While Valve shouldn't have done this, Yuzu (and emulation) is completely legal. Nintendo cant do anything unless they want to go hard against emulation itself which brings us to the same are APIs copyrightable debate.
While this is legal, Nintendo is very vocally anti-emulation. Nintendo and Denuvo announced anti-emulation measures for switch games in August 2022. There's a big difference between support and marketing support. Nintendo doesn't care what other companies do internally, but cares a lot about what is shown publicly. I remember when Nintendo took down a bunch of youtube videos showing how to jailbreak the original switch. Nintendo isn't coming to PC anytime soon though, so I can't imagine this having any major impact, but it is bad manners. Video and thumbnail edited out Yuzu.
And what's the problem exactly? It's just emulation - if anything should cause a stir, it should be nintendo for their anti-consumer behaviour
Emulation aside, the Steam Deck has been compared to the Switch in some capacity or another in almost every single review I have ever seen of it. While I wouldn't think it's had any negative impact on Switch sales, it's a absolute fact that the Deck can emulate a multitude of games at performance parity or <i>better</i> than the Switch itself. The deck is constantly lauded as an emulation powerhouse and the Switch appears frequently in the discourse.<p>Emulation legality aside, Nintendo would certainly be the company I would expect to pressure Valve for a case against enabling and abetting piracy given their history of legally attacking perceived "competition".
Oddly enough, the light that Humble Bundles have shone into gaming revenue cycles has made me question our copyright system as a whole.<p>Stay with me.<p>In Europe during the time of Mozart, composers were incentivized to be prolific by only getting royalties off the first public performance of their works. Now that is not fair today because of course we can losslessy reproduce such things infinitely.<p>However, Humble Bundles (and really, steam sales and other similar discounts and give-aways) work because the vast majority of the money a game is ever likely to make is early in the revenue cycle. Not 20 or 10 or even 5 years later.<p>We don't know the revenue Nintendo derives from virtual console sales, but you can be assured that virtually none of it is making it to the creators which is who copyright is designed to protect.
To the people saying "it's completely legal, what can Nintendo do" it might be worth considering that not everything is about legal / not legal. Companies and people have relationships and it's not always about if something is technically allowed, it's about how it's being understood by the other party and in this case it's pretty clear that Nintendo is not a big fan of emulators.
Side note, is anyone using one of these as a daily driver computer for development?<p>The specs look decent enough and the price is cheaper than a laptop.
Emulation or not, the Deck has really eaten into the 'AAA gaming in your hand' market the switch has established, considering most non-Nintendo titles are available on the Deck as well.