Nintendo lawyers :
Not if they do it the same way as the OOT port. You provide the ROM, their code then picks it apart and puts it back together into an executable. There’s nothing for ninty to sue about.
You forgot one small detail, Nintendo doesn’t need a legal basis to sue. They have more money which allows them to weaponize the legal system against anyone they don’t like. Any small team like this cant even afford lawyers.
Apart from the fact that they haven’t gone after the OOT recompiler.
Minty is the most litigious gaming company around, they don’t sit on their haunches and wait to see what comes next. If there was something to sue over, they would have.
Just like they would have sued the hundreds of Pokémon romhack groups out there if they could.
this is what people used to say about switch emulation
The Switch emus included certain decryption keys, which was a pretty balant violation to be fair.
Did they? I’ve seen moreso that projects distributed methods to extract these keys from “real hardware” instead of actually distributing keys, or that projects “made money” from emulators, or that X or Y discord distributed pirated ROMs - Honestly I think Nintendo’s goal was to make the takedowns vague so successors couldnt work to new guidelines without fear of being next.
Ryujinx was supposedly even more strict with handling of proprietary info and community moderation, which only got it a few months of safety beyond Yuzu.
It feels more like Nintendo knows they have capital to leverage against FOSS developers, but prefer to wait and scoop up a bunch in one go. Plus, it takes time to pick through usernames and dig up personal info to threaten enough people to kill the hydra before more heads can spawn.
(genuinely though, if you or anyone has sources to the explicitly illegal stuff being done by Ryujinx and Yuzu, I’d happily retract my own comment which is only informed on speculation from the time)
It was a little trickier than I remember, they actively promoted illegal ways to obtain the keys, provided the tools to illegally bypass the DRM with them and (and this is what likely caught Nintendo’s attention) they were very actively monetizing it. This was enough to get Yuzu branded as an illegal tool sold to do piracy with.
Ryujinx was far more nebulous as few details were leaked, it seems there Nintendo just swung it’s big legalese dick around. Probably helped by the Yuzu settlement.
The Switch emulation litigation was much more grey than this. There were multiple problems with Yuzu, not the least of which was the official channels openly supporting and aiding piracy. They also included encryption keys, which is always a no-no.
You’ll notice that the only emulator that got taken down through litigation was Yuzu and forks. There are other Switch emulators out there which are perfectly fine.
I hope more reversal engineering teams pop up like this because I like this sort of thing
You fool!
Be a good grandma: Tussle your grandkids’ hair and tell 'em YOU WILL EAT WHEN THE FOOD IS READY!
I don’t know nor care if Nintendo plans to take these down. I just care that people continue to dismantle Nintendo’s control over its software library, past and present
Surprised the headline didn’t use the word “quietly”, since that seems to be the most popular buzzword this year.
