Tropic Haze, the company behind the popular Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu, has agreed to pay the Japanese game company $2.4M in damages after a lawsuit.
On February 27, 2024, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against Tropic Haze LLC stating that their product, the Nintendo Switch Emulator Yuzu, promoted piracy of the company’s games.
One major example shared by Nintendo mentions the weeks leading up to the launch of Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Nintendo says that Yuzu’s Patreon subscribers skyrocketed as the company was able to get the game running pre-release.
On March 4, 2024, Yuzu came to an agreement with Nintendo to pay $2.4M in damages to the Japanese company and they must cease distribution of the software.
Yuzu set to pay Nintendo $2.4M in damages
In the filing, Nintendo and Tropic Haze agree to the judgement being in favor of Nintendo.
“Plaintiff Nintendo of America Inc. (“Plaintiff” or “Nintendo”) and Tropic Haze LLC(“Defendant” or “Tropic Haze”), by and through their undersigned counsel, hereby consent tojudgment in favor of Nintendo, and jointly move the Court to enter monetary relief in the sum ofUS$2,400,000.00 in favor of Nintendo and against Defendant,” it reads.
Tropic Haze also agrees to waive any rights to appeal this decision in the agreement.
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The judgement also states that Yuzu must stop offering the Nintendo Switch emulator for download, including its source code and any features included in the software.
On top of the company having to cease distribution of the software, Tropic Haze is unable to form any new entities or associations that involve emulating Nintendo software.
Yuzu issues statement to users
In a post on its Twitter/X account, Yuzu made a statement to its fans and followers on the platform. In it, they reveal that both Yuzu and the companys 3DS Emulator, Citra, will be shutting down 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,” they said.
— yuzu (@yuzuemu) March 4, 2024
“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.”