The creators of Yuzu, the top Nintendo Switch emulator, were sued by Nintendo a little more than a week ago for “facilitating piracy at a colossal scale.” It seems like Yuzu will now go up without a fight and grant Nintendo all of its wishes. It also has an impact on Citra, a Nintendo 3DS emulator. In addition to agreeing to pay Nintendo $2,400,000, Tropic Haze claims in a joint filing that Yuzu is “primarily designed to circumvent and play Nintendo Switch games.” The business consents to a permanent injunction prohibiting it from developing Yuzu, hosting Yuzu, disseminating Yuzu’s features or code, running websites and social media accounts that advertise Yuzu, or engaging in any other activity that would violate Nintendo’s copyright protections.
Developer Bunnei of Yuzu and Citra has verified in the Yuzu discord that the impacted emulators are the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo 3DS
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.
Fate of Yuzu and Citra Emulators Hangs in the Balance as Legal Battles Continue
A similar text was shared on Yuzu’s developer Discord channel, and the official Yuzu page no longer has anything more than a notice about support ending. The source codes for Citra and Yuzu have also been taken off GitHub. Attorney Richard Hogue stated to the international publication The Verge that “Nintendo probably set a cap on Tropic Haze’s liability” which is why Tropic Haze likely consented to this arrangement. Tropic Haze also likely decided to proceed with the case despite consulting with an attorney who advised against it, stating that “continuing litigation will only increase costs and have little chance of success.”
The proposed permanent injunction and final decision are available for reading at the bottom of this article; a court has not yet accepted them. On the other hand, GitHub has already removed the source code for Citra and Yuzu.
Since copies of both emulators and their source code are still available in the open, it is unclear if this signals the true demise of Yuzu or Citra. Following Nintendo’s two-week lawsuit, some internet fans expressly brought up backing up the Yuzu code.
