Nintendo has won the battle, before starting it. Has reached an agreement with Tropic Haze, creators of Nintendo Switch emulators, Yuzu, and Nintendo 3DS emulators, Citrawhere he gets everything he asked for. The emulators disappear and you will receive compensation of 2.4 million dollarsamong other things.
A few days ago, Nintendo sued the creators of Yuzu, a Nintendo Switch emulator, for “facilitating piracy on a colossal scale.”
An emulator is an application that clones the functioning of other software or hardware, using reverse engineering. That is, it does the same thing, but in a different way. In this case, Yuzu allows you to play Nintendo Switch games on PC.
Goodbye to Yuzu and Citra emulators
Emulators are legal, because they do not copy anything, but do the same thing in a different way. But, in some cases, There are two steps that place them in a gray area of the law.
To use a console emulator with your commercial games, BIOS or firmware required, a digital version of its operating system. In the case of games, convert your cartridges or discs to a digital file. And in both cases, it implies break anti-piracy measuresto make both copies.
For decades, console emulators have navigated this gray area. They are vital for preserving old machinesas for example the MAME emulator does with the arcade machines of the 70s and 80s.
Many of these machines no longer exist or are in the hands of collectors and museums, and thanks to emulators, fans and students of video game history can try them out and see what they were like.
With more modern machines, Emulators are also vital to preserve digital games that disappear when online stores closeas has happened with the Nintendo 3DS or Wii digital stores.
In many cases, rights holders turn a blind eye when these machines are no longer sold, and are considered a legacy that becomes part of video game culture. But The Yuzu emulator is another story, because it emulates a console that continues to sell massively, such as the Nintendo Switch.
Its creators explain that their intention has never been to pirate, but to be able to play the games that everyone buys from Nintendo Switch on a PC, to obtain more resolution and a higher framerate. But, as usually happens in these cases, Many people downloaded games from a pirate website and played them on PC with the Yuzu emulator, without going through the cash register..
For Nintendo, this is undoubtedly an economic detriment, but it has possibly been more bothered by the PC / Switch comparisons, with the games emulated at 8K and mods to improve the graphic quality. And, above all, that many games were leaked days before their launchand pirates played them on PC while legal buyers had to wait for release day
Yuzu does not include the console BIOS or ROMs, that is something that users have to “achieve” on their own. So it had a legal basis to battle Nintendo in court. He has not explained the reasons why he has not done so.
On the contrary, has reached an out-of-court agreement with Nintendowhich is basically a total surrender without conditions.
Tropic Haze is committed to immediately close Yuzu, and also the other Nintendo emulator he had developed, Citra, which emulates the Nintendo 3DS console. In addition, it will pay compensation to Nintendo of 2.4 million dollars.
Also will remove all tools to make copies of the console BIOS and games, such as TegraRcmGUI, Hekate, Atmosphère, Lockpick_RCM, NDDumpTool, nxDumpFuse, and TegraExplorer. They also close their Patreon, and their Discord channels.
Has handed over the website to Nintendo yuzu-emu.organd agrees to never again work on anything to do with Yuzu or Citra, or Nintendo content.
On its Discord channel, the emulators’ developer, Bunnei, confirmed the agreement: “I am writing to inform you that Yuzu and Yuzu’s support for Citra are suspended with immediate effect. The Yuzu team has always been against the “piracy. We started the projects in good faith, out of passion for Nintendo and its consoles and games, and we did not intend to cause harm.”
He continues: “But now we see that, because our projects can circumvent Nintendo’s technological protection measures, they have led to widespread piracy. We have been deeply disappointed when users have used our software to leak game content before its release. launch and ruin the experience for legitimate buyers.
The big question is knowing What will happen now with other emulators that emulate Nintendo machines that are no longer for sale. Whether Nintendo will continue its offensive, or will it stop here.
After reaching an out-of-court agreement, The Yuzu and Cintra emulators disappear, and their creators will pay a fine of 2.4 million dollars to Nintendo. The Japanese company draws a line: it will not allow emulators to be used to hack its platforms that are still on sale. We’ll see if he intends to expand that line or not…