Game News Nintendo wins a battle against Switch emulation, but not the war

Game news Nintendo wins a battle against Switch emulation, but not the war

If you are a fan of emulation or at all interested in Nintendo news, you have probably heard the news: the Japanese giant has decided to take legal action against the developers of the most popular Nintendo Switch emulator on the market. , Yuzu, to get “facilitated piracy on a colossal scale“. The punchy action was launched after a distressing observation for the box: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was illegally downloaded over a million times even before it was released in due form. A situation which also recalls the case of SEGA’s Sonic Frontiers, also exhibited on emulators like Yuzu or Ryujinx even before its official publication. We could almost say that it still took time before reacting head-on, but Nintendo finally pulled out its guns and filed a complaint in Rhode Island on February 26, partially shared online. Tropic Haze, the operator of Yuzu, is accused of causing harm.irreparable” providing “gives anyone in the world the means to illegally decrypt and play virtually any Nintendo Switch game – including current generation and Nintendo’s most popular games – without ever paying a dime for a console Nintendo or for this game.”

Tropic Haze capitulates: The end of Yuzu and Citra

This is a new step for Nintendo in its fierce fight against game emulation and piracy. In the past, the publisher has already won several lawsuits, most recently against RomUniverse, a site which directly hosted pirated video game files and which was forced to pay more than $2 million in damages and destroy all its copies of Nintendo games. The giant also attacked a certain Gary Bowser, arrested and charged for selling Switch hacks and now released with a debt of 10 million dollars. The Japanese is intransigent, but the legal vagueness surrounding the exploitation of Yuzu did not necessarily guarantee his victory in a trial.

However, before even bothering to fight, Yuzu proves Nintendo right, Tropic Haze not only agreed to pay Nintendo $2,400,000, but even claims that Yuzu is “primarily designed to bypass and play Nintendo Switch games“. The company will no longer work on its emulator, and now refuses to host the platform, distribute its functionalities and host websites that promote it. The company also transfers the domain name yuzu-emu.org to Nintendo, and deletes “all workaround tools used to develop or use Yuzu – such as TegraRcmGUI, Hekate, Atmosphere, Lockpick_RCM, NDDumpTool, nxDumpFuse and TegraExplorer“, handing over to Nintendo all “physical circumvention devices” and the “modified Nintendo hardware“. In short, Yuzu is now the taboo of the club and brings with it the Nintendo 3DS emulator Citra, which was created in April 2014 and was still receiving updates until February of this year.

Yuzu and her team have always been against piracy. We began the projects in good faith, out of passion for Nintendo, its consoles and its games, and we did not intend to cause harm. But now we see that our plans, by circumventing Nintendo’s technological protections and allowing users to play games outside of authorized hardware, have resulted in widespread piracy. In particular, we were deeply disappointed when users used our software to leak game content before release and ruin the experience for legitimate buyers and fans – Posted on Yuzu Discord

And for many, it is a massive blow for the preservation of games. Some indeed believe that if Yuzu can lend itself to questionable practices, Citra is more about the conservation of archive games, which can no longer be found on official Nintendo stores since the closure of the 3DS eShop in March 2023. Direct consequence of this drastic decision: the influx of new emulation software, scattered across social networks and left at the disposal of enthusiasts of the practice in the hope of taking over from the Yuzu juggernaut.

Emulation, a legal but controversial practice

It is always good to remember that emulation is first and foremost a completely legal practice. By definition, it only allows games designed for one specific platform to run on another, often by imitating the original hardware via software. She has her fervent supporters, who advocate the importance of video game heritage and the promotion of innovation ; and then there are the owners, for whom emulation raises major concerns about copyright infringement. It is for this reason that some emulators are even developed in collaboration with publishers/developers, thus legitimizing their use. A Twitter thread from Internet user MisterDorian, CM and journalist, explains that Yuzu does not directly provide pirated games and believes that morally, “accusing an emulator of inciting piracy is like accusing VLC or any video player of doing the same”. Today if Yuzu loses support from Tropic Haze, the emulator remains open source, and therefore usable by anyone who wants it.

In the United States, there is even case law between Sony and Bleem, a case from 1999 which somewhat echoes that of today, Bleem also being a company specializing in emulation. Unhappy with the major presence it could have among consumers, Sony filed lawsuits alleging copyright infringement and counterfeiting. The Japanese accused Bleem of having stolen its technology when the latter claimed to have used commercially available tools, refuting anti-competitive practices. This was at a time when Sony was much less inclined to see its games ported to PC, imposing licensing fees estimated at $10 per production. “We prefer an agnostic platform. If Sony fails to keep its grip on PlayStation, we developers will start to balk at paying royalties“, declared Robert Stevens, spokesperson for the Boss Game Studios studio, in the columns of Forbes in the context of the affair. Ultimately, in 2000, the two parties reached an out-of-court settlement, allowing Bleem to continue operating under certain conditions.. The case nevertheless had a significant impact on the debate surrounding the legality of video game emulators and reinforced the legal vagueness surrounding it. And because of legal costs that were too heavy to bear, Bleem finally had to close its doors a few months later. At first the loser, the big one finally ate the small one.

Why did Yuzu capitulate?

On the subject of emulation, Nintendo’s position is very firm, the company being firmly opposed to any form of emulation. On her Q&A page, she states:

“While we recognize gamers’ passion for classic games, supporting emulation also means supporting illegal piracy of our products. Where possible, Nintendo and its licensees are working to find ways to bring legitimate classic games to current consoles (through Virtual Console titles, for example).

Misinformation is circulating on the internet regarding the exception relating to backup and archiving. This is a very narrow limitation that applies to computer software. Video games consist of many types of copyrighted works and should not be categorized as software only.

If Yuzu does not directly offer the illegal download of Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo accuses its developers of allowing piracy and deplores that “law-abiding customers” have been “forced to avoid social media to avoid seeing spoilers and preserve their surprise and pleasure when the game is released” following the leak of the game. The giant also points out the terms used in Yuzu’s quick start guide: “To start playing commercial games, Yuzu needs some system files from a HACKABLE Nintendo Switch console in order to play them properly“. A quote which calls into question the decryption methods revolving around Yuzu and their good faith.

But why does Yuzu give up without even fighting? If Yuzu gave up so quickly, it was probably because he preferred to avoid a scenario that would justify enormous legal fees to take the case to victory in a trial. Richard Hoeg, a business lawyer who hosts the Virtual Legality podcast, suggested to The Verge: “It’s a lot of money ($2,400,000 in damages), but it’s a known amount, and I suspect the advice they were receiving was that their exposure was high and they had a good chance to lose after paying lawyers for a long time.”

If Yuzu is ousted, Switch emulation is still far from being ousted. It remains to be seen how long Nintendo will wait before tackling Ryujinx, another emulator that has so far avoided legal action. If it wants to be uncompromising, the giant will also have to fight against the R4 cards which are now making the rounds on the internet, which are supplied with their small micro SD which are already making thousands of potential buyers drool.