Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
no edit summary
'''This page will try and document some notable incidents regarding the legal status of emulation. Nothing in this page should be considered a replacement for lawyer legal advice.'''
==Notable Legal Incidents==
;1992 - Atari Games vs. Nintendo
:'''Action:''' Pre-emptive lawsuit from Atari Games. Lawsuit against Atari Games for making new hardware copying the functionality of Nintendo's lock-out system, the 10NES, meant to prevent the NES from loading unauthorized game cartridges
:'''Reason:''' Atari tried attempted to reverse-engineered itengineer 10NES, they got a leaked copy of the 10NES source code after lying to the US Copyright Office (!), and then replicated it to make new games. Nintendo sued for patent infringement, copyright infringement.
:'''Outcome:''' Settlement, although the courts ruled in favor of "reverse-engineering being fair use" it was tainted by the copyright-infringing way Atari acquired the source code. Nintendo settled and shifted their legal strategy as it was embroiled in other lawsuits regarding its monopolistic behavior.
:'''Action:''' Pre-emptive lawsuit from Galbo. Lawsuit.
:'''Reason:''' Created an unauthorized NES dev kit. Nintendo argued that the Game Genie violated their intellectual property, infringing on their exclusive right to make derivative works of their copyrighted games. Nintendo relied on a precedent where a third-party company selling a speed-up kit for the Galaxian arcade game lost, but that was because the speed-up kit itself included copyrighted content from Galaxian.
:'''Outcome:''' Nintendo lost. Deterred litigousness against third party publishers. Altering the output of videogames video games was considered a case of "fair use". HOWEVER, they successfully lobbied for a similar law in Japan. As a result, devices that allow for cheating and patching them are outlawed there, with Konami going after people selling modified save files for Tokimeki Memorial in 1997. However, Nintendo's overly-aggressive actions against the doujin scene in 1999 triggered some public backlash that forced them to dial it down. Nintendo later collaborated with third party accessory publishers, but not for cheating devices.
;February 1999 - UltraHLE (N64) vs. Nintendo
:'''Outcome:''' Discontinued project, developers killed their online presence, but the source leaked later in 2002 and was continued as UltraHLE 2064. Other better emulators appeared in the meanwhile.
:Also notable for its time, UltraHLE was capable of playing commercial games while the console Nintendo 64 was still commercially viable, a feat which was ultimately noticed by Nintendo. In February 1999, Nintendo began the process of filing a lawsuit against the emulator's authors, along with the website hosting the emulator. Speaking to PC Zone, Nintendo representative Beth Llewellwyn commented: "Nintendo is very disturbed that RealityMan and Epsilon have widely distributed a product designed solely to play infringing copies of copyrighted works developed by Nintendo and its third-party licensees. We are taking measures to further protect and enforce our intellectual property rights which, of course, includes the bringing of legal action." Despite this, UltraHLE had grown beyond either its authors' or Nintendo's control. Subsequently, Epsilon and RealityMan abandoned their pseudonyms and went silent.
;2003 - GBA/LCD screen ghosting technique
;2024 - Yuzu (Switch) vs. Nintendo
:'''Action:''' Massive lawsuit Lawsuit against the for-profit LLC that manages Yuzu and its Patreon
:'''Reason:''' Emulation and personal backups itself (mentioned in passing), Encouraging and engaging in piracy of unreleased leaked games and prominently profiting off it, Yuzu not including AES keys but using them to load encrypted game images, using Nintendo imagery to promote their patreon. Comparisons presenting the emulator as the better alternative. Included guides for unlocking the protection of Switch hardware on the emulator website.
:'''Outcome:''' Settlement. Both Citra (also under the same team and LLC) and Yuzu's online presence and development is discontinued. Developers pay Nintendo $2.4m, retire from all emulation projects (even mGBA and Dolphin), issue statements denouncing emulation (in public) and claiming any emulation that deals with AES keys is illegal (in front of a federal judge, in an attempt to build up a legal precedent, despite cases like Accolade vs. Sega where similar protection circumvention wasn't deemed illegal because it preserves competitivity and interoperability - also protected by the DMCA itself), submit telemetry information to Nintendo, submit personal Switch hardware, avoid discovery (for even worse shady stuff specific to the Yuzu/Citra project) and run off with their personal salaries from the project in the sunset.
;2023 - Yuzu (Switch) / various Youtube channels vs. Nintendo
:'''Action:''' Copyright takedown take-down notices against videos promoting emulation of the Nintendo Switch for the following cases: Kotaku (game journalists) encouraging people to pirate leaked copies of Metroid Dread and Zelda Tears of the Kingdom after Nintendo denied them review copies (NoA took down the very video used in the article), Multiplayer mod for Zelda Breath of the Wild promoted on the Youtube channel of the mod author, and others.
:'''Reason:''' Generic copyrighted audiovisual content DMCA justification (Game footage)
:'''Outcome:''' No further retaliation from Nintendo against either Yuzu or the YT YouTube channels. Zelda Multiplayer mod shut down the project pre-emptively to avoid further trouble.
====Technological measures====
;1994 - SNESSuper Nintendo Entertainment System
:Select games trigger their anti-piracy without the proper save type, and actively try to mislead emulators and flashcarts. Worked around with SNES rom headers first, then a list of game-specific hacks.
;2004 - GBAGame Boy Advance
:Select games (Classic NES Series, a series of $40 individual NES games on the GBA) go out of their way to detect emulator behavior and refuse to boot up.
:Select games refuse to load without the proper save type, and actively try to mislead emulators and flashcarts. Worked around with a list of game-specific hacks.
Nintendo developers clearly follow the emulation scene closely, as some updates were made to remove mentions of unofficial N64 memory setups they accidentally included, and leaks for NERD's GBA emulation on the Nintendo Switch clearly mentioned unofficial software. Oblique allusions by Miyamoto and other staff acknowledged how games like Star Fox 2 and Mother 3 were known about in the West, wondering whether is it "better off left that way". Some unofficial emulation artifacts used internally by Japanese Nintendo employees even made it accidentally to the product, and one Nintendo PR staff accidentally compared a Super Mario Maker level to a "romhack".
Similarly, multiple third-party publishers for Nintendo consoles openly use emulators developed from fan sources. This contrasts with the language used on their website that claims "all emulation is illegal". Although it's true that Nintendo used to reject some emulated collections (for Atari games) on the Nintendo DS, it's not clear whether it's out of an anti-emulation stance or unrelated quality control issues tied to the quality of the collection itself. Nintendo never went after third party publishers that made Nintendo-exclusives available on other consoles, neither did Sony the other way around, although that might be to avoid anti-competitive behavior and lawsuits with emulationsemulation.
===Sony===
While Nintendo and Sony sued the most successful PS1 emulators in the 5th Gen, Sega had a more novel idea to shut down Saturn emulation. GiriGiri is a proprietary Sega Saturn emulator and one of the first to run commercial games at a decent speed. The developer, MegaDeath, was hired by Sega and GiriGiri was made an official emulator under the CyberDisc service. The service only lasted a little over a year before it was shut down in early 2004.
Sega also provided an online service on the DreamCast Dreamcast (but only exlusively in Japan) offering that offered emulated versions of Sega Genesis, Sega Master System, but also even and NEC PC Engine games, years before the Wii Virtual Console was even a thing. Only a single disc covering Sega Genesis emulation was released in the US, with leftover instructions on the disc by the developer addressed to people pirating the game and encouraging them to try other Sega Genesis games, including their proper compatibility settings.
Sega later collaborated with a huge number of fan emulation developers for their countless retro collections, both from Japan and elsewhere. Albeit some exclusive content was later on tampered with to prevent its compatibility with third-party emulators, to limit piracy and unauthorized resellers. Ex-Sega of Japan developers also worked on fan emulators. A lot of developer interviews by Sega developers discuss common emulation topics like input delay and CRT shaders and screen scales.
