A Yuzu Post-Mortem: The Great Emu-War

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The Great Emu-War continues. Yuzu, once the leading Nintendo Switch emulator, has been sued out of existence by Nintendo of America. In so doing, Nintendo has revealed its complete hand, and we have, arguably for the first time, a clear look at Nintendo's complete legal strategy against emulation.
In this episode, we'll break down exactly what Nintendo's argument is, and look also at the mistakes Yuzu made which allowed Nintendo to put the squeeze on them.
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Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
03:24 - What is Yuzu
04:53 - Intro to the Lawsuit and Reviewing Prior Videos
08:53 - What Did Yuzu Do Wrong? The First Three Criteria
14:03 - Analyzing Nintendo's Complete Argument Against Emulation
22:56 - A Warning to Emulator Devs
25:00 - Q&A
30:25 - Conclusion
31:50 - Credits Gag
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Additional Reading:

The Complaint

The Final Judgment

The Verge
[They've consistently been a cut above the rest when it comes to reporting on these emulation issues, in my experience: great stuff]
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Music:
I'm going to try including a track list again, and see how it works out! Thank you to Colibiri for the idea!

[SG] stands for SilvaGunner -- it's a parody! The {reference} is underneath it.

1m:0s - Athletic Theme (Alpha Mix), Yoshi's Island [SG]
{We’re Doing a Sequel, Muppets Most Wanted}
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2m:18s - Main Theme (Night), Wii Shop Channel [SG]
{Fly Me to the Moon}
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3m:24s – Gerudo Valley, Smash Bros Brawl [SG]
{Animal Crossing}
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5m:28s – Mind of a Thief, Mother 3
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7m:08s – Mind of a Thief (In-Game Version), Mother 3 [SG]
{World Revolving, Deltarune}
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9m:18s – Yoshi’s Island, Smash Bros [SG]
{Witch Doctor}
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10m:33s – Temmie Village (Alpha Mix), Undertale [SG]
{Beautiful Girls}
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14m:22s – Spookwave, the Napstablook, Undertale
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14m:30s – Spookwave (Extended Version), the Napstablook, Undertale [SG]
{Macintosh Plus}
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23m:10s – Aqua Star Select (Alpha Mix), Kirby 64 [SG]
{It is a Mystery} [no, literally, that’s what it’s called]
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25m:08s – Flower Garden (OST Version), Yoshi’s Island [SG]
{I think it’s Doki Doki Literature Club. Never played it, but I know the premise, and think it fits this section well}
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26m:49s – Overworld Theme (OST Version), Yoshi’s Island [SG]
{Brazil}
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28m:15s – Kamek’s Theme, Yoshi’s Island [SG]
{Sans, Undertale}
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30m:24s – 2 AM (OST Version), Animal Crossing Wild World [SG]
{Breathe, 2AM}
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31m:50s – A Certain Someone’s Memories (OST Version), Mother 3 [SG]
{The Amazing Digital Circus}
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Attributions:

Yuzu Early Access 3599 Footage:

[Electrosa]

There's a reason why, for the vast majority of video game emulation's history, the universal unspoken agreement was "SHUT UP AND DON'T TELL ANYBODY WHERE YOU GOT THIS".

[justforlawlsandtrolls]

Bro the fact that a serious youtube channel is *intentionally* using SiIvagunner music as it's bgm is insane, gotta give props to the little details

[Enraric]

IMO the real tragedy in Nintendo vs Yuzu is the death of Citra, the 3DS emulator. The 3DS eShop is closed, and soon the multiplayer servers will be shut down too. Nintendo isn't losing any sales to Citra, and communities for multiplayer titles like Monster Hunter 4 could have continued to exist using Citra's multiplayer features.

[jordansean]

We used to have a solid banner of plausible deniability that we could rally behind in the emulator community... And Yuzu is setting that banner on fire for profit.

[karlispovisils]

As much as we rag on Nintendo for being DMCA-heavy, it feels like Yuzu was asking for legal trouble with their blatant statements of how to get around the encryption keys, flaunting the money they made on Patreon, and advertising games for their emulator that were only just released on Nintendo's hardware or even before the official release. They were legally reckless and paid the price for it.

[RymanTheDoctor]

Good video.

This Yuzu situation reminds me of when Philip DeFranco talked about the thing you can do with airlines where you can buy a flight to wherever that connects through where you actually want to go and just not get on the connection for a potentially lower price than a direct flight to your destination would be. Nobody cared because it was a lot of work to find something like that, but once people made a program to find those opportunities and shared it out the airlines started cracking down on it.

Perhaps more background than necessary... ultimately the relevant quote goes "some of y'all are just too helpful" lol. I think Yuzu's biggest mistake was probably just that they made it too easy to use.

[thisisnootnoots]

When I saw 'great emu war' my mind went straight to when the AUS war vets lost to the local bird population. May need another cup of coffee....

[SSJKamui]

On topic of the Discord channel postings etc. : It is the best thing in any legal conflict to assume that the lawyer of the opposing party will use everything they can use against you.. (When certain developers tried to develop a fan remake of Chrono Trigger, they tried to post a kind of argument/apology and tried to basically reason with Square Enix. Even THAT was used agains them.)

People need to be extremely careful in such situations and need to expect literally anything. Everything needs to be carefully checked if it can be used aginst them.

[TheDeadmanTT]

"You can do whatever you want, just don't get caught."

[koketsok]

I keep waiting for moonie to talk about Australian big bird and how it relates to current events in video game land only to realize emu means emulation, this took an embarrassing time to realize.

[Vexcenot]

Yuzu: shows exactly how much games were used to the public

*Face palm*

[LAK_]

They got greedy and cocky, it made them flagrantly reckless, and now they’ve quite possibly put the entire enterprise of emulation at risk.

[anotherbacklog]

So I just learn that Moony plays guitar today.
*trying really hard to imagines a lawyer practicing guitar and singing, while playing stardew valley on a steamdeck, stock grinding War Thunder on a labtop, doing daily of Honkai Star Rail or Limbus Company on his phone, flipping through book of copyright laws this thick, researching on German philosophy or Eastern Asia history on his tablet, watching Homestuck on the background, and probably pulling up a sea bass or something while he just finished editing and posting this video.

And I’m pretty sure that I missed a few things here and there.

[zdelrod]

The fact that Citra, which was also by the Yuzu team, was caught in the crossfire is kinda sad for preservation purposes.

[Ash-Bun]

You know, I'm someone who actually believes wholeheartedly in archiving, but that's for the sake of preservation and not having to spend $600 on the hardware, wires, controller and game I grew up with (GC era) this kinda greedy move I didn't know happened changes my entire opinion about what happened. I think Bintembo was correct in their move here.

PS: i hope you're doing well. I know things will never be exactly the same as they were. Also, i hope you enjoy the eclipse if you go to see it! I know I'm driving further north to be directly in the path.

[kindoflame]

It seems to me that main reason Nintendo didn't push the red button is because it doesn't want to be the first huge company to stomp on the little guys. The cost of taking a case to court would be large due to both legal costs and the bad PR. However, if a different company (e.g. Microsoft) were to push the red button first and win, Nintendo can reduce their legal costs by relying on the precedent that case set. The PR backlash would probably be less since people would say Nintendo was only crushing emulators because the other company did it first.

In other words, Nintendo doesn't fear losing to the battle with the emulator community; they are hoping someone else will fight that battle for them. Of course, all the other companies are making the same calculations and reaching the same conclusions.

[superbro]

Thanks for including my question in the Q&A segment by the way!
(You can go by just "Superbro" for future reference.)
Very good writeup, research, and reporting

I was always curious what would become of emulators having discord servers where the devs directly talk in. We see what results here.
Bunnei and the Yuzu team certainly made a _comedy_ of errors here, but at least they didn't try and fight the suit, lose, and make emulation worse for everyone else

[josebarrera]

The most valuble lesson this video gave me is: be careful what you say in Discord

[komati]

I just watched this 20 minutes ago and i open twitter to see Ryujinx has been killed

[videos]

"users probably just pirate a yuzu folder with everything" I cannot facepalm hard enough. Why do people think platforms like Discord are safe???