Yuzu developer to cease distribution of Switch emulator & pay Nintendo $2.4 million in settlement
It appears Tropic Haze has agreed to a settlement with Nintendo over the latter's lawsuit against the Switch emulator developer.
UPDATE (March 4, 2024 @ 12:33 p.m. PT): When asked for a comment, Nintendo directed us to the ESA, which then provided the following statement:
Meanwhile, Tropic Haze has offered its own statement on the matter, which can be read below. It's worth noting that Citra (an emulator for 3DS run by the same group) offered the exact same statement:
Original Story: A major twist has occurred in Nintendo’s copyright lawsuit against Switch emulator developer Tropic Haze as the latter has agreed to a settlement with the Mario publisher. According to published details of the settlement, Tropic Haze will pay Nintendo $2.4 million USD in monetary relief. It will also cease distributing its emulator, Yuzu, and hand management of its website URL over to Nintendo.
The details of the lawsuit settlement between Nintendo and Tropic Haze were published in a Court Listener PDF this week. As of the March 4, 2024 filing, Nintendo and Tropic Haze have reportedly come to an agreement on the following noteworthy terms:
- Nintendo will be awarded judgment against Tropic Haze in the amount of US$2,400,000.
- A permanent injunction dictating that Tropic Haze can no longer offer Yuzu to the public, including “marketing, advertising, promoting, selling, testing, hosting, cloning, distributing or otherwise travel” of Yuzu, its source code, or features.
- The website for Yuzu’s details and distribution (YUZUEMU.ORG) will be handed over to Nintendo and Tropic Haze will be barred from launching or operating “successor websites, chatrooms, and other social media websites or apps” relating to the Yuzu emulator.
Source: Nintendo
With such a quick turnaround from the announcement of the lawsuit last week, this marks another win in court for the famously litigious Nintendo in regards to its IP. However, it may have bigger implications in the long run. The settlement directly refers to certain actions taken in establishing Yuzu that could prove detrimental to any similar emulators similarly taken to court:
The matter revolving around cryptographic keys could set a precedent that opens up further developers to possible legal issues. While it remains to be seen if we see additional lawsuits using this one as the basis, one can likely bet that if Nintendo sees a way to swing at those who would use its IP without permission, it will. Stay tuned as we continue to follow this topic for further updates.
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replyTJ Denzer posted a new article, Yuzu developer to cease distribution of Switch emulator & pay Nintendo $2.4 million in settlement
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Yuzu settles with Nintendo, paying 2.4 m and will no longer be hosting the project
https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/s/ZRgXtCpgN6
Will get that link in a moment-
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Was Yuzu making money for its creators? The fine seems either tiny or huge depending on that answer.
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I wonder if that's also considered income at the state or federal level.
So between taxes and payment for this lawsuit he's probably financially wiped out.-
As a settlement, the devs likely will work out some payment plan that takes money directly from any paycheck to fulfill the amount. They may be paying for the next 20 or 30 years but it is on terms they can work out.
As opposed to losing and having both a larger fine and court seizing their property for it.-
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Man, that has got to hurt financially.
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jesus, i’m all for emulators being legal but if you’re making that much on piracy that’s messed up
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Yah I wasn’t aware they had a Patreon and were making money off the emulator.
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Holy shit did they get off easy lol
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I think for Nintendo their goal was to eliminate them, which was successful. The financial settlement won't matter at all for Nintendo but certainly to Yuzu and any future emulation engine that doesn't want to fight the legal battle. I guess if you're going to create an emulator, don't profit from it is the message.
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The Final Judgement is that they have to hand the URL over to Nintendo, cease development and distribution of Yuzu and its source code...
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.rid.56980/gov.uscourts.rid.56980.10.1.pdf
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Ouch. So is switch emulation dead then?
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ah, okay.
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*Without paid devs acknowledging piracy.
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Yuzu fucked up by advertising support for games before they were announced, and collecting money via Patreon.
They haven't doomed Switch emulation yet, but they might - they're asking the judge for a secondary ruling:
https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/4/24090357/nintendo-yuzu-emulator-lawsuit-settlement
Developing or distributing software, including Yuzu, that in its ordinary course functions only when cryptographic keys are integrated without authorization, violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s prohibition on trafficking in devices that circumvent effective technological measures, because the software is primarily designed for the purpose of circumventing technological measures.
If they get that, it's gonna be real hard for other switch emulators.-
yeah as an honest nintendo consumer its not fun when people are talking about tears of the kingdom 2 weeks in advance. that just leaves a terrible taste in ppls mouths
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He said it cannot be erased; people will keep forking it
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Yuzu as well as cemu had a bad reputation because of the way they used just released games to advertize for their patreon, in case of cemu in particular did more to get it running rather than what ryujinx did to have qualitative high emulation of hardware/software ala dolphin.
Based on their initial documents I didn’t believe that they had a case but if these idiots also advertized unreleased games then I have no idea what to say to their defense.
That said, fuck nintendo for trying to use this to smother emulation by a ridiculously broad definition of copy protection.
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So your upset that Nintendo used copyright protection to protect their copyrights?
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Yuzu had a Patreon that received significant donations, hosted a how-to on how to dump your key, and advertised being able to play games that were weeks away from retail. Switch is also a shipping console from Nintendo, there is going to be many more eyes on this project when it includes both activities like this.
Had they not taken Patreon money, not hosted the how-to, not advertise support for upcoming comes, and Switch not be a current shipping product? Probably a different story.
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A good rule of thumb is never fuck with the IRS or Nintendo
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Citra, the 3ds emulator, has also been taken down, in part as the same worked on both Citra and Yuzu, and the agreement said they could not work on emulators in the future
https://www.pcgamer.com/software/nintendo-3ds-emulator-citra-taken-offline-as-collateral-damage-in-yuzu-settlement -
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