I found it funny that Linus of LMG endorsed this setup not because it is better, but because Yuzu doesn't hold your savegames hostage. If you don't know: you can't backup saves, they get written to NAND, not the SD card. you can however buy cloud backup, but only for games that don't opt out.
Truly a problem of Nintendo's own petty making if even switch owners with a legitimate copy prefer to not run on their hardware.
If you have a hacked console (paperclip with a 1st year console, modchip with later ones), you can back up your saves using a homebrew app (checkpoint) if you remember to do it regularly.
You can also copy the saves off the console (or the emulated NAND you're supposed to create when hacking it) by running a different app (TegraExplorer) right from the bootloader. I had to do this when I messed up an update and my system wouldn't boot, but I hadn't backed up my saves in months.
I do wonder if anyone's attempted to get nintendo to respond to a subject access request in the EU to get their saves from their cloud service.
I didn't want to run CFW, so I have actually written a tool to back up and decrypt all saves in a single click given any vulnerable Switch in RCM Mode. It's been really quite useful.
The savegame situation was part of what made me less interested in my Switch over time - I just didn't want to invest much time in any long-term games where I couldn't actually back up the savegames in any direct way. Now it gets pulled out every now and then when the kids want to play Club House Games or Mario Party.
Note: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.
In the EU, reverse engineering is allowed by law if the reason for doing so is interoperability by the one who owns a license to the product in question.
"The authorisation of the rightholder shall not be required where reproduction of the code and translation of its form within the meaning of points (a) and (b) of Article 4(1) are indispensable to obtain the information necessary to achieve the interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, provided that the following conditions are met:
(a) those acts are performed by the licensee or by another person having a right to use a copy of a program, or on their behalf by a person authorised to do so;
(b) the information necessary to achieve interoperability has not previously been readily available to the persons referred to in point (a); and
(c) those acts are confined to the parts of the original program which are necessary in order to achieve interoperability."
Luckily Nintendo (Shadowrun is still some years away, when Ninsonmicro determines what is legal and what isn't) is not the authority to determine if something is illegal or not. But of course they are entitled to their own opinion.
Here in France, as far as I know I have a right to private copy, which I pay for through a specific tax whenever I buy storage. I can rip my DVDs, Blu-rays, or even Nintendo Switch cartridges or hard drive, perfectly legally, even if it means cracking open the thing and circumvent stuff. It's awfully less convenient than downloading the stuff, but it is legal. Or at least it was 20 years ago, but I'm not aware of any change on that front.
Now there should be some ground rule. When you buy something, it's supposed to be yours, and you should be allowed to do what you want with it, especially studying it and sharing the results of your study. Any rule that allows some big corporation to retain power over something that's supposed to be yours is serious overreach and should be shut down.
Now Nintendo does have a big problem here: without the exclusivity of their form factor (which is arguably difficult to improve upon[1]), all they have left is the exclusivity of their game library.
In Sweden it was like that, but after some prodding and patting by "market forces" on the politicians it's no longer legal, but the tax is still there.
TL;DR: it's more complicated than I thought. First, the law was introduced in 2006, so before it, circumventing DRM and publishing how to do it was not a crime. (Of course, publishing copyrighted works with no proper authorisation was already a crime, regardless of DRM.)
Then for a brief time, circumventing DRM was outlawed. But fear of foreign monopolies (most notably Microsoft) and free software lobbying eventually had those articles amended, effectively exempting research and free software from any sanction. The exact limits of the current law are still fuzzy, but it seems pretty clear that using VLC to make copy of a DVD I own is 100% legal in France.
Are they really rare? I have an older switch that is easily hackable and can’t be blocked due to it being a hardware vulnerability but I have never bothered to hack it as I just don’t know if it is worth it. Not sure if you can continue to play online once hacked and I assume once hacked play pirated games as why else hack it. But I haven’t pirated games in a long time I wonder if it is worth it. What the switch really needs is a messaging app maybe hacked switches can do that idk.
The detachable joycon with accelerometer control are a mechanic in some games (eg. Zelda crossbow aim). I would imagine this would be worse experience on steam deck.
Better as in much better framerate with no performance drops. At least that's what I've heard.
Pretty much all the games I have played allowed to disable the motion controls. I think it counts towards accessibility. Personally I really dislike the whole motion control aspect so always turn them off. Zelda included.
I'm sure there are other tradeoffs as well. But would love it see what it's like on an emulator. Or maybe not, it might make running games on the original hardware feel terrible :)
That has not been my experience with switch games on the Steam Deck. Anytime shaders are loaded the FPS seems to stutter which in the newer Mario game is like every few seconds at first and it gets better the longer you play.
I still prefer the switch for switch games myself.
Not in my experience. Definitely performance drops on the Deck. And even when it's running well, shader caches or whatever can make it stutter. Still very cool to be able to have all my games on one device though, even if it doesn't run as well.
By the by, I recently switched to using a Dualsense as my SD external controller and found that the gyro controls make for an excellent desktop and M+K game controller. Surprised I didn’t think to check earlier.
I can confirm a PS4 controller tilt sensor works with yuzu, so fundamentally it's possible, not sure a plugin for parsing the steamdeck tilt sensor exists though
I played BotW on my friend's Switch, and loved it, but didn't really wanna buy another console.
So I went through the tribulations of setting it up on the Deck (pro tip: use EmuDeck, I didn't know about it back then).
I don't know about better, but for me it felt the same as the Switch! The only slight confusion thing was button labeling, but it's quick to get used to.
Yeah, why pay for something, if you can also simply download/steal it? Something which took a lot of work to make?
Reading comments like this I can almost understand Nintendos stance on emulation. Suing the emulator team is certainly not the right thing to do, but come on.
At least pay for the game if you are not paying for the console.
It was quickly taken down and re-posted without any references to Yuzu, probably after a panicked email from legal.
https://www.pcgamer.com/valve-edits-steam-deck-trailer-to-re...