Last month, Nintendo sued Tropic Haze, the developer of Yuzu emulator claiming the emulator facilitated piracy on a colossal scale. A final judgment and permanent injunction have been issued on the matter and it involves the shutting down of Yuzu emulator.
While every party will bear their attorney’s legal charges, Yuzu will pay $2.4 million to Nintendo in damages. When Nintendo filed the lawsuit on February 27, 2024, fans desperately yearned for a statement from Yuzu emulator makers. None came until Monday, March 4, 2024, when the developers announced on X that the Yuzu emulator project would be shutting down.
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“We write today to inform you that yuzu’s support of Citra are being discontinued, effective immediately,” the developers shared through a statement on X. “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.”
“Effective today, we will be pulling our code repositories offline, discontinuing our Patreon accounts and Discord servers, and, soon, shutting down our websites. We hope our actions will be a small step toward ending piracy of all creators’ works.”
The same message was also posted on Ctira, which was also operated by Tropic Haze. The comment section of the messages was disabled. We imagine aggrieved fans hitting back at Nintendo if the comment section was left open.
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At the time of writing, another popular emulator Ryujinx was trending with many concerned that they are next in line to be hit with a Nintendo lawsuit. While the shuttering of Yuzu emulator will come as no surprise to those who are familiar with Nintendo’s legal weight, those who used the emulator legally will surely be disappointed.
People thinking Nintendo will stop after yuzu and not hunting down
ryujinx are delusional. They will scare them to death since they can afford 1000 years in court. pic.twitter.com/b6is0l7Qec— LearningTheLaw (@Mangalawyer) March 4, 2024
Yuzu emulator ordeal doesn’t end with paying $2.4 million in damages to Nintendo
“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,” Nintendo had said in its lawsuit.
In its official message, Yuzu emulator maker said they were “deeply disappointed when users have used our software to leak game content before its release and ruin the experience for legitimate purchasers and fans”.
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Delivering the final judgment on the matter, Hon. John J. McConnell, the Chief judge of the United States District Court, District of Rhode Island, ordered that Yuzu emulator makers should surrender their domain to Nintendo’s control.
The court also ordered Yuzu emulator maker to delete “all circumvention devices” which includes “all copies of Yuzu, all circumvention tools used for developing or using Yuzu—such as TegraRcmGUI, Hekate, Atmosphère, Lockpick_RCM, NDDumpTool, nxDumpFuse, and TegraExplorer, and all copies of Nintendo cryptographic keys including the prod.keys”.
Yuzu emulator makers were also ordered to hand over to Nintendo all physical circumvention devices including any modified Nintendo Switch consoles that may be in their possession. The decisions were made after the judge established that “Yuzu is primarily designed to circumvent and play Nintendo Switch games” and that the distribution and playing of games on Yuzu violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Tropic Haze was also prohibited from starting a new company or service that offered emulation for Nintendo software. The fact that the Yuzu emulator maker has decided to opt for a settlement signals that they were aware that their software was being used for piracy. Hopefully, the judgment will be enough warning to other emulator makers.
