Nintendo is going after the development team of an emulator. A legal case was filed by Nintendo yesterday, alleging that the Nintendo Switch emulator, Yuzu, has caused damages to the company by allowing for its games to be played illegally before release. The suit also claims that the company behind the emulator, Tropic Haze LLC, makes a profit by facilitating piracy, noting that during the leak of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Yuzu's Patreon saw a large increase in users. Nintendo's legal team makes a case that Tropic Haze profits from and popularizes video game piracy.

NEW: Nintendo is suing the creators of popular Switch emulator Yuzu, saying their tech illegally circumvents Nintendo's software encryption and facilitates piracy.
Seeks damages for alleged violations and a shutdown of the emulator. pic.twitter.com/SGZVI6Cs0x

— Stephen Totilo (@stephentotilo) February 27, 2024

In the legal document, Nintendo refers to an emulator as, "a piece of software that allows users to unlawfully play pirated video games". They also assert that the Yuzu team is aware of the emulator's use in the context of piracy, and do not try to hide that aspect. In addition, Nintendo's legal team states that extracting your own keys from a Nintendo Switch console--a requirement to run any Nintendo Switch emulator--is illegal.

Source

 

[Noctosphere]

Nintendo, I hope you read this one message.

Fuck off with ya. You making less than 1% of revenue isn't going to even be on your radar. Your demographic is still happily eating all the shit you come out with up so keep up the good work with that!

Even if they read it, they won't give a shit. You, I, DinohScene and pretty much anyone on this site are meaningless to them

 

[Jacobh]

I didn’t know there were so many lawyers on this board.

 

[Prior22]

How many people here have a Switch but use Yuzu for atleast some games? Never tried Yuzu before but might try it since I just picked up a ROG Ally. Would be nice for graphic upgrades and a more comfortable handheld experience.

In general is the Yuzu experience relatively glitch free?

 

[Xzi]

How many people here have a Switch but use Yuzu for atleast some games? Never tried Yuzu before but might try it since I just picked up a ROG Ally. Would be nice for graphic upgrades and a more comfortable handheld experience.

In general is the Yuzu experience relatively glitch free?

Yuzu is pretty stable at this point yeah, usually some visual glitches with brand new games but those tend to be sorted out pretty quick.

 

[Noctosphere]

Yuzu is pretty stable at this point yeah, usually some visual glitches with brand new games but those tend to be sorted out pretty quick.

I remember there was a time where Yuzu and Ryujinx both had different flaws.
One had lots of graphics glitches, but was yet playable
The other had very few graphics glitches but had a lot of performance issues

They both had their respective flaws only on recently-released games, but had them fixed after few patches.
In the last year, from what I've tested, they pretty much both had the same performance on recent games.

 

[Darth Meteos]

going after an emulator? damn, that's... dumb
there's legal precedent for this kind of case

the argument is that the yuzu dev team is profiting from piracy because of the patreon increase during tears of the kingdom's leak
if they can prove yuzu's dev team made actions to incentivize this or worked on the program to specifically improve totk performance in the leak period, they might have something
as far as i can tell, though, they didn't do those things
no leg to stand on

 

[Xzi]

going after an emulator? damn, that's... dumb
there's legal precedent for this kind of case

the argument is that the yuzu dev team is profiting from piracy because of the patreon increase during tears of the kingdom's leak
if they can prove yuzu's dev team made actions to incentivize this or worked on the program to specifically improve totk performance in the leak period, they might have something
as far as i can tell, though, they didn't do those things
no leg to stand on

Nintendo just hoping they can pack the jury with corporate bootlickers/fanboys.

 

[Prior22]

Yuzu is pretty stable at this point yeah, usually some visual glitches with brand new games but those tend to be sorted out pretty quick.

So the games that have been released for several months, or longer, should play relatively issue free on a powerful device?

 

[Centrix]

Wouldn't their resources be better spent going after the people that actually leaked the game and not the team behind the emulator? seems backwards to me.

Buuuttt, this isn't the first time we have seen a game company, like Nintendo try and take down emulation and usually fail! Remember all the bs they tried giving Flash carts back in the day and they're still hanging around, hell, now we have PC handhelds that can run Switch emulation, Nintendo you have bigger issues going on then one lone emulator. From what I understand, there's a ton of red tape between customer ownership and usage and the policies Nintendo has in place. They would have to figure out away to get through the miles long tape before anything came of this lawsuit, I feel. It'll be interesting to see what comes out of this. One thing I definitely think they will be bringing up quite a bit in this case - is did Team Yuzu actually leak the game (Tears of the Kingdom), and has the Yuzu emulator actually had any effect on Nintendo's sales.

 

[Xzi]

So the games that have been released for several months, or longer, should play relatively issue free on a powerful device?

Yeah everything I've tried on Steam Deck runs well enough, and obviously no problems at all on my PC.

 

[Darth Meteos]

Nintendo just hoping they can pack the jury with corporate bootlickers/fanboys.

i don't believe this case would feature a jury unless specifically requested
likely it would be a judge, and there's been legal precedent for the function of emulators
nintendo could request damages, but since you can play leaked copies on actual hardware, it's not like yuzu can be held liable for being the one-stop-totk-shop
frivolous lawsuit, they probably just want the threat to be enough to take out yuzu, lawyers are expensive

 

[samcambolt270]

to Nintendo, it apparently is copyright infringement.

Nintendo has a really stupid idea of what "copyright infringement" is considering that they tried to sue game genie for it too and lost XD

 

[whitesword7]

Ever since Nintendo won the lawsuit case against Universal Studios (regarding Donkey Kong) in the early 80s - they learnt the ways of the law and how to make use of it.

This is actually a compliment to Yuzu, Nintendo didn't go after Ryujinx because it's not good enough to be a threat.

Nintendo didn’t go after Ryujinx… Yet…

One at a time. why would you risk losing 2 case at once when you can test the water first with one of the emulator? if they win the yuzu lawsuit, there’s a chance they’ll attack other emulator too

 

[samcambolt270]

since you can play leaked copies on actual hardware, it's not like yuzu can be held liable for being the one-stop-totk-shop

Yeah, this is really the crux. they're trying to argue yuzu is at fault for piracy merely by it being able to play pirated copies, but they'd be equally as liable since you can do the same on their own device. The bleem lawsuit already placed precedent that merely being *able* to pirate with an emulator does not make the emulator liable since it's the user choosing to commit the piracy.

 

[Fugelmir]

Nintendo is going to be really sorry they did this once the palworld team creates a proper evolution for Electabuzz.

 

[Xzi]

i don't believe this case would feature a jury unless specifically requested

AFAIK they are requesting a trial by jury.

 

[Delerious]

going after an emulator? damn, that's... dumb
there's legal precedent for this kind of case

the argument is that the yuzu dev team is profiting from piracy because of the patreon increase during tears of the kingdom's leak
if they can prove yuzu's dev team made actions to incentivize this or worked on the program to specifically improve totk performance in the leak period, they might have something
as far as i can tell, though, they didn't do those things
no leg to stand on

Realistically, the fact that they were taking donations at all to develop a program that actually can be used for piracy of games licensed for a device whose games are still available to purchase on the retail market is already painting a target on your back. Yuzu devs should have realized that this alone was a stupid thing to do on their part with how aggro Nintendo can be about it. They've already shown that they can come after people for selling flashcarts and they've managed to shut down SX, so making money for developing a piece of software that can run games that typically run on their current hardware is probably no different in Nintendo's eyes.

 

[Darth Meteos]

Realistically, the fact that they were taking donations at all to develop a program that actually can be used for piracy of games licensed for a device whose games are still available to purchase on the retail market is already painting a target on your back. Yuzu devs should have realized that this alone was a stupid thing to do on their part with how aggro Nintendo can be about it. They've already shown that they can come after people for selling flashcarts and they've managed to shut down SX, so making money for developing a piece of software that can run games that typically run on their current hardware is probably no different in Nintendo's eyes.

it's legally distinct
sx was taking money for purchase
yuzu's devs produce a free software and people choose to donate to them

 

[ertaboy356b]

It's the piracy before the release that broke the camel's back. Let's get real guys, I can understand if these are jailbroken units but these are emulated so anyone with a PC can run TOTK the week before release date.

 

[PcMacsterRace]

So, this probably will be a legal precedent if Yuzu doesn't win or settle. Even if Yuzu does settle this due to lack of funds, what's stopping Nintendo from going after other emulators after they're done with Yuzu? They very clearly will attempt corporate bullying to get their way, so what's stopping them from suing Ryujinx, or Dolphin, or Citra, or any other Nintendo emulator?