Nearly a week ago, Nintendo of America Inc. filed a lawsuit against Tropic Haze LLC, the creators of the popular Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu, for “facilitating piracy at a colossal scale” and thereby violating the anti-trafficking provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA).
Yuzu Emulator Creator To Pay Nintendo $2.4 Million In Settlement
Further, the lawsuit also described the emulator as “software primarily designed to circumvent technological measures.”
In a major development, Tropic Haze has complied with a judgment in favor of Nintendo and agreed to pay the Japanese video gaming giant US$2.4 million in damages for intellectual property violations as part of the settlement, revealed court filings posted on Monday.
Besides the financial settlement, the Yuzu developers have also agreed to halt “engaging in activities related to offering, marketing, distributing, or trafficking in Yuzu emulator or any similar software that circumvents Nintendo’s technical protection measures.”
Further, the company also has to cease production and development in its current form, surrender control of its websites to Nintendo, and take down its code repositories, Patreon page, websites, and Discord servers. In addition, Citra, a long-running Nintendo 3DS emulator developed by the same team behind Yuzu, has also been shut down.
The developers of Yuzu released a statement on both the team’s official Discord channel and on X (formerly Twitter), announcing the immediate end of support for the software.
— yuzu (@yuzuemu) March 4, 2024
For the uninitiated, Yuzu is a free and open-source Nintendo Switch emulator that allows users to download free video games developed exclusively for Nintendo Switch consoles and run them on different platforms, such as Windows PC, Linux, Android devices, and Steam Deck.
In its lawsuit against Tropic Haze, Nintendo alleged that a copy of its blockbuster Switch release, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, was leaked online a week and a half before its launch and downloaded illegally more than one million times. It accused Yuzu of facilitating piracy by allowing players to access the ROM illegally.
“With Yuzu in hand, nothing stops a user from obtaining and playing unlawful copies of virtually any game made for the Nintendo Switch, all without paying a dime to Nintendo or to any of the hundreds of other game developers and publishers making and selling games for the Nintendo Switch,” the company argued.
However, Tropic Haze has denied Nintendo’s claims and said its original intention was never to promote privacy.
“Yuzu and its team have always been against piracy. We started the projects in good faith, out of passion for Nintendo and its consoles and games, and were not intending to cause harm,” the post on X reads.
“But we see now that because our projects can circumvent Nintendo’s technological protection measures and allow users to play games outside of authorised hardware, they have led to extensive piracy. In particular, we have been deeply disappointed when users have used our software to leak game content prior to its release and ruin the experience for legitimate purchasers and fans.”
Nintendo and Tropic Haze LLC filed a joint motion on Monday, which is awaiting a judge’s approval and a permanent injunction to be issued by the court. If the judge agrees, this could potentially set an example for other Switch emulators and put them at risk.
