Switch emulator makers agree to pay $2.4 million to settle Nintendo lawsuit

The makers of Switch emulator Yuzu said they will “consent to a judgment in favor of Nintendo” to settle a major lawsuit filed by the console maker last week.

In a series of court filings Monday, Yuzu developers agreed to pay $2.4 million in “monetary relief” and to stop “offering to the public, providing, marketing, advertising, promoting, selling, testing, hosting, cloning, distributing”. , or traffic in Yuzu or any source code or functionality of Yuzu.”

In a statement posted Monday afternoon on Yuzu Discord, the developers wrote that support for the emulator was ending “effective immediately.”

Yuzu and her team have always been against piracy. We started the projects in good faith, out of passion for Nintendo, its consoles and its games, and did not intend to do any harm. But we now see that because our projects can circumvent Nintendo’s technological protections and allow users to play games outside of authorized hardware, they have led to widespread piracy. In particular, we were deeply disappointed when users used our software to leak game content before release and spoil the experience for legitimate buyers and fans.

We have decided that we cannot continue to allow this to happen. Piracy was never our intention and we believe that piracy of video games and video game consoles should stop. Starting today, we will be taking our code repositories offline, deleting our Patreon accounts and Discord servers, and soon, shutting down our websites. We hope that our actions will be a small step towards ending piracy of the works of all creators.

We admit it

The proposed final judgment, which has yet to be accepted by the judge in the case, fully accepts Nintendo’s stated position that “Yuzu is primarily designed to circumvent (Nintendo’s copy protection) and play Nintendo Switch games ” by “using unauthorized copies of Nintendo Change cryptographic key.”

Although the Yuzu software itself does not include copies of these Nintendo Switch cryptographic keys, the proposed judgment notes that “in its ordinary course (Yuzu) only functions when cryptographic keys are embedded without authorization.” This means the software is “primarily designed for the purpose of circumventing technological measures” and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, according to the proposed settlement.

While this admission does not technically account for Yuzu’s ability to run a long list of Switch homebrew programs, proving that such homebrew was a significant part of the “ordinary course” of the average Yuzu user’s experience could have been an uphill battle in court. Nintendo argued in its lawsuit that “the vast majority of Yuzu users use Yuzu to play pirated games downloaded in Yuzu”, a fact that could have worked against the emulator maker in the lawsuit, even if it non-infringing uses of the emulator existed.

Isn’t this worth fighting for?

The Yuzu Patreon currently brings in around $30,000 per month, making a $2.4 million settlement a significant expense for Tropic Haze LLC, the US company created to coordinate these Patreon donations for the development of the emulator. But in the proposed settlement, Yuzu developers say that figure “bears a reasonable relationship to the range of damages, attorneys’ fees and full costs that the parties could have anticipated as being awarded at and after the trial of this action”.

The possible attorney fees necessary for Yuzu’s case to be fully adjudicated likely played a significant role in the speedy resolution of this case. As lawyer Jon Loiterman told Ars last week: “Unless Yuzu has very deep pockets, I think they’re probably going to remove (the emulator), and the software will live on but not be not distributed centrally by Yuzu.”

Yuzu developers have also faced relatively separate allegations that they aided and acknowledged potential Switch pirates through various communication channels, including boasting about successfully emulating Switch games leaked before their release dates . “I’ve personally seen how strict most emulator communities/Discord servers/forums are about copyright and piracy, so it’s really weird to me that the Yuzu developers aren’t like that,” emulator developer Lycoder told Ars last week.

It’s unclear whether these distinctions would be enough to protect Ryujinx, another Switch emulator that has so far avoided any legal action from Nintendo. Several members of the Ryujinx development team have yet to respond to a request for comment from Ars Technica.

While emulation programs are generally protected by U.S. legal precedents protecting reverse engineering, console makers could bring similar DMCA actions against certain emulators that rely on the use of cryptographic keys to break protection against the copy. But many emulator makers believe such lawsuits are less likely to be filed against emulators of outdated systems that no longer sell new hardware or software in significant numbers.

“(Nintendo) must think this is a significant piracy risk to initiate this case,” attorney Mark Methenitis told Ars last week.

Nintendo’s legal department has a proven track record of zealously defending its copyrighted works by going after fangames, ROM distribution sites, and hardware modders in the past. Although direct legal action against emulator makers is less common for Nintendo, the company sent a letter to Valve to block the Wii/Gamecube Dolphin emulator from appearing on Steam last year.