Yuzu emulator shuts down after $2.4 million settlement with Nintendo

The creators of the free and open-source Yuzu emulator, known for its compatibility with various copyrighted Switch games, have recently settled a lawsuit with Nintendo.

This settlement comes just a few days after Nintendo filed legal action against the emulator’s developers. Nintendo accused Tropic Haze LLC of enabling “piracy at a colossal scale.”

Tropic Haze LLC has agreed to pay the heft amount of $2.4 million to Nintendo. According to Nintendo, Tropic Haze LLC violated the anti-circumvention and anti-trafficking provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The complaint stated that Yuzu’s decryption of Nintendo’s encryption allowed unauthorized copies of games to be played on PCs and Android devices. The Big N also stated the emulator allowed over a million people to play leaked copies of the most recent Zelda title (The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom) before the game’s release.

Besides the $2.4 million pay to Nintendo, Tropic Haze has agreed to the following terms as part of the settlement:

• To permanently refrain from activities related to offering, marketing, distributing, or trafficking in the Yuzu emulator or similar software that circumvents Nintendo’s technical protection measures.
• To delete all circumvention devices, tools, and Nintendo cryptographic keys used in the emulator.
• To surrender the emulator’s web domain to Nintendo.

Currently, the web site yuzu-emu.org shows the following message:

“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.”

The website for the Citra emulator, used to play 3DS games on PCs and Android devices, has also been affected and currently shows the same message as seen above.

As seen on the preliminary statements presented by Nintendo, Tropic Haze operated a Patreon page for the “yuzu Team,” where they got to seek monthly donations for the project. In return, supporters gained early access to “daily updates” and “special unreleased features.” Meanwhile, on Google Play, Tropic Haze provided a paid “early access” version and a free version for Android devices. The Yuzu Patreon account had over 7,000 patrons, generating approximately $30,000 monthly. Following the release of the Android version on Google Play on May 30, 2023, the free version has amassed over 1 million downloads, while the paid version has been downloaded over 10,000 times, resulting in earning at least an additional $50,000 for Tropic Haze.

[Sources]: Yuzu-emu.org: Home – [Archive] – [Screenshot]. Citra-emu.org: Home – [Archive] – [Screenshot]. US Courts: Nintendo of America v. Tropic Haze LLC – Preliminary Statement – [Archive] – [Screenshot]. Nintendo of America v. Tropic Haze LLC – Joint Motion for Entry of Final Judgment and Permanent Injunction – [Archive] – [Screenshot].