Just last week, on Tuesday, February 26th, 2024, news broke out about the Yuzu emulator team being sued by none other than Nintendo themselves, with Nintendo claiming that the emulator apparently allowed users to play certain games early (due to street dates being broken) and also allowing piracy of the current Nintendo Switch system.

Today, in a rather surprisingly quick manner, it seems like Tropic Haze LLC., the company behind the Yuzu team, has reached a settlement with Nintendo in regards to the lawsuit. According to a recent official document uploaded just a few minutes ago, Tropic Haze will pay up 2.4 million USD in favour to Nintendo, with both parties agreeing in the settlement and its amount.

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UPDATE: According to the proposed Final Judgement and Permanent Injunction document, Yuzu as a whole in its current form will cease to exist, meaning no further development and prohibition of any distribution of built or source code forms of it.

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Official document of the settlement
Final Judgement and Permanent Injunction

 

[Mayo1990]

Imagine if this lawsuit happened when Dolphin could emulate the Wii while the console was still sold in stores

 

[James_]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the reason the Yuzu devs got fucked was because they were distributing switch games on Discord, not because of the emulator itself, which would be 100% legal and there's precedent for that. There's a reason these guys settled - they knew they were fucked.

I'm not sure if there's any concrete proof of that right now, and I don't think the documents mention that either.

If there is proof then... well, it'll make things more sour for sure.

 

[Deleted member 466238]

Looks like Citra (3DS emulator) died too

 

[Spectremint]

I want to know why a settlement was reached... Never will I guess. However, it seems a bit odd that if emulation is wholly legal, why did Yuzu bow out? Legal fees? The world will never know..

My best guess: they didn't want to risk that legality being tampered with in a court case, so they took the blow to protect emulation legality

 

[LightBeam]

My best guess: they didn't want to risk that legality being tampered with in a court case, so they took the blow to protect emulation legality

I think it's more because it would have costed much more to handle a case against Nintendo

 

[splaca]

Amazing. They had enough money to pay that but not to fight it?

I imagine this is a classic utility calculation. They'd have to spend a lot of money to go to court for who knows how many years, with a nontrivial probability of ultimately losing and maybe having to pay at least an order of magnitude more than what they settled for. Depending on the numbers they estimated (and their tolerance for uncertainty), settling could easily yield better expected value.

("Better" as in... smaller negative number, of course)

i mean, its not like its any different now, right?
anyone just has to sue emulator for the same reasons.

Yeah, I think this is one big reason the whole situation feels bleak, regardless of legal precedents.

 

[djpannda]

RiP

 

[stanleyopar2000]

Can anonymous just fucking hack Nintendo already?

 

[duncedoof]

Can anonymous just fucking hack Nintendo already?

Still waiting for the final part of the Gigaleak to drop.

 

[Hassal]

My best guess: they didn't want to risk that legality being tampered with in a court case, so they took the blow to protect emulation legality

That is clearly a joke. I'm not sure why anyone would think that. Citra went poof without being targeted? Who do you think will be next to go? You can bet these people are already thinking of quitting the scene.

You people in the emulation scene are pretty pathetic. You shouldn't give in on winning battle.

 

[Spectremint]

I think it's more because it would have costed much more to handle a case against Nintendo

That too. Maybe it was both? IDK

 

[Fyrus]

Does that means multiplayer servers for Citra and their replacement for WiFi games is also dead ?

 

[Nerdtendo]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the reason the Yuzu devs got fucked was because they were distributing switch games on Discord, not because of the emulator itself, which would be 100% legal and there's precedent for that. There's a reason these guys settled - they knew they were fucked.

What the fuck are you talking about? That never happened.

 

[CrazySquid]

Niiice. It's cool to have emulators, but only when a console is dead and out of production. I hope the same happens to the rest of Switch emulators, but I doubt it will.

 

[JustSomeGuyOnTheSite]

That is clearly a joke. I'm not sure why anyone would think that. Citra went poof without being targeted? Who do you think will be next to go? You can bet these people are already thinking of quitting the scene.

Citra had the same developers, so that's why they were targeted as well

 

[AlexMCS]

WTB recent forks of Citra/Yuzu...

 

[PrincessLillie]

Sure, the loss of Yuzu is bad, but I'd argue the loss of Citra is even worse. There's no other mature 3DS emulator, whereas for the Switch there was also Ryujinx. If someone doesn't fork or at the very least archive Citra soon, there'll be dark days ahead for 3DS emulation and preservation.
Just thinking about it makes me sick.

 

[Impossible_Igntiz]

YES!!! Hallelujah pirates are now FORCED to start hoping off they lazy asses and get cracking on that denuvo shit! Finally came to bit ya'll in the asses!

 

[Kioku]

YES!!! Hallelujah pirates are now FORCED to start hoping off they lazy asses and get cracking on that denuvo shit! Finally came to bit ya'll in the asses!

Okay.... what...

 

[linuxares]

Okay.... what...

They think that suddenly instead of emulating Denuvo games they will suddenly start cracking them. Which will not happen unless Empress publish how to crack them.