A few days ago, we learned that Nintendo was filing a complaint against an emulator creation company. Tropic Haze is behind the Yuzu software, a well-known emulator that allows Steam Deck players to enjoy Nintendo Switch titles. It is so well-known that it has appeared several times on official visuals shared by Valve as part of the communication/promotion of the hybrid PC.
However, it was threatened by Nintendo, which states that Yuzu is one of the factors that contributed to the illegal downloading of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom even before its release on Switch. More than a million copies have been pirated and played at the time. It seems that the case was settled before going to court since Tropic Haze agreed to cover the costs and reach an agreement with the Japanese firm.
Tropic Haze accepts its fate
Against all expectations, the company has admitted a large part of the facts alleged and has agreed to make concessions regarding its activity. It will pay the sum of 2.4 million dollars to Nintendo and will stop operating the emulators that it owns. In an effort to resolve the matter, Tropic Haze is also promising to remove all Nintendo circumvention devices, tools, and cryptographic keys, as well as hand over all Nintendo circumvention devices and modified Nintendo hardware. Even the domain name for the emulator’s website will have to revert to Big N.
On the accused’s Discord, the developers took to the stage to break the “bad news” to users:
“We are writing to you today to inform you that yuzu and yuzu’s support for Citra is being discontinued, effective immediately. Yuzu and his team have always been against piracy. We began our projects in good faith, out of a passion for Nintendo, its systems, and its games, and we had no intention of causing harm. […] We were deeply disappointed when users used our software to leak game content before release and ruin the experience for legitimate buyers and fans.
We decided that we could not continue to allow this to happen. Piracy was never our intention, and we believe that piracy of video games and video game consoles must stop. Starting today, we will be taking our code repositories offline, shutting down our Patreon accounts and Discord servers, and soon, closing our websites. We hope that our actions will be a small step towards ending piracy of all creators’ works.”
Will this case be used as a basis for legislation?
Despite everything, Tropic Haze is still awaiting an official ruling. Nintendo must agree to all of the provisions proposed by the company before moving on. However, this legal case could change everything in the future. Indeed, many expressed doubts about the legitimacy of the original complaint. Emulation has never been against the law, but when it comes to modern consoles, encryption keys and other bypasses of copyrighted BIOS can be tricky to manage.
https://twitter.com/CentroLeaks/status/1764722344914755882
The fact that Tropic Haze capitulated without even putting up a fight gives Nintendo all the legitimacy that it lacked in this area. This case could therefore serve as a precedent for the following ones to come and we can expect a shower of bans for modern emulators. What this case reveals to the general public is that pirating your own console can become illegal and that it can also be prohibited to copy the ROMs of the games you have purchased.
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