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Switch Emulator Yuzu's Developers Cease Work, Pay Nintendo US$2.4 Million in Settlement

Tropic Haze, the legal entity behind the developers of the Yuzu emulator for the Nintendo Switch console, reached a settlement with Nintendo on Monday. Tropic Haze agreed to pay US$2.4 million to Nintendo and cease development and support of Yuzu and the Nintendo 3DS emulator Citra. The Yuzu developers have also deleted their code repositories, shut down their Patreon page and Discord servers, and taken down their website.

Game File reporter Stephen Totilo first reported on Nintendo's lawsuit against Tropic Haze on Wednesday last week. Nintendo sued the developers for infringing on its copyrights and creating measures to "defeat" the Switch's protection methods that prevent users from using pirated copies. Nintendo said that the developers' efforts help piracy flourish. In its lawsuit, Nintendo specifically highlighted the supposed widespread distribution of pirated copies its May 2023 game The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom almost two weeks before the game's offficial release date, with the pirated copies playable in Yuzu.

The Yuzu developers themselves do not distribute pirated copies of Switch games. However, users, who are not involved with the development of Yuzu but nevertheless participate in discussion on the Yuzu Discord server, directly linked or uploaded pirated copies of Switch games, and also directed users to where pirated copies may be found online. In turn, distributors of pirated Switch games often linked to Yuzu and other emulators to play downloaded games. The Yuzu developers also often distributed bespoke fixes to the emulator, intended to make specific games such The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom more compatible, to paying users on their Patreon page.

The first public release of Yuzu debuted in January 2018. It was developed by many of the same developers involved with Citra, an emulator for Nintendo's 3DS platform which debuted in 2014.

Nintendo launched the Switch console in March 2017, and has sold 139.36 million units as of December 31 last year.

The Switch surpassed Sony's PlayStation 4 and Nintendo's Game Boy/Game Boy Color as the third best-selling console of all time as of the end of 2022. It now stands behind only the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo DS.

Sources: CourtListener, Polygon (Nicole Carpenter), Yuzu Twitter account