Nintendo and Tropic Haze, the Yuzu Switch emulator developer, have agreed to settle the lawsuit filed by Nintendo.
It was less than a week ago when the legal action was filed, accusing the creators of the emulator of “piracy at a colossal scale.”
A joint final judgement and a permanent injunction claim Tropic Haze has agreed to pay Nintendo $2.4 million, as well as a long list of concessions.
The lawsuit claimed Tropic Haze violated the anti-circumvention, and anti-trafficking provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
In its complaint, Nintendo said, “Without Yuzu’s decryption of Nintendo’s encryption, unauthorized copies of games could not be played on PCs or Android devices.”
Yuzu was described as “software primarily designed to circumvent technological measures.”
Launched in 2018, Yuzu was a free, open source software for Windows, Linux, and Android, which could run countless copyrighted Switch games.
Reddit threads praised the software’s performance compared with rivals such as Ryujinx. The software introduced various bugs across different titles, but can usually handle games at higher resolutions than the Nintendo Switch.
These usually come with better frame rates as well if the user’s hardware is powerful enough.
Tropic Haze has agreed to a series of accommodations as part of the settlement. Along with paying $2.4 million, it must also permanently refrain from “engaging in activities related to offering, marketing, distributing, or trafficking in Yuzu emulator or any similar software that circumvents Nintendo’s technical protection measures.”
Additionally, it must also delete all circumvention devices, tools, and Nintendo cryptographic keys used in the emulator, and turn over all devices and modified Nintendo hardware.
Also, it has to surrender the emulator’s web domain, which includes any variants or successors to Nintendo.
By not abiding to these agreements, Tropic Haze will be in contempt of court, which would include punitive, coercive, and monetary actions.
The emulator software can also double as crucial tools for video game preservation, meaning rapid legal surrenders could be problematic. Without emulators, copyright holders could make games obsolete for future generations as older hardware becomes harder to find.
Recently, Nintendo went after Switch piracy websites, sued ROM-sharing website RomUniverse for $2 million, and helped send hacker Gary Bowser to prison.
Nintendo’s reputation also got the Dolphin Wii and GameCube emulator blocked from Steam.
Despite the settlement, it seems unlikely Yuzu will disappear entirely. It’s currently still available on GitHub.