Nintendo is suing Switch emulator ‘Yuzu’

It is no secret that Nintendo is not a fan of readily available emulators for its consoles, especially consoles it still has in circulation. In the case of the Nintendo Switch, the Yuzu emulator has existed for years, but now, Nintendo is suing the creators. 

Nintendo of America is suing the maker of Yuzu, the most popular Switch emulation software. The lawsuit filing, as shared by Stephen Totilo, describes emulators as software “that allows users to unlawfully play pirated videogames that were published only for a specific console on a general-purpose computing device”.

While it is true that emulators do provide a method for piracy, most emulation projects encourage users to only play the games they own. The developer behind Yuzu did the same thing after copies of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom leaked ahead of the game's planned release in May 2023. However, many piracy sites packaged the game with a version of Yuzu, or encouraged downloaders to obtain the emulator, and as a result, Nintendo is arguing that Yuzu is a tool primarily designed to facilitate piracy.

Nintendo claims the damage caused by Yuzu is “irreparable” and even goes as far as to blame the emulator for ‘spoiling' Tears of the Kingdom, conveniently ignoring the fact that Yuzu had nothing to do with the game leaking, or the piracy sites sharing digital copies of the game.

The lawsuit is seeking $2,500 per instance of DRM circumvention and an additional $150,000 per violation of Nintendo's copyright. However, the lawsuit may not be an easy win. Back in the 90s, Sony tried to sue a company known as Connectix for making a PlayStation emulator, but a court ruled that the emulator did not violate Sony's rights. That precedent has been in place ever since, allowing emulators to exist legally, but that isn't stopping Nintendo from fighting to change this.

Nintendo itself uses emulation as a tool to provide access to older titles from the N64, SNES, NES and GameBoy eras right now on the Nintendo Switch as part of the Switch Online subscription.

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KitGuru Says: If emulators didn't exist, then many older games would have been lost to time. Piracy is bad sure, but it certainly didn't hurt the success of Nintendo's biggest games and ultimately, emulation has paved the way for classic titles to remain playable for generations to come. 

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