TOWARDS the end of February, Nintendo sued the developers of Yuzu for “facilitating piracy at a colossal scale”. Within a week, the developers Tropic Haze acquiesced completely to Nintendo’s demands.
In the original lawsuit, Nintendo alleged that the Yuzu emulator is “primarily designed” to circumvent the Nintendo Switch’s encryption so that users can play copyrighted Nintendo games.
To settle the case, Tropic Haze has agreed to not only pay US$2.4 million (RM11.34 million) to Nintendo, but also admit to the allegations above.
Additionally, according to The Verge, the company agreed to be “permanently enjoined from working on Yuzu, hosting Yuzu, distributing Yuzu’s code or features, hosting websites and social media promoting Yuzu, or doing anything else that circumvents Nintendo’s copyright protection”.
The legal whipping does not end there. Tropic Haze has also agreed to surrender the emulator’s domain name, delete not only copies of Yuzu but also “all circumvention tools”, hand over all “circumvention devices” and “modified Nintendo hardware” to Nintendo.
Along with completely crushing Yuzu, Nintendo has also brought the hammer down on another emulator by Tropic Haze, the Citra. Where Yuzu allowed the illegal emulation of Nintendo Switch games, Citra was an emulator for Nintendo 3DS games.
In a post on social and instant messaging platform Discord, a Yuzu and Citra developer posted a message, confirming the details and admitting that the two emulators have led to extensive piracy.
“We have been deeply disappointed when users have (also) used our software to leak game content prior to its release and ruin the experience for legitimate purchasers and fans. Piracy was never our intention, and we believe that piracy of video games and on video game consoles should end.”
