Case 1:24-cv-00082-JJM-LDADocument 1Filed 02/26/24Page 25 of 41 PageID #: 25
Nintendo GameCube emulator called “Gekko” in 2005. Bunnei was then the lead developer for “Citra,” a Nintendo 3DS emulator which is still widely-available and still supported.
67. In January 2018, less than a year after the launch of the Nintendo Switch—and driven by their “gravitat[ion] to the latest and greatest thing, for better or worse”—Bunnei announced the forthcoming creation of the Yuzu emulator. By April 2018, Yuzu could play a handful “of the Nintendo Switch’s more primitive games,” and steady modifications since then have allowed Yuzu to play the vast majority of current Nintendo Switch games. Indeed, Yuzu’s website provides a “Game Compatibility List,” which identifies over 2,500 different games that Yuzu developers, including Bunnei, have tested and played in Yuzu, over 1,800 of which are “playable from start to finish.” However, the number of compatible games is likely significantly higher as the available list is reportedly outdated by two years.
68. Bunnei describes themself as Yuzu’s “author” and “project lead.” In interviews, Bunnei has stated that they “did most of the work to initially stand up the project [and] get [Nintendo] Switch games loading” as well as “most of the work to get early [graphics] rendering working, and the initial implementation” of the audio backend. Bunnei states they have “a lot of breadth in [their] knowledge” of the entire system. Yuzu’s code history bears this out. As Yuzu is open-source, records reflecting users’ contributions to the software are public. Github’s records indicate that Bunnei has added and revised more lines of Yuzu code than any other user.
69. As “project lead,” Bunnei has knowledge of and directs the conduct of each of the several other developers who contribute to Yuzu. For instance, Yuzu’s website has a blog that includes at least monthly updates on the status of development of the emulator, including what each developer has worked on that month and what improvements have been made to the emulation of specific games. Bunnei is regularly featured in the monthly updates. The
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