The team behind the Switch emulator that Nintendo accused of “facilitating piracy at a colossal scale” has agreed to pay $2.4 million to the video game giant and will seemingly end its operations. But beyond killing Yuzu—a program that lets users play Nintendo Switch games on other platforms, such as the PC or mobile devices—the agreement, if it’s approved by the court, could put Switch emulation at risk altogether.
Yuzu, like many other video game emulators, had initially claimed it required users to use code from purchased games in order to play them on their PCs or mobile devices. Nintendo accused the emulator makers of circumnavigating the Switch’s copyright protections, regardless of where the code came from.
The motion for final judgment—which both Nintendo and Tropic Haze, the makers of the Yuzu emulator, have agreed to—includes language that asks the judge to find that Yuzu violated copyright laws, even though it does not contain Nintendo code.
“Developing or distributing software, including Yuzu, that in its ordinary course functions only when cryptographic keys are integrated without authorization, violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s prohibition on trafficking in devices that circumvent effective technological measures because the software is primarily designed for the purpose of circumventing technological measures,” the court document reads.
If the judge agrees, that would potentially set a precedent that could put other Switch emulators at risk.
Regardless of whether that particular stipulation is approved by the courts, Yuzo’s days seem to be finished. The makers of the emulator agree in the motion that “Yuzu is primarily designed to circumvent and play Nintendo Switch games” and, in addition to the fine, agree to hand over the emulator’s domain and delete all copies of Yuzu as well as tools used to create or use it. The company’s Discord chat room and social media accounts are also likely to be given over to Nintendo.
The capitulation by Tropic Haze comes less than a week after Nintendo sued the company in federal court. That suit accused the creators of building a device “primarily designed” to work around the multiple layers of encryption on Switch games.
Nintendo has a storied history of going after emulator programs. Dolphin, an open-sourced emulator for the Nintendo Wii and GameCube, was a target of the gaming giant a year ago when it announced plans to put its emulator on the Steam game distribution platform. Nintendo sent a cease-and-desist order to Valve, which pulled the listing. Days later, Dolphin’s developers announced, “It is with much disappointment that we have to announce that the Dolphin on Steam release has been indefinitely postponed.”
Nintendo’s complaint at the time was similar to the one it lodged against Yuzu.
“Nintendo is committed to protecting the hard work and creativity of video game engineers and developers,” a spokesperson for Nintendo told Kotaku last May. “This emulator illegally circumvents Nintendo’s protection measures and runs illegal copies of games. Using illegal emulators or illegal copies of games harms development and ultimately stifles innovation. Nintendo respects the intellectual property rights of other companies, and in turn expects others to do the same.”
Emulator proponents argue that there is legal precedent to reverse-engineer a gaming console without using the source code owned by the company—and it’s sometimes necessary for preservation of older titles. Critics, though, say it’s an easy way to play pirated games.
Nintendo’s original suit against Yuzu claimed that more than one million people were able to play leaked copies of the Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom before the game’s release, which impacted sales of that title, something Tropic Haze did not contest in the motion for final judgment.
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