It's a tale as old as time; free and open-source software developers being served notice of intent to sue from an impressive-sounding law firm on behalf of a huge multinational corporation, printed on expensive stationery expertly folded into three segments that lie perfectly flat. More indie software developers than I can recall at the moment have been scuttled in this way, but ultimately, it's all moot anyway. Why? Free and open source software. The corporations hate it, because it's harder to kill than a cockroach. The source code isn't hidden away in a clean white room somewhere deep within corporate HQ in Kyoto—it's freely available on Github, FOSShub, and SourceForge. People download the source code, encouraged by the developer to make edits and assist with development, causing it to be on more computers in more countries than most corporate executives realise even exist.
In other words, yuzu can't be killed. That's most likely why the main development team folded so easily, despite having Sega v. Accolate and Sony v. BLEEM on their side; if the lawsuit were to proceed, Nintendo would likely have begun to embroil much of the FOSS community in wasteful litigation—attorneys that Nintendo could afford, but armchair programmers couldn't. All Nintendo knew about was the main project, and they wanted to keep it that way; by shutting off the faucet, yuzu could hide the fact that the water pitcher in the fridge had been completely filled.
I just have to wonder... If Nintendo spent half as much time and money on making games as they do on suing people, their games would probably be a lot better. But, Nintendo isn't a game developer anymore—they're a full-time frivolous lawsuit generator. Frankly, I wouldn't mind seeing them stop making games and consoles altogether. The same for Microsoft and Sony. There's, what, 15 games for the PlayStation 5? The Atari VCS had that many games on launch day, and the PS5's been out for 3 years. Does that seem like a short time? Consider that most game systems are only supported for 5 years. Nintendo does nothing but file lawsuits, Sony made a next-gen console and stopped supporting it on day one, and Microsoft is only interested in acquiring its competitors. Corporate videogaming has reached the end of the line and it just needs to end. Nintendo can go back to real-estate speculation, Sony can go back to making Walkmans, and Microsoft can dry up and blow away.
--5 March 2024--