(un)Happy Mar10 Day

By now, we've all heard the news. Yuzu is dead. Nintendo SLAPPed them around the courtroom and got exactly what they wanted. Their vicious teams of rabid attack lawyers did what vicious attack lawyers do.

Nintendo are bullies. Plain as that. Did Tropic Haze/Yuzu do some shady shit by leaking Tears of the Kingdom? That's still speculation, but if they did, that's not a great look for them either. But it still doesn't change the fact that Nintendo are bullies, and this isn't the first time they've gone after fan-made projects or content.

Intellectual property law is a tricky, prickly subject that should be debated and reviewed often. However my issue (and likely most folks who have a beef with Nintendo will agree) here is that Nintendo's default option always seems to be the nuclear one. The Yuzu project notwithstanding, it otherwise doesn't seem to matter to Nintendo who they're going after or what scale or size the project they have a problem with is; they just throw everything they have at unsuspecting (usually) well-meaning fans who want to show their love and support for games that are a big part of their lives.

And while that's bad enough, now they've come for the emulation community.

Say what you want about emulation, but here's my take: Game preservation is important. It's important because video games are an important part of our modern-day culture. They have HISTORICAL relevance and importance. Beyond any discussions of piracy, fair use, or anything else, the one net positive from dumping ROMs and emulating games is that these games will live on. And they'll live on regardless of being gatekept by a billion-dollar corporation only concerned with how much money it can extract from people. Does Nintendo deserve to be compensated for creating these games? Absolutely. But where does that end?

This becomes especially difficult when you take into consideration the fact that the world is starting to move on from physical media. Albeit not by choice, if you ask me, but the fact of the matter is that the precedent has been set. We now live in a weird sort of post-ownership world where any media company can decide that you don't GET to enjoy your favourite music, movies, or video games anymore. And quite frankly, that terrifies me. Can you still purchase physical Switch games? Sure. Do you? Or, for that matter, will Nintendo's NEXT console even support physical media? Sony and Microsoft have already started offering versions of THEIR consoles that don't include a disk drive, so why shouldn't Nintendo follow suit?

It remains to be seen whether Nintendo will take any further action against OTHER emulation projects, but they've set a dangerous precedent. They may have let a genie out of the bottle that could endanger the entire emulation community here. And THAT is what I'm taking issue with.

So here's what I plan to do: I'm personally boycotting Nintendo. Never again will I purchase a Nintendo game from their online store, and never again will I purchase a brand new physical copy of one of their games. I hope you'll join me. Additionally, I hope that you'll find your way onto archive.org, where the original Yuzu source code is still being mirrored. I hope you'll download it and upload it to a Git repository of your choosing. I also hope you'll paste the following graphic all over the merch you'll sell in Etsy shops or elsewhere online. And finally, to Nintendo, I say the following: