the emulator accused of facilitating piracy

Nintendo has filed a lawsuit against the creators of Yuzu, a popular emulator that allows you to play Nintendo Switch games on other platforms, as reported by Stephen Totilo. The Japanese company is demanding compensation for alleged violations and that Yuzu be shut down.

Nintendo’s thesis —

Nintendo claims Yuzu’s technology illegally bypasses the company’s software encryption and knowingly contributes to piracy. “Defendant and his agents are fully aware of the use of Yuzu by others in the circumvention and facilitation of piracy on a colossal scale,” Nintendo’s lawyers wrote. “The Yuzu website acknowledges that Nintendo Switch decryption keys (prod.keys) are necessary to decrypt games and includes links to software that illegally extracts such keys from the Nintendo Switch.”

The Case of Zelda —

Regarding accusations of supporting piracy, Big N’s legal team pointed to the launch of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in 2023 as an example. They wrote that the title “was illegally distributed a week and a half before of his exit from Nintendo. Illegal copies of the game that were circulating online could be played in Yuzu, […]. Many of the pirate websites specifically reported the ability to play the game file in Yuzu.”

What is Yuzu —

“Defendant’s development and distribution of Yuzu to the public materially contributes to and induces these third parties to infringe Nintendo’s game copyrights,” the lawyers argue. “The defendant is therefore secondarily liable for the infringement committed by the users to whom it distributes Yuzu.” In the citation, Mario’s house stated that Tears of the Kingdom had been illegally downloaded more than a million times before release from pirated websites. Yuzu, who bases his business model on Patreon, has seen his revenue increase massively in that time frame thanks to the hype around Tears of the Kingdom.