitely. 💯

my thoughts is that i'm not buying anything by nintendo anymore. All the gig with citra angered me slightly. My 2ds is broken. I have to emulate to play the games i still have

That letter is the most "gun to the head" letter I have ever seen

Sad to hear it i was gonna update mine

Ryujinx and Cemu is next

I think one annoying thing about emulation is that some people played the leak version and streamed online before the release date (as in the case of TotK). If you play emulation and do no harm to the community then I'm totally fine with it. Pirating games that are no longer available is OK, but pirating a game when and even before it releases is another thing.

From what I've heard Yuzu's team was mostly private/hidden and if this went to court they'd have to reveal the identities of their devs. There's been some speculation that Yuzu or at least members of it's team may have had ties to piracy or at the very least used code that wasn't legitimately obtained which would help explain how fast this moved from a court filing with absolutely nothing to it (any competent judge should've thrown the case out) to Yuzu being removed entirely (at least officially). More troubling is that they apparently had a lot of telemetry data which is now in Nintendo's hands, this apparently includes names and IPs of users which could lead to further actions against individuals who simply can't afford to fight back no matter how bullshit the claims are (and of course there's plenty of judges who are not competent or are easily paid off). Fortunately it's unlikely Nintendo will just randomly target some users like that, it cost them a lot of money as well so if they're going to sue it's probably going to be a big target. A lot of the problems with Nintendo's attitude stems from them being an old fashioned Japanese company. Many of Japan's copyright laws are completely ass backwards and from my understanding they don't even have fair use laws in Japan. Some other Japanese companies have learned to embrace fair use but Nintendo's heads are still stuck in the past. Hopefully as younger guys start to take over and the older guys start to retire we'll see a change of attitude. I love many of Nintendo's first party games and want to support the developers but at the same time I don't want to support the company. At least with Apple (who are also terribly anti-consumer but far better at brainwashing their fan base) I can use alternative products which are often just as good if not better (perhaps after a couple generations tbf but I'm patient enough).

Only really used Emulation for retro consoles but Yuzu is an interesting one for two reasons it's for a current console but it also the games perform better on it than native hardware. I cannot remember another time where both scenarios has happened. Emulation for a current console in the past tended to be janky at best and sided on nothing more than a tech demo to show it can be done.

I've wanted a Nintendo Switch since release but I cannot in good conscience give them money.

I think that the biggest problem with Yuzu, as a thing, is that it was emulating a system that is still alive. It wasn’t GameCube or Wii, it was Nintendo’s current system. That it was emulating it isn’t bad, but that was their sword of Damocles. I don’t have a system that can run yuzu or probably even citra, but I love the idea of being able to play better versions of the games I own on a PC. That’s cool especially since the controller I use for switch can also work on the PC. That being said, emulation on older systems shouldn’t be touched by any company for one specific reason. They aren’t selling the games. I’m not saying pirate the games, but emulation of the 3DO impacts no one, hell, pirating those games impacts no one. I don’t know the status of all Nintendo systems, like which storefronts still exist, but if they don’t exist, emulation should exist for those systems and Nintendo should actively encourage it for one simple reason (and that includes Citra if applicable) and that is because it provides them free blueprints of what people want in an emulation experience. In the end, I feel bad for the developers who were just doing what nerds do. I’m also tempted to go find both yuzu and Citra in case I ever have a non potato.

Ok. I guess now we have to wait for a Ryujinx android version.

If I'm being perfectly honest it feels like Nintendo's legal team is satisfied with decapitating a dragon and then failed to realize they only took off one head of a hydra.

My take has always been Nintendo does not hate emulators. They hate free ones that let people bypass paying. Even in the Wii era the Genesis emulator used on VG was all done in a legal way. Nintendo and Sega cut a deal. It's not like Nintendo was hosting Sega Genesis ROM downloads without Sega knowing. Sega made money on the sells. The problem is not emulators are bad. The problem is free emulators you are not paying for are bad as they are viewed as stealing. Even old games are still under copyright and trademark so Nintendo just wants people to buy games they allow in a legal way. Switch online is the same way. Sega gets a cut of the profits for Genesis games. Any game not made by Nintendo the owners get a small cut. So even if it's an NES game if Capcom made it they get a cut and they allow the game to be on the service. Nintendo wants people to use a legal emulator and not a free one that lets you play anything. Nintendo makes or hosts legal emulators because they know those would be payed for. It was never the emulators it was always stop playing games for free.

I had an eye on what was happening around TotKs release. Yuzu didn't do anything wrong, they were adamant that they were supporting the piracy of Zelda and would not update the emu for anything geared toward TotK. They simply existed and someone at Nintendo leaked the game. It really wasn't Yuzus fault. Nintendo hates it's fans. Not because of this but for ALL the things they do to suppress the ppl who enjoy their games.

Well said, and I agree. There's no way possible for them to really do much of anything to stop people using emulation. And of course the yuzu emulator is still out there on the internet for good.

Whether i plan to play or not, i really need to download stuff as soon as i hear about it. I sat on this till just now and now itll be harder to find.