Following Nintendo’s legal action against Yuzu, an emulator program for the Nintendo Switch, substitutes have already begun to surface online. Last week, it was made public that Yuzu, which let players play Nintendo Switch games on PC, had been sued by Nintendo by Tropic Haze, the business that created it. In those days, Nintendo claimed the emulator offered any Internet user worldwide the ability to illegally crack and play almost any Nintendo Switch game, including the company’s most recent generation of games, without ever having to pay a dime for a Nintendo system or for that particular game. They added,
“There is no lawful way to use Yuzu to play Nintendo Switch games”, partially because it must decrypt games’ encryption in order to function.
Yuzu Emulator Settles with Nintendo: Crackdown on Emulation Continues Amidst Piracy Concerns
Tropic Haze will pay Nintendo a settlement of $2.4 million, as was reported on March 4. The emulation business said in a statement,
The team has always been against piracy and we have been deeply disappointed when users have used our software to leak game content prior to its release. It hopes that pulling the software offline will be a small step toward ending piracy of all creators’ works.
This hasn’t stopped a flood of new emulation software from appearing on social media and other platforms, though, in an effort to replace Yuzu. Some of these programs appear to have been posted just a few hours after Yuzu’s retirement was announced. Tropic Haze has not yet made a public statement on this as of this writing. While many emulators claim to be for legal use, it’s important to remember that Nintendo officially opposes all forms of emulation. The corporation notes on its website of commonly asked concerns about intellectual property and piracy:
“While we recognize the passion that players have for classic games, supporting emulation also supports the illegal piracy of our products. Wherever possible, Nintendo and its licensees attempt to find ways to bring legitimate classics to current systems (via Virtual Console titles, for example).”
Nintendo’s Stance on Game Backups and Emulators: A Legal Perspective
It goes on to say that you shouldn’t make backups of the games you own, thus the issue goes beyond individuals being able to play games they haven’t paid for. On the Internet, there is some false information about this backup/archival exception. This is a highly specific restriction that applies to software on computers. Video games should not be categorized as software alone as they are made up of many different kinds of copyrighted works, according to Nintendo.
“Therefore, provisions that pertain to backup copies would not apply to copyrighted video game works and specifically ROM downloads, that are typically unauthorized and infringing.”
In light of this, it is probable that Nintendo will file a lawsuit against these new emulators as well, but it is unclear when this will happen.
