Posted December 12th, 2024
Game Loading on Azahar: What's Changing
Everything you need to know about game loading changes and why they matter.
Written by PabloMK7
The legality of emulation has been a subject of debate since the early days. In 1999 Sony sued Bleem!, a PlayStation Emulator, which started a legal battle that ultimately ruled in favor of emulation. While Bleem! had to eventually close due to bankruptcy, they set a very imporant precedent in favor of videogame preservation through emulation.
However as technology advances, emulation faces new legal challenges, particularly regarding technological protection measures (TPM) on modern consoles like on the 3DS. In fact, the circumvention of TPM done by the Switch emulator Yuzu became the central argument in Nintendo's lawsuit against Tropic Haze, the company behind the now defuct emulators Yuzu and Citra.
We have taken this lawsuit very seriously, and have decided to introduce some design changes in Azahar to address some potential concerns.
Before starting I would like to make it clear that we strongly believe Azahar and formerly Citra were in the clear even before making these design changes, and we are simply trying to make things as clear as possible to prevent any potential confusion we hadn't considered. Please keep in mind that all the decisions explained below have been taken after doing an interpretation of Spanish intellectual property law, as this is where I am based.
Decision #1: Removing encrypted game support
In order to not cause any confusion regarding Azahar's goals, we have taken the decision to limit the circumvention of TPM as much as we posibly can. Circumvention will only be performed whenever interoperability of Nintendo's code is required with Azahar or with other Nintendo's code. As a result Azahar will not allow launching or installing encrypted games, unless they have been obtained through Nintendo's official applications, such as the eShop or System Settings.
Decision #2: Bundling cryptographic keys
Citra required users to extract cryptographic keys to be able to run encrypted games. This was mostly done for two separate reasons:
- To prove that in order to use encrypted games on Citra, you had to own a console. However, the extraction process was complex and eventually lead to the users just downloading the keys from the internet.
- To justify that Citra did not perform the circumvention of TPM by itself, as users had to provide the cryptographic keys themselves. However, this does not change the fact that the circumvention is ultimately being done by the emulator, and the user being involved in this process is irrelevant.
Since those reasons do not really play a role to the legality of the emulator, we have switched our focus to other aspects of the law, such as interoperability, accessibility and private copy. To make things easier to everyone, we will directly include the cryptographic keys in Azahar. That way, users will no longer need to extract them from their consoles.
Keep in mind that cryptographic keys are just very big numbers, which are generated randomly. Therefore they are not creative enough to be protected by copyright law. Furthermore, most of the keys are used to perform cryptographic operations on chunks of data that are not copyrighted works, as they again are not creative enough to be protected (mii and amiibo information, online packets, structures of numbers, etc). Additionally, we are far from the only emulator doing such a thing:
Decision #3: Distancing from piracy terms
Azahar developers are against piracy, which puts emulation development and game preservation at high risk. For that reason we want to distance from piracy terminology as much as possible, so we will be dropping support for the .3ds file extension which had its roots in piracy tools. Instead we will add support for the .cci file extension, which is the official name for cartridge images.
Decision #4: Not providing game copying guides
Since every jurisdiction is different, we leave it to users to determine the proper and lawful method for obtaining private copies of their own games. Azahar will focus instead on providing guides for setting up the emulator, installing the firmware and accessing the eShop, enabling users to re-download owned titles from there.
Final words
I would like to conclude this article by highlighting a few alternative use cases for Azahar beyond playing private copies of your games, supported by documented evidence of their usefulness:
- Obtaining and playing original copies of your owned games by re-downloading them from the eShop.
- Preserving the history of videogames, which would otherwise be lost once the original consoles stop working.
- Improving accessibility for users with disabilities or impedements that have a hard time enjoying their games on real hardware.
- Reducing e-waste by allowing users to continue using partially broken consoles to play their games (using Artic Base for example), instead of having to dispose of them.
- Allowing users to access discontinued online features of the games they have bought by using third party services such as Pretendo Network.
- Developing and using homebrew applications created by people "at home" without using Nintendo's official tools or processes.
- Research and education, including courses about game development on embedded systems (which, fun fact, I actualy took a course on this myself, which is what got me into Citra development!)
Additionally, we are pleased to report that we have received written authorization from at least one video game developer, explicitly granting permission for their games to be emulated on Azahar, and we will be seeking support from more!
Finally, I would like to remind all readers to please act responsably when it comes to piracy. Not only you are damaging video game studios when unjustified mass piracy happens, you are also putting videogame preservation projects (such as Azahar) at risk of being terminated. Please consider these repurcussions before you act. Thank you.