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Switch emulator Yuzu is dead

5/3/2024

Translation: Patrik Stainbrook

The developers of popular Switch emulator Yuzu have settled their legal dispute with Nintendo. The company must pay 2.4 million dollars in damages and halt development of the emulator.

Last week, Nintendo sued Tropic Haze, developers of the biggest Switch emulator Yuzu. In its lawsuit, the Japanese game manufacturer claimed that the Yuzu development team was «facilitating piracy at a colossal scale» with its emulator. One of the reasons Nintendo gave for this was the fact that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom had been illegally downloaded and played on the emulator around one million times before its launch. You can read the detailed indictment here:

Background information
Nintendo sues Yuzu – what this could mean for emulators
by Florian Bodoky

Only a few days after the suit was served, Tropic Haze and Nintendo settled their legal dispute out of court. The company has agreed to pay 2.4 million US dollars in damages to Nintendo. Furthermore, the company and the developers are prohibited from offering Yuzu or its source code to the public in the future, marketing the software or developing it further in any way. Tropic Haze must also hand over all website domains as well as information on Yuzu development, software tools and modified hardware used for development to Nintendo.

How did developers react?

The development team has published a detailed statement on their Discord, their X account and on their website.

Statement from bunnei, a lead developer of the Switch emulator.
Source: Yuzu Discord via @stephentotilo/X

In its statement, the team confirms that development on the emulator has ended with immediate effect. The company is also taking all code repositories for the emulator offline and suspending its Patreon and Discord accounts. Tropic Haze is also halting work on 3DS emulator Citra. Despite not being part of the indictment, it was developed by the same team.

The company also writes that it realised its software has been used to circumvent Nintendo’s protective measures and has contributed to extensive piracy. The team is disappointed that Yuzu users used their software to play games before the official release – «Piracy was never our intention».

Why did the Yuzu developers give up so quickly?

The exact reasons behind this quick agreement are being hotly debated in the emulation scene. The indictment and various screenshots from Yuzu’s Discord server show that the development team created ROMs of games before their official release and distributed them among Yuzu developers. This was done to ensure that games would run flawlessly on the emulator at time of release. In the case of Xenoblade Chronicles, this even happened before the official release.

The developers admit to having distributed pirated copies of Xenoblade Chronicles.
Source: Yuzu Discord via X

In concrete terms, this means that Nintendo could probably prove in legal proceedings that Tropic Haze produced illegal pirated copies of its games or distributed them for the purpose of further developing Yuzu. According to ArsTechnica, Yuzu developers also indirectly provided their users with instructions on how to illegally obtain pirated copies. This would play into the hands of Nintendo’s legal argument. As a reminder, Nintendo accused Tropic Haze of developing software that «turns general computing devices into tools for massive intellectual property infringement of Nintendo and others’ copyrighted works».

Furthermore, Tropic Haze demonstrably profited massively from illegal downloads of Tears of the Kingdom in May 2023. Before shuttering their Patreon account, the team most recently took in around 30,000 US dollars per month through crowdfunding contributions. Despite the high revenue, it seems unlikely that Tropic Haze would’ve been financially prepared for a long legal process with expensive lawyers.

What does this agreement mean for emulators in general?

As Nintendo and Tropic Haze settled their dispute without going to court, the settlement is unlikely to set a precedent for future legal proceedings. However, Nintendo has sent a clear declaration against emulation and piracy of current console games with this lawsuit. It’s unclear whether Nintendo is now also targeting the second major Switch emulator, Ryujinx, after Yuzu. Compared to Yuzu, Ryujinx developers aren’t making any direct profit from the development of their emulator.

Although the demise of Yuzu also affected 3DS emulator Citra, it seems unlikely that Nintendo will continue to actively combat retro emulators. The emulation scene is unanimous – there’s a big difference between using software to emulate current, top-selling hardware and retro hardware that no longer generates a profit for a company like Nintendo. For example, Nintendo has so far completely ignored the largest Wii and Gamecube emulator Dolphin, except for a ban (article in German) on its Steam release in July last year. Instead, Nintendo has recently focused on fighting ROM providers such as RomUniverse and LoveRoms.

Header image: Shutterstock

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Domagoj Belancic

Senior Editor

Domagoj.Belancic@digitecgalaxus.ch

My love of video games was unleashed at the tender age of five by the original Gameboy. Over the years, it's grown in leaps and bounds.

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