Just a week ago, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against the Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu creator Topic Haze, and just seven days later, today, the company settled the lawsuit for a cool $2.4 million.
Today, the company behind the Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu, Tropic Haze, has settled their week-long legal battle with the company that created the NES for millions. Just a week ago, Nintendo filed a lawsuit that alleged Yuzu decrypted Nintendo’s software without authorization. In the lawsuit, Nintendo states, “In other words, without Yuzu’s decryption of Nintendo’s encryption, unauthorized copies of games could not be played on PCs or Android devices.” Today, it appears that Yuzu will just admit wrongdoing and settle the lawsuit out of court, ending the run Yuzu has had since its 2018 launch.
The main argument against Yuzu was that they utilized illegally obtained product keys to bypass the Nintendo Switch’s security. Nintendo also alleged Yuzu was responsible for the Tears of the Kingdom leak almost two weeks before its release in the first half of 2023. In this settlement, Yuzu will have to pay Nintendo $2.4 million, and they’ve agreed not to work or be associated with the emulation project in any way moving forward. Tropic Haze also can’t work on anything that circumvents Nintendo (or the Nintendo Switch) copyright protection.
The Yuzu creators have also agreed to hand over any of their modified Nintendo hardware and delete all copies of their ‘circumvention tools.’ Yuzu developer Bunnei took to the official Yuzu X (formerly Twitter) account today thanking community members, and saying goodbye with “We write today to inform you that yuzu and yuzu’s support of Citra are being discontinued, effective immediately.”
Bunnei continues by saying, “We have come to the decision that we cannot continue to allow this to occur. Piracy was never our intention, and we believe that piracy of video games and on video game consoles should end. 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.”
With their former website domain now being replaced by the same message that populates their X account, it appears the Nintendo Switch Emulator Yuzu has officially seen its final days. Fans can check out the solemn message on the website domain if curious.
