Following an official filing in late February against Tropic Haze LLC and its Nintendo Switch emulator program Yuzu, Nintendo has reached a legal settlement with the developers to the tune of $2.4 million and what looks to be a complete shutdown of the program.
On Feb. 26, it was confirmed that Nintendo filed a lawsuit against Tropic Haze regarding its popular Switch emulator Yuzu and the damages the company claims it caused regarding hardware and software sales through facilitating piracy of its intellectual property. Now, the developers of the emulator are paying out millions of dollars in damages and must completely cease operations regarding the development and distribution of Yuzu.
According to documents served in the U.S. District Court of Rhode Island for both parties, Tropic Haze and Nintendo reached a joint monetary relief settlement of $2.4 million that shows a “reasonable relationship to the range of damages” and other fees that would have been reached following the trial. In addition to that settlement for damages, Tropic Haze is being ordered to cease all distribution, development, or promotion of Yuzu in all forms.
That means all active Yuzu domains will also cease, including associated websites, community hubs, and the Pateron used to fund the emulator’s continued development—with the main Yuzu website set to be directly handed over to Nintendo. The court ruling also orders that those involved with the project delete any and all copies of Yuzu and the development tools specifically pertaining to the program—which are directly listed in the document with additional specifications on what can’t be deleted regarding evidence.
In the initial lawsuit, Nintendo claimed that “Yuzu unlawfully circumvents the technological measures” like game encryption on the Switch and that the developers behind the emulator actively provide the directions and means to unlawfully obtain its products. “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 said in the preliminary statement. “In effect, Yuzu turns general computing devices into tools for massive intellectual property infringement of Nintendo and others’ copyrighted works.”
Nintendo cited the early leak of The Legends of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom more than a week before its May 12, 2023 release, which was reportedly downloaded over one million times from pirate websites that directed users toward Yuzu for this case. It also alleged that, at the same time as that leak, the Yuzu Patreon doubled in size.
This is not the first time Nintendo has targeted emulators or other entities for potential infringement or damaging use of its IP. Last May, Nintendo issued a DMCA takedown to Valve to prevent the popular Dolphin emulator from launching publicly on Steam and the company has actively sent out cease and desists to multiple tournament organizers for trying to use modded content in games like Super Smash Bros. Melee.
Update March 4 3:50pm CT: Following the settlement, Tropic Haze released a public statement on multiple Yuzu social media accounts confirming all of the information and that the team will be discontinuing all aspects of the emulator effective immediately.
Starting today, all offerings of Yuzu and its source code that have been shared by the developers will be pulled offline, along with the discontinuation of public-facing hubs like the Yuzu Discord server and Pateron. The Yuzu websites will be terminated in the near future as well, with the team noting that it hopes this will “be a small step toward ending piracy of all creators’ works” while also condemning piracy in totality—whether it is sincere or to abide by the court rulings.
“We started the [Yuzu] projects in good faith, out of passion for Nintendo and its consoles and games, and were not intending to cause harm. But we see now that because our projects can circumvent Nintendo’s technological protection measures and allow users to play games outside of authorized hardware, they have led to extensive piracy,” Tropic Haze said. “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.”
In addition, this statement specifically mentions Citra, a popular 3DS emulator that was also developed by some of the same team behind Yuzu. While it wasn’t the focus of the settlement, a matching post was shared on Citra social media pages, confirming that the program will also go through the same process of removing all access to its programs and terminating its public presence.
With this blow to two of the most popular emulators for Nintendo platforms, there is growing concern about how sizable a blow this case will deal to the emulation scene and game preservation.
