Nintendo wins $2.4 million in Switch emulator lawsuit, Yuzu is discontinued
The makers of the Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu owe Nintendo $2.4 million after reaching a settlement with the Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom developer, following a lawsuit over the open-source emulator last week. Both Nintendo and Tropic Haze, the company behind Yuzu, filed for final judgment and a permanent ban on Monday. according to court documentsafter Nintendo accused the Yuzu makers of copyright infringement, circumventing Nintendo’s Switch protections, and sale those circumvention technologies like Yuzu, among others.
However, the settlement awaits court approval.
Yuzu is a free Nintendo Switch emulator that was released in 2018, months after Nintendo launched the Nintendo Switch. It is a piece of software that allows people to play Nintendo Switch games on their computers or phones, including Tears of the Kingdom, which Nintendo cited in its lawsuit, saying Yuzu let people play leaked copies of the game early. Specifically, Nintendo said that more than 1 million people played the game before its release date because of the leaked copies. Yuzu itself doesn’t offer pirated or leaked games, but Nintendo targeted the company because the emulator is one of the few ways to play those games.
In addition to the money, the terms of the settlement dictate that Tropic Haze will have to completely cease operations on Yuzu. The company cannot distribute it in any way, nor can it market it on its website or social media. Yuzu will also have to give up his domain name.
In a statement published on Discord, Yuzu creator Bunnei confirmed that everything related to Yuzu will be coming offline.
“Piracy was never our intention, and we believe that piracy of video games and on video game consoles must end. Effective today, we will be taking our code repositories offline, shutting down our Patreon accounts and Discord servers, and shutting down our websites soon,” Bunnei wrote. “We hope our actions will be a small step toward ending piracy of the works of all creators.”
The website, Patreon page, and GitHub repositories for both Yuzu and Nintendo 3DS emulator Citra have all been taken offline. The Discord channel remains online.
A Nintendo representative pointed Polygon to the Entertainment Software Association when contacted for comment on the settlement. Lawyers for the emulator maker did not respond to a request for comment.
The Tears of the Kingdom The publisher is known to be strict with its intellectual property. Nintendo has won several lawsuits against pirated gaming sites such as RomUniverse, where it was awarded more than $2 million in damages. Nintendo also notoriously went after an alleged Nintendo Switch hacker named Gary Bowser, who was arrested and charged for selling Switch hacks. Although he has been released from prison, Bowser still owes Nintendo $10 million; he paid Nintendo $175 while in prison from the money he earned working in the prison library and kitchen.
The lawsuit between Nintendo and Yuzu has reignited a debate over emulation – whether the act of emulation is inherently illegal. Of course, emulation fans don’t believe that: many people see Yuzu and other emulators as an important tool for video game preservation. Nintendo clearly disagrees.
Update: Bunnei, one of the creators of Yuzu, published a message about the settlement on the group’s Discord page, where they said that all Yuzu code, Patreon accounts, and Discord servers will be shut down. We have updated this story with part of this statement. Here is the full message:
Hello yuz-ers and Citra fans:
We are writing today to inform you that yuzu and yuzu’s support of Citra is ending immediately.
Yuzu and his team have always been against piracy. We started the projects in good faith, out of passion for Nintendo and its consoles and games, and did not intend to cause harm. But we now see that because our projects can bypass Nintendo’s technological protection measures and allow users to play games outside of authorized hardware, they have led to widespread piracy. In particular, we have been deeply disappointed when users used our software to leak game content before release and ruin the experience for legitimate buyers and fans.
We have come to the conclusion that we cannot continue to allow this to happen. Piracy was never our intention, and we believe that piracy of video games and on video game consoles must end. Effective today, we will be taking our code repositories offline, shutting down our Patreon accounts and Discord servers, and shutting down our websites soon. We hope that our actions will be a small step toward ending piracy of the works of all creators.
Thank you for your many years of support and for your understanding of our decision.
Update (4:58 p.m. ET): This story has been updated after the creators of Yuzu and Citra took the code, Patreon page, and website offline.