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The developers behind the Switch emulator, Yuzu, have agreed to pay Nintendo $2.4 million in damages. This settlement, along with other stipulations, was agreed upon by the creators of Yuzu, Tropic Haze, after Nintendo sued them in late February.
The lawsuit claimed that Tropic Haze "primarily designed" Yuzu to bypass several layers of Switch encryption in order to play Nintendo games. Furthermore, Nintendo alleged that Tropic Haze sold exclusive, early access to special Yuzu builds that included updates and features targeting emulation of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. This special access to updates and features were limited to builds locked away behind the Yuzu Patreon page, where Tropic Haze pulled in roughly $30,000 per month.
A proposed final judgment (PDF) says that in addition to now owing $2.4 million to Nintendo, Tropic Haze will be forbidden from distributing Yuzu in any form. There will be no more downloadable builds, nor will the Yuzu Github page with its source code be allowed to continue.
The settlement agreed upon by the Yuzu team also resulted in the removal and closure of Citra, a Nintendo 3DS emulator. Some (the number is currently unknown) Yuzu developers also co-developed Citra. Citra's closure comes as part of the settlement agreement, which says that Yuzu must "surrender, and permanently cease to use... any other website or system that [Tropic Haze] members own or control, either directly or indirectly, that involves Nintendo's Intellectual Property, to Plaintiff's control."
Both the Yuzu and Citra websites now show only the following statement to visitors.
Hello yuz-ers and Citra fans:
We write today to inform you that yuzu and yuzu’s support of Citra are being discontinued, effective immediately.
yuzu and its team have always been against piracy. We started the 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. 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.
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.
Thank you for your years of support and for understanding our decision.
We write today to inform you that yuzu and yuzu’s support of Citra are being discontinued, effective immediately.
yuzu and its team have always been against piracy. We started the 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. 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.
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.
Thank you for your years of support and for understanding our decision.
