My take on video game emulation

Hey everyone, Bit here. It's time to make a drawn-out blog post about another topic: emulation.

On March 4, 2024, Tropic Haze settled out of court with Nintendo and the documents of the agreement finally came out. Tropic Haze were the developers of two Nintendo console emulators, Yuzu for the Switch, and Citra for the 3DS. Both of their emulators as well as their websites have been forced to shut down, and their open-source code repositories have been destroyed and are no longer accessible. The only place where these two emulators survive now is the Internet Archive (https://archive.org).

First of all, emulation is not solely a tool for piracy. The reason that Nintendo seems to absolutely hate anyone who creates software that emulates a Nintendo system is because Nintendo thinks that emulators are strictly for piracy. The logical and potentially legal use of emulation is to keep a backup of old games so that their existence does not depend on the company that made them. Nintendo and other companies don't have to keep producing a game or system forever, so both the system that runs them and the games for those systems should be preserved by communities. The only company that seems to ravenously pursue any emulator or ROM repository that exists is Nintendo. Emulators are a way of preserving systems, and once a system is no longer maintained by its creators, I don't have a problem with people emulating or archiving ROMs for it.

I do not personally condone emulating current generation hardware or archiving current generation software. Since it is still being actively supported, I understand why Nintendo was going after Yuzu originally because it emulates their current-gen system, the Switch. Once a system is no longer supported, meaning the digital storefronts have shut down and production of new hardware has ceased, I no longer have a problem with software archival, emulator usage, or software/hardware modifications.

One reason that Nintendo could have wanted Yuzu taken down more is because many people were promoting it actively in places where Nintendo was able to see it readily, like on the comments of Nintendo's official social media accounts. If it wasn't so popularly mentioned, then Nintendo might not have sought it out directly. As one person said, Tropic Haze and its community kept poking the bear and it came back to bite.

Patreon (https://patreon.com) is a website that allows creators to receive monthly subscription-based donations. Most creators offer benefits for subscribing to their Patreon, and Tropic Haze was using Patreon to paywall access to the Early Access version of Yuzu. These Patreon donations netted Tropic Haze around $29,560 every month, according to a Community Note on Twitter/X. Emulators are fine if they are free software (closed or open source), and many popular emulators are FOSS (free and open-source software). Charging for features or a beta version may put you in the legal crosshairs of the one you're emulating, as what happened to Yuzu.

Luckily the Internet Archive exists to keep many pieces of software that exists or has ever existed so that they are never completely gone. Also, now that Yuzu and Citra have been litigated out of existence, I don't know how much longer any other Nintendo emulator will survive. I hope that Nintendo doesn't achieve complete lack of any emulation of their hardware, since hardware needs to be preserved in any way possible, whether it be collections of consoles or FPGAs (looking at you, Analogue) or emulation software. May emulators live on, and I'll see you next time.

A line was added mentioning a Community Note on Twitter/X that listed Tropic Haze's Patreon revenue.

Originally posted on Listed.

https://listed.littlebitstudios.com/50131/my-take-on-video-game-emulation