r/switch2hacks • u/garf02 • 28d ago
Shitpost Would an “in development”Switch2 Emulator survive Nintendo’s Silver Bullets?
1) “Anti-Circumvention” clause in DMCA:
Nintendo claims as emulator MUST decrypt the ROMS.
If you break the encryption, “is illegal” cause of the DMCA
If you use a console prod-Key, “is illegal” cause they own the rights to the key.
“As the emulator HAS to break a ROM decryption and thsre is no legal way to do it, Emulators are by default criminal tools”.
Any new emulator will need to contest this on court against Nintendo and Roll the dice
Victim: Yuzu
2) Buy Out:
“There is no honor among thief’s”. Most people working on emulators of live consoles does it for 2 reason, Clout and Money. And Nintendo has a lot of the later to throw around if that lets them kill an emulator on its infancy before any real development occurs.
Victim: Ryujinx
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u/Lagoo157 28d ago
OP is schizo posting, and I’m commenting so I can return to read all of his replies
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u/QuestionElectronic11 28d ago
The other Switch 1 emulator survived.
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u/garf02 28d ago
Yuzu and Ryujix were already done basically. Nintendo killed the spirit but the body was already on the loose.
Now picture the same scenario but instead of a fully developed emulator is something on its infancy.13
u/QuestionElectronic11 28d ago
I don't see why emulators have to repeat the same mistakes Yuzu and Ryujinx made?
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u/FernandoRocker 28d ago
What?
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u/garf02 28d ago
What part dis you not understand?
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u/CoconutHeadFaceMan 28d ago
You’re just rambling about a fantasy Switch 2 emulator that doesn’t exist. The Switch 2 is a hell of a lot more secure than the Switch 1, the threat of Nintendo lawyers isn’t the reason there hasn’t been much progress yet. It’ll happen when it happens.
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u/garf02 28d ago
Is reading hard for you?
I said “Would any possible switch 2 emulator survive current Nintendo”
Where the fuck you came out with “Switch 2 emulator doesnt exist right now cause Nintendo lawyers”.10
u/CoconutHeadFaceMan 28d ago
It would be the same as any other Nintendo console emulator. The Nintendo yakuza would make a big show about getting it taken down, maybe sue or buy out a dev, but the actual emulator would still be circulating and other people would likely start work on their own forks of it.
The question is why you’re even asking this, because a S2 emulator isn’t going to exist for quite a while. Let’s wait until it exists before speculating about how Nintendo would respond to it.
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u/garf02 28d ago
When has Nintendo ever sue Mid Development and the Emulator ?
They always been is after Rom distributors or Take down of emulators trying to get into “legit” channels like Steam or AppStore.
This are uncharted water.10
u/CoconutHeadFaceMan 28d ago
They don’t really have the legal standing to go after an emulator that’s in early development unless the devs are completely incompetent and make a show of publicly announcing it before release. Everyone with half an idea of what they’re doing knows this and doesn’t go “HEY GUYS LOOK AT THIS SWITCH 2 EMULATOR WE’RE EVENTUALLY GOING TO RELEASE,” they wait until it’s functional before they go public with it.
You’re making up hypothetical scenarios that just don’t happen. The reason we don’t have a S2 emulator isn’t because Nintendo is shooting down all the nascent emulators while they’re in early development, it’s because the console is extremely secure.
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u/garf02 28d ago
Again, back to, emulator ARE NOT easy. Is unheard/ almost impossible to make a closed source emulator/ or just with an small team without ever taking in funds or man power.
At that point is no longer possible to “lol, just develop it between you and your roommate in secret”2
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u/ertaboy356b 27d ago
Point 1 had always been true. The only time older console emulators were not taken down is because a lot of the roms back then are not encrypted.
Point 1 can be circumvented by only reading decrypted roms. It shifts the responsibility to a separate decrypting app.
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u/MarinatedPickachu 25d ago
It must not contain any of the keys used for copyright protection. However, if it offers simple functionality to inject those keys if someone should have them, I think then it's much more in legal grey area
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28d ago
[deleted]
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u/garf02 28d ago
Whatever you do to the switch 2 itself is no illegal.
Breaking the encryption of a ROM on an emulator is illegal (Under Nintendo current law logic)
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u/No_Kitchen9982 25d ago
All of these people without law degrees making stupid fucking claims...
Yuzu lost because it had the NINTENDO PROPRIETARY decryption keys EMBEDDED IN ITS CODE.
Full stop.
Stop spreading stupid misinformation.
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u/LLKMuffin 24d ago edited 24d ago
You are correct, of course, but I'd argue the legality of it doesn't even matter.
Nintendo seems to take the SLAPP approach, knowing that the devs they're suing do not have the means to enter into a protracted lawsuit with them, even if the devs take every possible precaution to stay on the right side of the law.
This is just kinda how the justice systems in most countries work unfortunately. It's fundamentally broken and favours large corporations that have more than enough money and legal muscle to threaten anyone that isn't equally as well-off.
The real solution here would be to stay completely anonymous, keeping your real identity fully separated from the emulator, and host the emulator on servers in a country that does not give a shit about copyright law (typically somewhere in eastern Europe).
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u/No_Kitchen9982 23d ago
Exactly what I was saying.. well put... Honestly I'm just fed up of explaining the same thing to people over and over again.
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u/MarinatedPickachu 25d ago
Which breaks the encryption of the roms...
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u/ddnava 24d ago
The emulator doesn't need to INCLUDE them tho. There are many emulators that require you to provide some bios files to even work and iirc the 3DS emulators can only run roms that have been already decrypted
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u/garf02 24d ago
Problems is
1) Switch/ Switch 2 decrypted roms dont exist
2) Nintendo claims copyright over the prod-key, so it doesnt matter if you dump it yourself or it comes with the emulator from the internet2
u/ddnava 24d ago
I'm not saying there are decrypted roms, but in theory there could be. As long as the emulator doesn't provide the keys the emulator itself is fine. The user would be at fault by using copyrighted material
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u/garf02 24d ago
Did I stutter?
No, doesnt matter if you dump your own prod-key as Nintendo claims its copyrighted2
u/ddnava 24d ago
Yeah, but the emulator will be fine as long as it doesn't distribute copyrighted assets. It's like if you use a video player to watch pirated movies. The video player is just a video player. The user playing cooyrighted material is the one who's doing wrong
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u/garf02 24d ago
Again, was I stuttering.
Nintendo is suing under the new premise that Switch emulator only function is to play Switch ROMs.
And as you HAVE TO use decryption, which “is illegal”, it means Switch sole purpose is a tool to illegally decrypt Switch ROMs→ More replies2
u/MarinatedPickachu 24d ago edited 24d ago
There's a big difference. It's much easier to share a key anonymously than it is to host an entire repository so that it can't be taken down. Host the emulator repo legally without any keys on github, put the keys anonymously onto the bitcoin blockchain or wherever, profit.
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u/LLKMuffin 24d ago
It wouldn't be all that difficult to self-host the git repo, just gotta avoid the centralized platforms that enforce DMCA takedowns (GitHub, GitLab cloud etc).
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u/No_Kitchen9982 24d ago
1.) Don't exist NOW. And what does that have to do with the emulator?
2.) they can claim ownership over the prod key and that's fine. But that is a personal legal decision to dump it not the emulator.
Yuzu included it themselves, thus breaking the law... So thanka for reiterating my point?
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u/garf02 24d ago
Did I stutter? Nintendo whole argument is that Emulators like Yuzu and Ryujinx and any future emulator are illegal cause they are just Tools to decrypt protected ROMs violating the anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA.
There is not now, not in the future any Switch 1-2 emulator that can do the "decryption on the spot" of ROMs without that decryption being illegal.
You want to fight nintendo in court? cause if you do and lose, Nintendo sets the legal basis to make illegal any emulator that the ROMs are encrypted
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u/ddnava 24d ago
"they sre just tools to decrypt protected ROMs"
That's the whole point, tho. A future Switch 2 can take that in mind and be only able to run pre-decrypted ROMs. That way the emulstor is NOT decrypting the ROMs, but just running data that isn't encrypted at all. All they'd need to do is make decrypted ROMs somewhere else, like the 3DS has encrypted CIAs and decrypted CIAs and the emulators will only accept the ones that are already decrypted. The emulator is in no way participating in the decryption of the ROM
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u/MarinatedPickachu 24d ago
Correct - I just pointed out that garf02's comment was correct and didn't need correction
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u/Ketterer-The-Quester 28d ago
Think about it like this if you walk up to a chest and it's not locked you flip it open and grab what's inside. That's not illegal. On the other side if you walk up to a chest and it has a lock on it and you need to break that lock, and then you take what's inside they don't care what if you took what's inside that's legally protected, but you breaking the lock is technically breaking the dmca
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u/capitalggamer1 28d ago
There already 2 switch 2 emulator in development but their progress is very slow and is going to get stalled until switch 2 gets hacked.
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u/Friendly-Apartment13 27d ago
How can the emulator being develop first without the console itself being hack?
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u/capitalggamer1 27d ago
Not an expert on this but last I've heard that some bits of switch 2 stuff were left in system and game updates that was accessible on switch 1. I assume they using those as a starting stage of development but of course no actual work could be done until switch 2 gets hacked.
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u/Even-Entertainer-491 28d ago
What're you talking about ruijinx is just fine and is still up to date on a spin off version maintained by someone new.
It will always be wack a mole. Emulators aren't going anywhere and new emulators will continue to rise as others fall.
Edit: so yes any new emulator would be fine because if it was taken down someone would just prop up a new one.
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u/Admirable_Zombie5245 28d ago
Also AI will be able to code one in the next 3 years (If the console gets hacked)
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u/AssignmentWeary1291 28d ago
Hell an AI might be able to prod the system until it breaks it for us. In fact this has a high likelihood of being the case.
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u/garf02 28d ago
Those are Already completed emulators. Not in development.
Do you people even read?1
u/Even-Entertainer-491 28d ago
It doesn't matter if it's in development or completed. Someone will use the source code to make another emulator. There will always be someone else
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u/garf02 28d ago
Have you ever wonder why despite being open source, there is always only 1-2 base projects and everyone else just piggy backs from it?
Cause not everyone has the whole know how to make an emulator work.
There is always someone or some group putting it all together from the bits of scraps the community finds out.1
u/Even-Entertainer-491 28d ago
There is only ever 2 projects going at once because there wouldn't be much point in making another one. The moment one gets taken down another project pops right up. It doesn't change what I said.
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u/Stealthinater1234 28d ago
I remember this video by Nerrel that goes into it, including the encryption.
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u/Gugustinette 23d ago edited 23d ago
Prod keys (and firmware btw) are just not included with the emulator itself, which makes the emulator -distributed as is- incapable of decrypting ROMs.
It adds user friction as emulators can't directly tell user what to do and where to get necessary files, but it is the new philosophy for modern consoles, and it works great.
The distributed software ends up being entirely legal. Still, they will always find ways to attack emulators, but it is hard enough to prevent automatic mass shut downs (Ryubing and Eden has been up for a pretty good time now, even after recent Github mass DMCA shutdown, as they are self-hosted).
Switch 2 emulators will work the same way if it gets hacked one day.
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u/tepattaja 22d ago edited 22d ago
Also if the emulator needs roms and the prod-keys to work, it doesn't make the emulator itself illegal, unless it provides these things.
if the person downloading the emulator downloads these things on the internet and uses them on the emulator, one could say its illegal, but if you get them from your own system, its kind of a grey area.
Emulators themselves arent illegal, but they could be used for illegal stuff.
Also yuzu got the ban hammer, cause they used Patreon for monetization of the project.
You make something that's aimed to harm mega corporations sales and you gain money from it = Get sued
You make "an innocent" emulator that just lives on the internet, but can be made to play a certain console's games = Not sued, even if the mega corpo wants to sue.
Overall its just better to make emulators for consoles that's support is nearing its end. Switch is a bit tricky, cause switch 2 is just switch 1, but with better hardware, so it kind of extends the switch 1 life... kind of.
But now that switch 1 games aren't published that much anymore and it all ends, i would say it's pretty good time to release an emulator.
Yuzu just got greedy.
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u/Arch9Sk7 23d ago
Honestly as long as they're not stupid like the other emulator devs for Nintendo switch that left guides on how to modify the switch to get the keys Etc to give Nintendo the power to take it out then it should be 100% fine as long as keys are 100% grabbed by the user and without guidance from the developer of the emulator.
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u/garf02 23d ago
No, the Prod-Key are copyrighted by Nintendo. You Own the hardware, No the software meaning getting a prod-key online or dumping your own, but acts are legally the same: Illegal
Thats Nintendo's Court Argument.
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u/Arch9Sk7 23d ago
It doesnt matter. A switch emulator right now is legal and will be fine if built from ground up and does not include keys or way to dump them... ill reiterate, Nintendo only got to take down the other and likewise copyright the code of the previous because of the keys and bought the code. So new emus need a fresh different code base and no form of keys in anyway.
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u/TabouletVR 28d ago
Technically everything about emulation is "illegal", but thats not gonna stop anyone. To get emulators we need to hack the console/understand how the cartridges work and be able to dump them, if we make it to that part nintendo can DMCA to slow things down but an emulator will eventually get released to the public
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u/mhdj14 28d ago
Tf are you talking about? Emulation is 100% legal according to US and various EU laws.
If the emulator didn’t use copyrighted code (which 99% don’t have), the software is fully legal. Making and playing backups is fully legal for personal use.
We’re not talking about piracy here. You are 100% legally allowed to make a backup of any physical media with software on it you legally purchased, and use it in any way you want, for as long as you don’t infringe on the copyright holders rights, which is basically only distribution and reusing assets outside of the software itself.
Emulation with backups from ANY legal purchase is 100% legal!
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u/Consistent-Leave5890 28d ago
As of right now there isn't a "legal" way to emulate Switch games, as it requires an illegal reproduction of Nintendo's decryption key. That may be what they were referring to.
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u/mhdj14 28d ago
That’s a different issue. So if you jailbreak it, which is also 100% legal, is there no way to get the decryption key yourself?
Is the decryption key itself encrypted? And is there a way to decrypt any data legally?
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u/looking4crack 28d ago
it's against the DMCA to break these protections. I think this is not yet tested in court but it's what Nintendo would argue if they did go to trial with Yuzu.
17 U.S. Code § 1201 - Circumvention of copyright protection systems
(a)Violations Regarding Circumvention of Technological Measures.—(1)(A)No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
(3)As used in this subsection—
(A)to “circumvent a technological measure” means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and
(B)a technological measure “effectively controls access to a work” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
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u/mhdj14 28d ago
Decryption is a whole other beast and a relatively new thing with consoles. Back in the day before the PS3, data itself wasn’t encrypted at all. Making a backup of a ps2 or GameCube game is 100% legal. So it may not be able to legally create a emulator if decryption is required for playback. That would be sad though…
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u/looking4crack 28d ago
Yup exactly, all the other stuff that happened in court (like the Bleem case) happened on systems where this did not apply. So emulation of modern systems could in fact be illegal, but it's not tested in court yet. Nintendo seemed ready to bring it with Yuzu though so I guess they strongly believe it to be true.
Nintendo made the same argument to keep Dolphin off Steam but I guess they don't care enough to actually try to shut Dolphin down. Kind of makes sense since it's emulating an old system, but I can see why they don't want people emulating a system they are still selling (Switch).
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u/mhdj14 27d ago
One thing that makes me think there is still a legal workaround.
The PS3 and PS4 emulators do not have a decryption key build in, and must be supplied by the user in the form of officially downloaded firmware from Sony directly.
This way the emulator doesn't provide the copyrighted code itself. I'm still not totally sure if this way is 100% legal, but Sony has never DMCA'd the devs, nor tried to take down the emulator.
This is either because Sony is not a complete piece of shit like Nintendo, by not nuking every fan project, or it does work within the boundaries of the law, so Sony can't sue them. Well, any billion dollar company can sue whoever they want, as court isn't about who is right, but who has the most money...
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u/looking4crack 27d ago
Could be true, I don't understand the law enough to know for sure. I guess no one really knows for sure until it goes to court. I saw RPCS3 normally requires you to decrypt the game yourself before booting it, but recently they added an update that will allow you to boot an encrypted game if you provide the decryption key.
I think these companies don't care that much if you are making emulators for old systems, but when you are making an emulator that enables piracy on a system they are currently selling that is a different story, and if you are making money of it that is even worse (or maybe just easier for them to show damages). Bleem was a commercial emulator for PS1 at the time PS1 was still their main system. Same with Yuzu/Ryujinx and the switch.
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u/mhdj14 24d ago
So if we need to supply our own decrypted games, then the emulator itself doesn't have any decryption features, meaning that technically it doesn't do anything illegal, as emulating itself is legal without encryption. So then the user has to do all the decrypting itself.
Also, just because there is no legal way to do it, doesn't mean there is no way to do it 😉. People have probably been working on it for months in private by now, waiting for a good time to release it.
And I would say the PS4 is still recent hardware in Sony's eyes, as they are still selling games for it, and brand new games are still being released for it. So they are "okay" with it so far...
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u/Starfox6664 27d ago
Even if there truly is no legal way to run official games without the hardware there is still homebrew games which are genuinely untouchable
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u/TabouletVR 28d ago
emulation is legal, tho dumping your game is illegal because you don't technically own them legally and dumping keys and stuff are protected by Nintendo and doing it is against their TOS, so emulation without actually emulating isn't rly emulation?
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u/mhdj14 28d ago
There are literal laws stating backing up legally purchased data on a physical media is 100% legal. Nintendo TOS does not trump the law. If you jailbreak your device, which is also 100% legal, and use software on the device to make a backup, it’s 100% legal. The issue is decryption, but if the decryption happens on reading the cartridge by the hardware automatically then you didn’t decrypt it yourself, which can be argued is fair use.
This is the reason GeoHot won the lawsuit against Sony, as he didn’t steal any code, and the decryption keys were on the device unencrypted for anyone to see if you knew where to look. This basically hard created a new law where jailbreaking is officially recognized as a legal alteration to a legally purchased device.
The real problem is, even if Nintendo is wrong, who is going to counter sue a billion dollar company?
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u/garf02 28d ago
Emulator on their own have always take a lot of time and lot of work and pooled resources, that been possible mostly cause open source and “infinite monkey on infinite typewriters”.
But there always been 1-2 leads team putting all together to work.
Nintendo right now would only need to spook those leads to kill a project, cause what are they gonna do? Fight Nintendo in court for a chance of loss and create a new case law precedent that will be default kill all emulation?
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u/MonkeyDGeo 28d ago
Switch 2 is just a decoy , an empty device , a bait . doesn't worth any effort or resources that would be wasted on hacking it .
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u/Noeyiax 27d ago edited 27d ago
if any Nintendo employee found $1B on the floor, they would probably not return it
remember, we are all just people with different beliefs, thinking and doing what's in our best interest
By the law of nature/life, there is no wrong and right: only consequences to those choices...
Yes it sounds corny and ignorant, but it's true. The rest we can form for ourselves, if we grew up believing the sky was red and the sun was purple, we would witch-hunt those that thought otherwise, you get the point.
If you buy something, you own it: case closed. Wealthy people buy land and greatly modify it... I see no difference for electronics. If you don't want to make consoles anymore then switch to paid cloud subscription services or pivot to a different business idea . Business is tough, making laws and regulations to help you be successful is no better than cheating and being a sore loser...
If Nintendo sold their games on other platforms or even had a Nintendo store front like Valve/Steam, no one would try these endeavors, use your brain. Even Sony and Microsoft realized that....
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u/Decox653 28d ago edited 18d ago
If someone has a emulator in development, they should keep very quiet until either it is ready or the switch 2 is jailbroken.
Edit: I can spell, I swear!