1
Yuzu (Emulator)

Yuzu (Emulator)

Part of a series on Nintendo Switch. [View Related Entries]

Updated Mar 06, 2024 at 11:46AM EST by Zach.

Added Mar 04, 2024 at 07:58PM EST by Philipp.

PROTIP: Press 'i' to view the image gallery, 'v' to view the video gallery, or 'r' to view a random entry.

This submission is currently being researched & evaluated!

You can help confirm this entry by contributing facts, media, and other evidence of notability and mutation.

About

Yuzu was a Nintendo Switch emulator software developed by Tropic Haze. In February 2024, the developers of the emulator were sued by Nintendo over allegedly "facilitating piracy at a colossal scale." In March 2024, the lawsuit was settled out of court, with Tropic Haze taking down the emulator, all circumvention tools used in its development and its Nintendo 3Ds emulator Citra and agreeing to pay a settlement of $2.4 million to Nintendo.

History

On January 14th, 2018, 10 months after the release of the Nintendo Switch handheld console, the developers behind the Nintendo 3DS emulator Citra announced Yuzu, an emulator for Switch written in C++.[1][2] Kotaku[3] reported that Super Mario Odyssey was playable on Yuzu in November 2018 with minor glitches and slowdowns.

Yuzu was regularly updated since its initial release, adding multi-core CPU emulation,[4] Fastmem support[5] and other features. In May 2023, an Android version of the emulator was released.[6]

Lawsuit and Shutdown

On February 27th, 2024, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against Tropic Haze LLC,[7][8] the legal entity behind Team Yuzu, in US federal court, claiming that Yuzu illegally circumvents Nintendo's software encryption and "facilitates piracy at a colossal scale." The lawsuit mentioned The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom being leaked a week prior to its official release, with the leaked copies meant to be played in the Yuzu emulator, with Nintendo arguing that "defendant's development and distribution of Yuzu to the public materially contributes to and induces those third parties to infringe the copyrights in Nintendo's games."


Stephen Totilo @stephentotilo NEW: Nintendo is suing the creators of popular Switch emulator Yuzu, saying their tech illegally circumvents Nintendo's software encryption and facilitates piracy. Seeks damages for alleged violations and a shutdown of the emulator. NINTENDO OF AMERICA INC., V. Plaintiff, TROPIC HAZE LLC, 2. Defendant. NO. COMPLAINT JURY DEMAND PRELIMINARY STATEMENT Plaintiff Nintendo of America Inc. ("Nintendo of America Inc." or "Plaintiff""), by and through its counsel, on personal knowledge as to its own actions and on information and belief as to the actions, capabilities, and motivations of others, hereby alleges as follows: 1. Nintendo of America Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nintendo Co., Ltd., markets and distributes electronic video game consoles, games, and accessories developed by Nintendo Co., Ltd., including the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch Lite, and Nintendo Switch OLED consoles (collectively the "Nintendo Switch"). Nintendo of America Inc. and Nintendo Co., Ltd. are together referred to herein as "Nintendo." Nintendo also makes award-winning and beloved video games that can be played only on the Nintendo Switch, including such well- known franchises as Mario and The Legend of Zelda. Nintendo has sold over 139 million Nintendo Switch consoles (and counting), making it the third most popular video game console of all time. Defendant Tropic Haze LLC is an entity that owns, develops, and operates "Yuzu," a video game emulator for Nintendo Switch games. A video game emulator is a piece of software that allows users to unlawfully play pirated video games that were published only 3:31 PM Feb 27, 2024 4.3M Views . 13. Defendant and its agents are fully aware of the use of Yuzu by others in performing circumvention, and in facilitating piracy at a colossal scale. As to circumvention, Yuzu's website acknowledges that the Nintendo Switch's decryption keys (the prod.keys) are required to decrypt games and includes links to software that unlawfully extract those keys from the Nintendo Switch.2 As to piracy, for instance, one recent major Nintendo video game, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, was unlawfully distributed week and a half before its release by Nintendo. Infringing copies of the game that circulated online were able to be played in Yuzu, and those copies were successfully downloaded from pirate websites. over one million times before the game was published and made available for lawful purchase by Nintendo. Many of the pirate websites specifically noted the ability to play the game file in Yuzu. Defendant's development and distribution of Yuzu to the public materially contributes 2 See Quickstart Guide, Yuzu, https://yuzu-emu.org/help/quickstart/ ("Dumping Decryption Keys") (accessed February 21, 2024). Case 1:24-cv-00082-JJM-LDA Document 1 ... to and induces those third parties to infringe the copyrights in Nintendo's games. Defendant is thus secondarily liable for the infringement committed by the users to whom it distributes Yuzu. Filed 02/26/24 Page 6 of 41 PagelD #: 6

The development of Yuzu ended on March 4th, 2024, after Tropic Haze and Nintendo of America settled the lawsuit out of court. Team Haze agreed to pay $2.4 million to Nintendo and admit that Yuzu is “primarily designed to circumvent and play Nintendo Switch games.” The company also agreed to be permanently enjoined from working on Yuzu, hosting Yuzu, distributing Yuzu’s code or features, hosting websites and social media that promote Yuzu, or doing anything else that circumvents Nintendo’s copyright protection.[9]

On March 4th, Team Yuzu shut down its website, Github and Patreon and deleted all posts from social media, posting[10] a final message in which they spoke out against piracy (shown below).


Hello yuz-ers and Citra fans: We write today to inform you that yuzu and yuzu's support of Citra are being discontinued, effective immediately. yuzu and its team have always been against piracy. We started the projects in good faith, out of passion for Nintendo and its consoles and games, and were not intending to cause harm. But we see now that because our projects can circumvent Nintendo's technological protection measures and allow users to play games outside of authorized hardware, they have led to extensive piracy. In particular, we have been deeply disappointed when users have used our software to leak game content prior to its release and ruin the experience for legitimate purchasers and fans. We have come to the decision that we cannot continue to allow this to occur. Piracy was never our intention, and we believe that piracy of video games and on video game consoles should end. Effective today, we will be pulling our code repositories offline, discontinuing our Patreon accounts and Discord servers, and, soon, shutting down our websites. We hope our actions will be a small step toward ending piracy of all creators' works. Thank you for your years of support and for understanding our decision.

Online Reactions

The March 2024 lawsuit and subsequent shutdown of Yuzu and Citra became a viral topic of discussion on social media as users discussed the legal status of emulation, argued about piracy and posted memes about Nintendo Lawsuits. For example, on March 4th, 2024, X[11] user @BlooHook posted a Thing, Japan meme that received over 1,900 reposts and 17,000 likes in one day (shown below, left).

Later that day, X[12] user @nonbatnary posted a meme about Shigeru Miyamoto personally forcing Team Yuzu to write their anti-piracy post, gaining over 1,300 reposts and 14,000 likes in one day (shown below, right).


Bloo @BlooHook Typical Nintendrone response Emulated games $0 Emulated games $60 Sold by Nintendo Nyv @Nyv 09-20h Replying to @PMS_Jordan Nope, just right, Nintendo is only protecting their property Big W for Big N 1:31 PM . Mar 4, 2024 429.4K Views : ba tgirl swag #A @nonbatnary miyamoto himself forcing the yuzu devs to write this II GIF ALT yuzu @yuzuemu. 19h More M Hello yuz-ers and Citra fans: We write today to inform you that yuzu and yuzu's support of Citra are being discontinued, effective immediately. yuzu and its team have always been against piracy. We started the projects in good faith, out of passion for Nintendo and its consoles and games, and were not intending to cause harm. But we see now that because our projects can circumvent Nintendo's technological protection measures and allow users to play games outside of authorized hardware, they have led to extensive piracy. In particular, we have been deeply disappointed when users have used our software to leak game content prior to its release and ruin the experience for legitimate purchasers and fans. We have come to the decision that we cannot continue to allow this to occur. Piracy was never our intention, and we believe that piracy of video games and on video game consoles should end. Effective today, we will be pulling our code repositories offline, discontinuing our Patreon accounts and Discord servers, and, soon, shutting down our websites. We hope our actions will be a small step toward ending piracy of all creators' works. Thank you for your years of support and for understanding our decision. 3:56 PM. Mar 4, 2024 26.7K Views

Various Examples


www [yuzu] OatmealDome @OatmealDome yuzu, in its current form, will cease to exist. Their settlement with Nintendo prohibits any distribution of yuzu in built and source code form. Development must also stop. The yuzu website and related services will also be shut down. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco... ent injunction is entered against Defendant enjoini ees, independent contractors, successors, assigns, ol from: fering to the public, providing, marketing, ad hosting, cloning, distributing, or otherwise traffic atures of Yuzu; fering to the public, providing, marketing, ad osting, cloning, distributing, or otherwise traffickir umvent Nintendo's technical protection measur 1:13 PM. Mar 4, 2024 2.9M Views employees, independent contractors, successors, assigns, attorneys, and all third parties acting in active concert or participation with Defendant-including but not limited to any domain name registrars or registries holding or listing Defendant's Website: a. surrender, and permanently cease to use, the domain name YUZU- EMU.ORG, any variant or successor thereof controlled by Defendant or its members, and any other website or system that Defendant or its members owns or controls, directly or indirectly, that involves or harms Nintendo's Intellectual Property; and to the extent the domain is under Defendant or its members' custody or control, or under the control of registrars or registries with notice of this Order, immediately transfer the domain name YUZU-EMU.ORG, any variant or successor thereof b. aantalled he. Dafandant as its mamham and : athan makita antams that Dafandant election and to the extent controlled by Defendant or its members, the destruction by deletion of all imvention devices, including all copies Yuzu, circumvention tools used for developing or using Yuzu-such as TegraRcmGUI, Hekate, Atmosphère, Lockpick RCM, NDDumpTool, nxDumpFuse, and TegraExplorer, and all copies of Nintendo cryptographic keys including the prod.keys, and all other electronic material within Defendant or its members' custody, possession, or control that violate Nintendo's rights under the DMCA or infringe copyrights owned or exclusively licensed by Nintendo. 6. The Court further orders, pursuant to 17 U.S.C. §§ 503 & 1203, upon Nintendo's election and to the extent controlled by Defendant or its members, the handing over to Nintendo of all physical circumvention devices that circumvent or attempt to circumvent the Technological Maple J Milk @maples_milk yuzu taking the lawsuit out of court so that Nintendo doesn't have legal ammo against other emulators: II GIF ALT [archer] @archer_uwu final message in the yuzu discord general channel Alter @unicodesnek Today at 2:31 PM F discord GreenSwede @greenswede Today at 2:31 PM Barnar 46 42 43 43 59 263 37 39 You must verify your identity by phone before you can send messages in this server. Barnars 2:46 PM Mar 4, 2024 213.3K Views 34 F 47 36 39 : Verify Phone to
Hard Drive @Hard DriveMag Yuzu Shuts Down to Better Emulate Video Game Industry Yuzu Shuts Down to Better Emulate Video Game Industry From hard-drive.net D 3:12 PM Mar 4, 2024 · 274.2K Views . Mutahar @OrdinaryGamers You can feel the gun barrel pressed to their heads writing this. yuzu @yuzuemu · 20h Hello yuz-ers and Citra fans: We write today to inform you that yuzu and yuzu's support of Citra are being discontinued, effective immediately. yuzu and its team have always been against piracy. We started the projects in good faith, out of passion for Nintendo and its consoles and games, and were not intending to cause harm. But we see now that because our projects can circumvent Nintendo's technological protection measures and allow users to play games outside of authorized hardware, they have led to extensive piracy. In particular, we have been deeply disappointed when users have used our software to leak game content prior to its release and ruin the experience for legitimate purchasers and fans. We have come to the decision that we cannot continue to allow this to occur. Piracy was never our intention, and we believe that piracy of video games and on video game consoles should end. Effective today, we will be pulling our code repositories offline, discontinuing our Patreon accounts and Discord servers, and, soon, shutting down our websites. We hope our actions will be a small step toward ending piracy of all creators' works. Thank you for your years of support and for understanding our decision. 5:02 PM • Mar 4, 2024 1.1M Views : Rhey @Rheycore blah blah blah nintendo bad, whatever, i just want you people to consider for a minute that yuzu's team is notorious for stealing code from other emulators and paywalling their releases on patreon, i dont really think they deserve all too much sympathy for reaping what they sowed OatmealDome @OatmealDome • 20h [yuzu] yuzu, in its current form, will cease to exist. Their settlement with Nintendo prohibits any distribution of yuzu in built and ... Show more ent injunction is entered against Defendant enjoini ees, independent contractors, successors, assigns, ol from: fering to the public, providing, marketing, ad hosting, cloning, distributing, or otherwise traffic atures of Yuzu; fering to the public, providing, marketing, ad osting, cloning, distributing, or otherwise traffickir umvent Nintendo's technical protection measur 2:11 PM Mar 4, 2024 33.3K Views employees, independent contractors, successors, assigns, attorneys, and all third parties acting in active concert or participation with Defendant-including but not limited to any domain name registrars or registries holding or listing Defendant's Website: surrender, and permanently cease to use, the domain name YUZU- EMU.ORG, any variant or successor thereof controlled by Defendant or its members, and any other website or system that Defendant or its members owns or controls, directly or indirectly, that involves or harms Nintendo's Intellectual Property; and to the extent the domain is under Defendant or its members' custody or control, or under the control of registrars or registries with notice of this Order, immediately transfer the domain name YUZU-EMU.ORG, any variant or successor thereof a. : b. annteallad kus Dafandant an ita mamaham and an athan mahaita au muntans that afandant election and to the extent controlled by Defendant or its members, the destruction by deletion of all circumvention devices, including all copies of Yuzu, all circumvention tools used for developing or using Yuzu such as TegraRcmGUI, Hekate, Atmosphère, Lockpick_RCM, NDDumpTool, nxDumpFuse, and TegraExplorer, and all copies of Nintendo cryptographic keys including the prod.keys, and all other electronic material within Defendant or its members' custody, possession, or control that violate Nintendo's rights under the DMCA or infringe copyrights owned or exclusively licensed by Nintendo. 6. The Court further orders, pursuant to 17 U.S.C. §§ 503 & 1203, upon Nintendo's election and to the extent controlled by Defendant or its members, the handing over to Nintendo of all physical circumvention devices that circumvent or attempt to circumvent the Technological

Search Interest

External References

[1] Hot Hardware – Nintendo Switch 'Yuzu' Emulator Announced By Citra 3DS Developers

[2] X – @yuzuemu

[3] Kotaku – Super Mario Odyssey Is Already Playable In An Emulator

[4] Wccftech – Yuzu, the Nintendo Switch Emulator, Can Now Take Advantage of Multicore CPUs

[5] Internet Archive – New Feature Release – Fastmem Support

[6] XDA – Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu officially comes to Android

[7] X – @stephentotilo

[8] The Verge – Nintendo sues Switch emulator Yuzu for ‘facilitating piracy at a colossal scale’

[9] The Verge – Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu will utterly fold and pay $2.4M to settle its lawsuit

[10] X – @yuzuemu

[11] X – @BlooHook

[12] X – @nonbatnary

Related Entries 10 total

Recent Videos

There are no videos currently available.

Recent Images 20 total


Top Comments

dancing cactuar
Delete
Sensitive
dancing cactuar

While the death of Citra is very unfortunate collateral, Yuzu are absolute fucking morons for thinking that they could have people pay for early builds and get away with it, because now it introduces profit. It's why some sites with ROMS and ISOs stay up, and why others get taken down the nanosecond Nintendo finds out the site's running ads.

+35
Reply

+ Add a Comment

Comments (50)


Display Comments

Add a Comment


Word Up! You must login or signup first!