There’s no denying that Nintendo like to smash down the law on creators taking advantage of their IP, but this time it’s a little different.
Nintendo has officially and publicly filed a lawsuit against the creators behind Yuzu (one of the best Nintendo Switch emulators on the market) on the 26th February according to Stephen Totilo on Twitter.
Nintendo wants the emulator shut down immediately alongside payment for damages saying that Yuzu’s technology illegally circumvents Nintendo’s software encryption and facilitates piracy “at a colossal scale”.
They mention the fact that Tears of the Kingdom was downloaded 1,000,000 times prior to the games official release and indicates proof because Yuzu’s Patreon support doubled in that time giving members access to this emulator.
Alongside that, Nintendo also point out that Yuzu was apart of the mass outbreak of early Tears of the Kingdom leaks, and states that it “harmed law-abiding Nintendo customers”.
What makes this a whole lot worse is the apparently Yuzu makers accessed Nintendo Switch games from a hacked handheld, deemed as a DMCA violation and even made a new copy for themselves which is also a major copyright violation.
There’s no denying that what Nintendo is saying is illegal and certainly degrades Nintendo’s effort to create incredible games for their customers.
I have been using emulators for many, many years and I’ll be honest and say that it doesn’t feel right to be emulating current generation games that are available to purchase, and that not buying them and emulating them instead stops the creative team from benefiting from their work.
But who am I to be the judge, emulation has always been a grey area, but feels less ingenious when being used to play either games you own, or games that are no longer being preserved.
Even Valve was ballsy enough to feature Yuzu on their promotional material for the Steam Deck, so it goes to show how big of an impact Yuzu is making on the gaming industry… good or bad.
I am not sure how this lawsuit will go, but what I do know is that both parties won’t go down without a fight, so this will be an interesting one to follow.
You can read the official report here.
