Nintendo has sued Yuzu, the Switch emulator in US Federal Court. The lawsuit, which was spotted by former Kotaku Editor in Chief, Stephen Totilo, seems to indicate that the gaming company wants to squash the emulator, and for good this time.
Nintendo is requesting the Federal Court stop Yuzu and its makers, Tropic Haze, dead in its tracks with a permanent injunction. The demands don’t stop there either; It also wants the court to take away is domain names, URLs, chatrooms, and social media presence, effectively wiping our the emulator’s existence.
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
Not only that, Nintendo also want Tropic Haze to hand over the Yuzu domain, yuzu-emu.org over to the company, as well as all the hard drives that it has so that it can be destroyed, in hopes of wiping out the emulator. Then, to add further insult to injury, Nintendo wants the Switch emulator to pay for damages as well.
It’s no secret that Nintendo has a reputation for being one of the most litigious, but unsurprisingly, many believe the gaming company’s actions are a step toward the extreme. The idea and concept of a game emulator is a gray area for many; many defenders of the emulator say running some software through Yuzu is a legitimate use that doesn’t require breaking Nintendo’s encryption or software copyrights.
It is likely the gaming company already knows this, which is why it the company is going the route of accusing the emulator of “facilitating piracy at a colossal scale”, rather than just outright accusing it of distributing the illegal copies of the game directly.
On that note, Nintendo will also need to prove to US court that the Switch emulator is “primarily designed” to give people access to official Nintendo Switch games. In which case, Yuzu may find itself in hot water, on account of a DMCA circumvention claim, which bans products “primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access”.
The case against Yuzu is currently ongoing.
