Anyway, the team behind Yuzu is still at large and the development will continue elsewhere, from aside, like in older days of emulation. Not everything has to default to GitHub, and not everything can.
I think AI is going to make some kind of p2p github style decentralization closer to reality. The gap is the unique identifier vs the hash identifier and identity/signature management.
But the tools are all there to create some kind of dark web, especially as the real web is going to be flooded with garbage.
There is also a pds that supports being backed by an object storage system, for trivial pds node hydration, warmup, and underlying data durability: https://vlpds.jazco.dev/docs/overview.
Every single Switch 2 emulator is still available on Github and Gitlab.
And just checked most Switch 1 emulator is still available too because they are not hosted on Github but rather on self hosted repos with their own domains.
Not that it matters because they will be back next week either way.
The only surprising thing is the PicoFly firmware but that's such a niche. Most peope who have a chipmodded Switch never touch that.
I thought I had the right to use circumvention procedures to back up my own games. If I own game and run it on an emulator with a firmware extracted from my device, what law am I breaking?
As far as I understand it, the way it works is that section 1201 of the DMCA has two parts. One part prohibits breaking DRM, and one part prohibits trafficking in devices or software intended to circumvent DRM. The part that prohibits breaking DRM has tons of exceptions so previously legal behavior doesn't become illegal just because something has a digital lock. However, the part that prohibits trafficking in circumvention devices has none of these exceptions. That's the part that Nintendo uses to go after emulators.
Emulators have neither "breaking DRM", "circumvention devices" nor circumvention code though.
That's why Nintendo usually tries to avoid going to court for emulators unlike when they sued for the R4 cartridge for example, they are afraid of the result.
Nintendo Switch games are stored as encrypted data, and then decrypted at runtime by the console. Nintendo's legal position is that because the emulator will only run Switch games if the user provides decryption keys dumped from a Switch, it counts as a circumvention device and is therefore illegal to distribute. Nintendo sued Yuzu, one of the most popular Switch emulators, and the Yuzu authors chose to settle rather than going to trial.
That seems like a weak argument, but the courts make all sorts of surprising decisions these days.
In the past, Nintendo tried using their trademark as a watchdog -- the console would reboot if the game did not display it at startup -- then sued unlicensed games for trademark violation. The courts ruled the trademark was purely functional in that use case, and not a trademark, then ruled against Nintendo.
I imagine a similar ruling, if the defense is: The user has a valid key, and a copy of the media. Any circumvention happened before that point in time. We're simply building a compatible device.
Of course, I'm not a lawyer, and the DMCA is a terribly designed law.
Rather than a value judgment of whether or not Nintendo is rightly applying the law, Yuzu settling must be viewed as a fundamental inability for a small group of independent devs to defend themselves against the deep pockets of a famously litigious major global corporation in the modern court system.
The issue is that the law is meant to protect billionaire corporations from you, not the other way around.
Congress has now illegally approved copyright theft of millions of works from small authors, EVEN where everything was illegal about it, down to the torrent client used to get the works in the first place. Oh and this was illegal for Congress too, you see, just about the only thing Congress isn't allowed to do is to change the law retroactively (OpenAI, Meta, Google violated the law BEFORE congress made it legal. So that doesn't matter according to the law. A lot of states even created criminal responsibility for copyright violations. Do these companies or CEOs get convicted for that? No, of course not). But to protection billionaires they do it gladly. (yes, technically congress didn't do anything, the "copyright office" did, but it's a part of congress and you can bet your firstborn if 10 congresscritters disagreed with the font the decision is published in they would have changed it immediately)
Even courts do that. They make up equally absurd justifications. I mean, in order to protect the billionaire AI labs they have now declared AI models persons [1] (because if they are not persons they cannot create a copyright, and so cannot give it to customers, in other words: AI labs would have nothing to sell. You wouldn't be legally allowed to use AI outputs). What do you think the odds are that AI models will now be treated as persons when it doesn't benefit billionaires? I believe we have found the first example of odds bigger than 100%.
Congress does NOT apply used against billionaires, but it does apply when billionaires sue 9 year olds with download software. 9 year olds get threatened with 2 months prison plus 300,000 PER INFRACTION, billionaires get to violate the law. Oh, and by the way, the EU commission has, separately, agreed with this way of doing things over the objection of German courts (the EU AI directive, like any other directive, comes from the commission. They had the good manners to let parliament vote on it, but is there anyone who doesn't remember what happens when parliament votes against it, say, something like "Chat Control" for example?)
Fundamentally, Anthropic and OpenAI (and Google and Facebook and ...) are based on massive violations of copyright. If any of these companies were held liable to the standards courts hold 9 year olds, their billions wouldn't be enough to protect them from bankruptcy (violating millions of works at hundreds of thousands per work adds up fast).
Can someone explain to me how I get to do that? If I can violate the law millions of times making up a billion dollar company is trivial, for obvious reasons. How do I get courts and congress to find technicalities to never hold me responsible. Because under the deal Sam Altman, Larry Page, Elon Musk and Dario Amodei get from courts and congress, and even from the EU, anyone can become a billionaire ... Just make the Netflix everyone wants for starters ...
In the long term, the only way for them to fight this is streaming video games. But even then AI can be used to recreate gameplay from video material..
It's getting there. Most games are sitting on top of engines that do almost all the heavy lifting, so the AI just has to reverse engineer the assets, gameplay and levels from footage. It can even run the game alongside the clone to see what sort of differences it finds.
Nintendo in particular leans way too hard on old intellectual property.
The first step to their continued survival is admitting that they lost. They put up a good fight, but betting the farm on nostalgia was already pissing in the wind 20 years ago. AI is a hurricane in comparison.
It might be an anecdote, but the Gary Bowser decision got me to stop buying Nintendo, even though platformers are my favorite genre. My third video game was Super Mario World and I have every home Nintendo console from the SNES to the Switch and handheld from the Game Boy Color to the 3DS. It didn't hurt that my Steam Deck is also pretty good for games. I like having an open platform and it actually delivered on what I wanted with the OpenPandora.
Oh wow. I haven't thought about my openPandora preorder in a long time.
I'll also add that the indie scene on Steam is amazing. We're consistently getting great games at prices that are a fraction of any Nintendo game. Frankly, I don't miss Nintendo.
On the one hand game preservation is a wonderful thing, a gift to humanity. It's the reason why I can play Eternal Sonata today on my computer in 4K instead of never again probably.
On the other hand, it's fucked up people are playing Ocarina of Time for free 2 days after launch.
> On the other hand, it's fucked up people are playing Ocarina of Time for free 2 days after launch.
Yet most of those are not lost sales. They never even want to buy the game to begin with (most of them doesn't even have a Switch 2). Also as easy emulation gets nowadays it's still a "technical hurdle" for most people.
the discourse on this stuff has really gone downhill. that said...
17 years ago, there was this guy who thought suing college students for pirating music was righteous, as it was the RIAA's only real recourse to enforce their rights. now he is president of the greatest copyright violating institution in all of history.
it is really unfair to go and point at the end user and say, "cognitive dissonance." the polite way of saying that someone is a moron. because the harvard and stanford dropouts leading these near $1T valuation companies, well, they changed their minds for money. to me, flip floppers are also morons. or perhaps, nobody's a moron. at the end of the day, piracy will lead to less Crysis titles and more Monopoly Go and Roblox brainrot, so time will tell if culturally we are better off.
You don't even need github source code. You could spin up a gitlab community server (or Forgejo or 50 other options) today to host these projects, but your domain/server provider will shut you down in two hours.
And if that doesn't happen, wait till you find a legal letter sent from Nintendo lawyers in your mailbox.
Unless you want to play hide and seek like z library or pirate bay which will become a full time job.
> ... This process protects Nintendo’s copyright-protected video games
Does Nintendo use LLMs to write games? AIUI, LLM output doesn't qualify for copyright protection.
May the forks live on. Also people seriously need to consider Radicle.
- https://radicle.network/
The outcome was obvious.
Anyway, the team behind Yuzu is still at large and the development will continue elsewhere, from aside, like in older days of emulation. Not everything has to default to GitHub, and not everything can.
I think AI is going to make some kind of p2p github style decentralization closer to reality. The gap is the unique identifier vs the hash identifier and identity/signature management.
But the tools are all there to create some kind of dark web, especially as the real web is going to be flooded with garbage.
https://knotless.dev/ (not mine, I just think its a fine primitive for distributed version control. git on atproto with your code in a pds)
Knotless.dev is now in the app store, manage your repos in your pocket ( - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50462272 - November 2026
There is also a pds that supports being backed by an object storage system, for trivial pds node hydration, warmup, and underlying data durability: https://vlpds.jazco.dev/docs/overview.
Every single Switch 2 emulator is still available on Github and Gitlab.
And just checked most Switch 1 emulator is still available too because they are not hosted on Github but rather on self hosted repos with their own domains.
Not that it matters because they will be back next week either way.
The only surprising thing is the PicoFly firmware but that's such a niche. Most peope who have a chipmodded Switch never touch that.
I thought I had the right to use circumvention procedures to back up my own games. If I own game and run it on an emulator with a firmware extracted from my device, what law am I breaking?
As far as I understand it, the way it works is that section 1201 of the DMCA has two parts. One part prohibits breaking DRM, and one part prohibits trafficking in devices or software intended to circumvent DRM. The part that prohibits breaking DRM has tons of exceptions so previously legal behavior doesn't become illegal just because something has a digital lock. However, the part that prohibits trafficking in circumvention devices has none of these exceptions. That's the part that Nintendo uses to go after emulators.
Emulators have neither "breaking DRM", "circumvention devices" nor circumvention code though.
That's why Nintendo usually tries to avoid going to court for emulators unlike when they sued for the R4 cartridge for example, they are afraid of the result.
Nintendo Switch games are stored as encrypted data, and then decrypted at runtime by the console. Nintendo's legal position is that because the emulator will only run Switch games if the user provides decryption keys dumped from a Switch, it counts as a circumvention device and is therefore illegal to distribute. Nintendo sued Yuzu, one of the most popular Switch emulators, and the Yuzu authors chose to settle rather than going to trial.
That seems like a weak argument, but the courts make all sorts of surprising decisions these days.
In the past, Nintendo tried using their trademark as a watchdog -- the console would reboot if the game did not display it at startup -- then sued unlicensed games for trademark violation. The courts ruled the trademark was purely functional in that use case, and not a trademark, then ruled against Nintendo.
I imagine a similar ruling, if the defense is: The user has a valid key, and a copy of the media. Any circumvention happened before that point in time. We're simply building a compatible device.
Of course, I'm not a lawyer, and the DMCA is a terribly designed law.
Rather than a value judgment of whether or not Nintendo is rightly applying the law, Yuzu settling must be viewed as a fundamental inability for a small group of independent devs to defend themselves against the deep pockets of a famously litigious major global corporation in the modern court system.
Sounds like someone should take them to court.
The issue is that the law is meant to protect billionaire corporations from you, not the other way around.
Congress has now illegally approved copyright theft of millions of works from small authors, EVEN where everything was illegal about it, down to the torrent client used to get the works in the first place. Oh and this was illegal for Congress too, you see, just about the only thing Congress isn't allowed to do is to change the law retroactively (OpenAI, Meta, Google violated the law BEFORE congress made it legal. So that doesn't matter according to the law. A lot of states even created criminal responsibility for copyright violations. Do these companies or CEOs get convicted for that? No, of course not). But to protection billionaires they do it gladly. (yes, technically congress didn't do anything, the "copyright office" did, but it's a part of congress and you can bet your firstborn if 10 congresscritters disagreed with the font the decision is published in they would have changed it immediately)
Even courts do that. They make up equally absurd justifications. I mean, in order to protect the billionaire AI labs they have now declared AI models persons [1] (because if they are not persons they cannot create a copyright, and so cannot give it to customers, in other words: AI labs would have nothing to sell. You wouldn't be legally allowed to use AI outputs). What do you think the odds are that AI models will now be treated as persons when it doesn't benefit billionaires? I believe we have found the first example of odds bigger than 100%.
Congress does NOT apply used against billionaires, but it does apply when billionaires sue 9 year olds with download software. 9 year olds get threatened with 2 months prison plus 300,000 PER INFRACTION, billionaires get to violate the law. Oh, and by the way, the EU commission has, separately, agreed with this way of doing things over the objection of German courts (the EU AI directive, like any other directive, comes from the commission. They had the good manners to let parliament vote on it, but is there anyone who doesn't remember what happens when parliament votes against it, say, something like "Chat Control" for example?)
Fundamentally, Anthropic and OpenAI (and Google and Facebook and ...) are based on massive violations of copyright. If any of these companies were held liable to the standards courts hold 9 year olds, their billions wouldn't be enough to protect them from bankruptcy (violating millions of works at hundreds of thousands per work adds up fast).
Can someone explain to me how I get to do that? If I can violate the law millions of times making up a billion dollar company is trivial, for obvious reasons. How do I get courts and congress to find technicalities to never hold me responsible. Because under the deal Sam Altman, Larry Page, Elon Musk and Dario Amodei get from courts and congress, and even from the EU, anyone can become a billionaire ... Just make the Netflix everyone wants for starters ...
[1] https://www.courthousenews.com/coders-lose-appeal-in-copyrig...
In the long term, the only way for them to fight this is streaming video games. But even then AI can be used to recreate gameplay from video material..
> But even then AI can be used to recreate gameplay from video material..
Sorry what? Is there an example of AI recreating a nontrivial, modern game from just video material?
It's getting there. Most games are sitting on top of engines that do almost all the heavy lifting, so the AI just has to reverse engineer the assets, gameplay and levels from footage. It can even run the game alongside the clone to see what sort of differences it finds.
Nintendo in particular leans way too hard on old intellectual property.
The first step to their continued survival is admitting that they lost. They put up a good fight, but betting the farm on nostalgia was already pissing in the wind 20 years ago. AI is a hurricane in comparison.
Nintendo fans are a special breed. Thinking AI will disrupt them by cloning games from videos is like thinking Six Flags is a threat to Disneyland.
It might be an anecdote, but the Gary Bowser decision got me to stop buying Nintendo, even though platformers are my favorite genre. My third video game was Super Mario World and I have every home Nintendo console from the SNES to the Switch and handheld from the Game Boy Color to the 3DS. It didn't hurt that my Steam Deck is also pretty good for games. I like having an open platform and it actually delivered on what I wanted with the OpenPandora.
I stopped buying Nintendo when it became their official policy to brick your device if they don't like what you did with it.
https://www.ign.com/articles/nintendo-revises-user-agreement...
Oh wow. I haven't thought about my openPandora preorder in a long time.
I'll also add that the indie scene on Steam is amazing. We're consistently getting great games at prices that are a fraction of any Nintendo game. Frankly, I don't miss Nintendo.
On the one hand game preservation is a wonderful thing, a gift to humanity. It's the reason why I can play Eternal Sonata today on my computer in 4K instead of never again probably.
On the other hand, it's fucked up people are playing Ocarina of Time for free 2 days after launch.
What's the answer here?
> On the other hand, it's fucked up people are playing Ocarina of Time for free 2 days after launch.
Yet most of those are not lost sales. They never even want to buy the game to begin with (most of them doesn't even have a Switch 2). Also as easy emulation gets nowadays it's still a "technical hurdle" for most people.
The game sold 5.2m copies in 4 days https://www.nintendo.co.jp/corporate/release/en/2026/261111....
the discourse on this stuff has really gone downhill. that said...
17 years ago, there was this guy who thought suing college students for pirating music was righteous, as it was the RIAA's only real recourse to enforce their rights. now he is president of the greatest copyright violating institution in all of history.
it is really unfair to go and point at the end user and say, "cognitive dissonance." the polite way of saying that someone is a moron. because the harvard and stanford dropouts leading these near $1T valuation companies, well, they changed their minds for money. to me, flip floppers are also morons. or perhaps, nobody's a moron. at the end of the day, piracy will lead to less Crysis titles and more Monopoly Go and Roblox brainrot, so time will tell if culturally we are better off.
Should use that leak of GitHub source code from some years back to fire up an `.ru`-based clone at this point. These people are clowns.
You don't even need github source code. You could spin up a gitlab community server (or Forgejo or 50 other options) today to host these projects, but your domain/server provider will shut you down in two hours.
And if that doesn't happen, wait till you find a legal letter sent from Nintendo lawyers in your mailbox.
Unless you want to play hide and seek like z library or pirate bay which will become a full time job.