Nintendo
Switch emulator Yuzu settles with Nintendo off-court, paying $2.4 million and ceasing to exist immediately
Nintendo is on a warpath against emulation, with the lawsuit against Yuzu settled before arriving in court.
It’s been just over a week since Nintendo filed a lawsuit against the developers behind the Yuzu project, an open-source emulator of the Nintendo Switch, and yet the case has been settled in favor of the Japanese company, although it’s still pending the approval of a judge.
Journalist Stephen Totilo broke the news on Twitter/X, revealing that Tropic Haze, the group behind Yuzu, looked to get an agreement with Nintendo that kept the case from litigation and settle on a deal with the developers of the Switch. The agreement will see Tropic Haze paying Nintendo $2.4 million dollars, as well as handing them all control over yuzu-emu.org and ceasing all development, operations, and distribution regarding the Yuzu software.
In addition, Tropic Haze has agreed to delete any copy of Yuzu they have in their possession, as well as all tools used to develop or use it, and handing over all physical hardware that has been modified for the development of the emulator.
Yuzu and a lawsuit that ends in favor of Nintendo
Nintendo’s original lawsuit against Yuzu alleged that one million illegal copies of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom had been downloaded before the game’s official release because of the existence of the emulator. A complaint from the Japanese company to Tropic Haze in which they claimed that they were facilitating piracy by allowing illegal copies of Nintendo games to be played.
Yuzu appeared in 2018 as a Nintendo Switch emulator for PC. The company has not yet publicly commented on the lawsuit on its website or other media, but on its own Discord server, it has responded to some users through a bot with the following message: “Yuzu is legal, we do not support illegal activities. Dumping your purchased games and system files from your Switch is legal. Downloading them is not.” Will this case affect other emulators? We will have to wait to see if the result of this lawsuit ends up affecting more emulators, but in the case of Yuzu the story seems closed.