Tropic Haze LLC, representing the developers of the open emulator Yuzu, has reached a settlement with Nintendo on the termination of the trial. In exchange for the complete folding of the emulator, closing all related resources, and compensation payments totaling $2.4 million, development of Yuzu and the Nintendo Switch game console emulator, as well as Citra, the Nintendo 3DS emulator developed by the same team, has been halted.
Currently, the contents of the Yuzu and Citra sites have been deleted, and there is an appeal to users on the main pages. Project repositories on GitHub have also been removed. Discord servers are planned to be disconnected soon, and the rights to domains will be transferred to Nintendo. An attempt to create a fork of Yuzu, called Nuzu, has been made by some community members, but the reaction from Nintendo and the sustainability of the project remain uncertain.
In their message to users, Yuzu developers stated that their intention was not to harm Nintendo but rather to develop a project out of their love for video games and Nintendo consoles. They acknowledged that their actions allowed for the bypassing of technical protection measures and playing without authorized equipment. The developers apologized to users, denounced the use of pirated video game copies, and hoped their decision would contribute towards combating piracy.
Nintendo uses encryption in its devices to prevent the launch of pirated copies of games and to protect against game copying. The company holds copyrights for its games and controls the distribution licenses. Game usage conditions dictate that games can only be played on their respective consoles and prohibit the use of unauthorized devices.
According to Nintendo’s lawyers, the use of the emulator circumvents technical protection measures and violates copyright laws. Using the Yuzu emulator requires decrypting game files with keys, which is seen as an illegal bypass by Nintendo. Even if users extract keys from their own purchased copies, using them on an emulator violates usage conditions that prohibit gameplay on other platforms.