Yes they have. They’ve just recently nuked on the Switch emulator.
And you can bet that if they could, Nintendo would go out of their way to sue any other emulator developer that emulates their games. The only things saving some of those emulators is technicalities like open-source.
I’m not going to check the whole archive, but going back to at least 2005, Nintendo was asking users to …
report ROM sites, emulators, Game Copiers, Counterfeit manufacturing, or other illegal activities
https://web.archive.org/web/20051124194318/http://www.nintendo.com/corp/faqs/legal.html
Here’s some more quotes from the same page where Nintendo is viciously anti-emulation:
The introduction of video game emulators represents the greatest threat to date to the intellectual property rights of video game developers. As is the case with any business or industry, when its products become available for free, the revenue stream supporting that industry is threatened. Such emulators have the potential to significantly damage a worldwide entertainment software industry which generates over $15 billion annually, and tens of thousands of jobs.
Distribution of a Nintendo emulator trades off of Nintendo’s goodwill and the millions of dollars invested in research & development and marketing by Nintendo and its licensees. Substantial damages are caused to Nintendo and its licensees. It is irrelevant whether or not someone profits from the distribution of an emulator. The emulator promotes the play of illegal ROMs , NOT authentic games. Thus, not only does it not lead to more sales, it has the opposite effect and purpose.
Personal Websites and/or Internet Content Providers sites That link to Nintendo ROMs, Nintendo emulators and/or illegal copying devices can be held liable for copyright and trademark violations, regardless of whether the illegal software and/or devices are on their site or whether they are linking to the sites where the illegal items are found.
Nintendo’s been openly emulating their own games since about that time. IIRC, the SNES Virtual Console on the Wii had code from SNES9X in it.
The distinction (which seems nobody cares about) is that Nintendo’s going after copyright infringers. If your emulator doesn’t use any of Nintendo’s code, they ain’t doing shit about it; they’re just gonna steal it, if anything.
Somebody has fed you or you have invented bad information. Neither Yuzu nor Ryujinx, the two Switch emulators which recently ceased development due to intervention from Nintendo, included Nintendo’s code. The Yuzu settlement required those developers to acknowledge that
because our projects can circumvent Nintendo’s technological protection measures and allow users to play games outside of authorized hardware, they have led to extensive piracy.
There was never any mention of them stealing Nintendo code.
Ryujinx, we know even less about, because the agreement went down privately, but there’s literally zero indication of any stolen code. We know that Nintendo contacted the developer proposing that they cease offering Ryujinx and they did.
Obviously, Nintendo was bothered in both of these cases because the emulators do facilitate piracy, but that’s not the same as them having infringed on Nintendo’s copyright by using their code which you are claiming. Both of these emulators were developed open-source; if they were built using stolen Nintendo code there would be receipts all over the place. That was never the problem.
I kinda get that they’ll do whatever than can to shut down an emulator for a console still selling and available on the shelves though. Not that there aren’t legitimate cases for it (homebrew software and games), but that’s not what Nintendo is concerned about.
But screw that for legacy consoles, game preservation is important too.
I kinda get that they’ll do whatever than can to shut down an emulator for a console still selling
If I hadn’t downloaded Yuzu and BOTW, Nintendo would’ve probably missed out on several hundreds euros my brother spent on buying a Switch, several games, controllers and supplies, albeit some of the supplies are 3rd party so Nintendo probably didn’t make profit off them.
Piracy definitely increases sales. I would have never bought a Switch in the situation I was in some years back, but having downloaded it and gotten very into it, my brother wanted to as well and he didn’t care to pirate, and had actual uses for Switch’s properties that you don’t get on emulators, like online play and the portability of the console itself.
It’s just that it’s hard to actually quantify, so the shareholders will prefer to go with enforcement that forces people to buy the games and console than taking a risk on hypotheticals.
Personally, I never bought a Wii U/Switch and played my fair share of games through emulation only.
They’ve just recently nuked on the Switch emulator.
Because it was being used for piracy. As in, had support in the emulator’s code for unreleased games. Nintendo rarely goes after emulator devs that don’t use their code.
Supporting unreleased games does not mean they used Nintendo code. The whole point of an emulator is to perfectly reproduce the original system. That means working on any switch game, regardless of whether said game has been released or even thought of. In practice it isn’t that simple because they are attempting to replicate a very complex system, so there will usually be patches whenever giant games come out that use the system in different ways. However, that doesn’t mean Nintendo code is being used at all.
Right, but Yuzu did, tho. That’s how Nintendo shut them down. Yuzu overstepped and handed Nintendo their own noose. They probably would’ve been just fine if they hadn’t given out builds with those tools built-in.
They didn’t use any code. Any keys were dumped from an existing Switch. Yuzu got taken down not as a result of a lawsuit, but because of the threat of one. Famously Bleem won their emulator lawsuit from PlayStation, but still went bankrupt anyway, so most emulator projects don’t even try to fight any legal battles.
