Yuzu and Citra, Switch and 3DS emulators, are dead

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.

Switch emulator Yuzu shuts down as creator agrees to pay Nintendo $2.4m
Following recent lawsuit.

Tropical Haze, the developer of open-source Switch emulator Yuzu, has agreed to pay $2.4m in damages to Nintendo and cease all operations in response to the Mario maker's recent lawsuit.

News of Nintendo's legal action against Yuzu surfaced last week, with the company claiming the emulator facilitated piracy "at a colossal scale". By way of example, it said over 1m copies of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom had been illegally downloaded ahead of its official launch - and that "many" pirate websites specified the game file was playable on Yuzu.

"Defendant [Tropic Haze] is thus secondarily liable for the infringement committed by the users to whom it distributes Yuzu", Nintendo's lawyers argued, with the lawsuit ultimately seeking damages and demanding the emulator be shut down.

Over the weekend, Tropic Haze announced it had retained the legal services of an attorney and would be responding Nintendo's lawsuit within 60 days, but a new filing has now been spotted confirming both parties have reached a settlement - pending the court's final approval - that will see Tropical Haze pay Nintendo $2.4m.

Additionally, Tropic Haze faces a permanent injunction preventing it from "offering to the public, providing, marketing, advertising, promoting, selling, testing, hosting, cloning, distributing, or otherwise trafficking in Yuzu or any source code or features of Yuzu", as well as "other software or devices that circumvent Nintendo's technical protection measures". This means the Yuzu team's 3DS emulator Citra will also be withdrawn.

Furthermore, Tropic Haze must surrender its website domains, hand over any physical circumvention devices it holds, and its creators agree not to form new entities or associations to develop similar Nintendo emulation software in the future.

Tropic Haze addressed today's developments on its Discord (thanks IGN), writing, "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 authorised 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," its statement continued. "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."

Today's win is only the latest for the infamously litigious Nintendo. In 2022, hacker Gary Bowser was sentenced to 40 months in prison - and was ordered to pay $4.5m - for the distribution and sale of piracy-enabling devices. In 2021, the owner of rom site RomUniverse was hit with a $2.1m bill for copyright and trademark infringement, and an Arizona couple was ordered to pay Nintendo $12.2m in 2018 for running two sites which offered pirated ROMs.

Knoyleo wrote:How long after launch do you think they'll find Yuzu code in the Switch 2?

Cheeky Devlin wrote:My only surprise is that it took them this long. Yuzu has been capable of playing Switch games on their launch day for years now, as has Ryujinx.
I was playing Metroid Dread at 4K 60fps within a day or two of getting it (Its Metroid so I'd already bought it anyway) and it was near flawless.
I think the main thing that finally got Nintendo to pull the trigger was when Yuzu were specifically working on patches and upgrades to allow stuff like ToTK behind their patreon before the game was officially released.

You start screwing with their main source of income and Nintendo will come for you.

I also lends credence to the fact that Switch 2 is very likely to be very similiar from an architecture point of view, meaning something like Yuzu could have a head start moving onto the sucessor system.
The last thing Nintendo wants is a viable Switch 2 emulator soon after launch. Hobbling Yuzu (And I would assume Ryujinx) is a good way to do that.

All it will do is slow down the pace of development for emulators for the newer systems, which is probably fine. It always felt a bit iffy emulating a currently viable system.

Preezy wrote:People like to pretend that Nintendo are this warm and fluffy company, when in reality they're as ruthless and litigious as any other. Don't be fooled, they don't give a strawberry float about the players.

Johnny Ryall wrote:

Cheeky Devlin wrote:My only surprise is that it took them this long. Yuzu has been capable of playing Switch games on their launch day for years now, as has Ryujinx.
I was playing Metroid Dread at 4K 60fps within a day or two of getting it (Its Metroid so I'd already bought it anyway) and it was near flawless.
I think the main thing that finally got Nintendo to pull the trigger was when Yuzu were specifically working on patches and upgrades to allow stuff like ToTK behind their patreon before the game was officially released.

You start screwing with their main source of income and Nintendo will come for you.

I also lends credence to the fact that Switch 2 is very likely to be very similiar from an architecture point of view, meaning something like Yuzu could have a head start moving onto the sucessor system.
The last thing Nintendo wants is a viable Switch 2 emulator soon after launch. Hobbling Yuzu (And I would assume Ryujinx) is a good way to do that.

All it will do is slow down the pace of development for emulators for the newer systems, which is probably fine. It always felt a bit iffy emulating a currently viable system.

Yep, that and they were using their discord to share pirated encryption keys and actual games as well.

Small blow for the preservation scene but something better will come along hopefully sticking with a white room approach (new code, rather than reverse engineered code) and without having to have copyrighted keys.

Squinty wrote:

Preezy wrote:People like to pretend that Nintendo are this warm and fluffy company, when in reality they're as ruthless and litigious as any other. Don't be fooled, they don't give a strawberry float about the players.

It's perfectly reasonable for them to stop stuff like this.

I think the issue is how far they go with it. It's heavy handed. I guess that's the point really.

Preezy wrote:

Squinty wrote:

Preezy wrote:People like to pretend that Nintendo are this warm and fluffy company, when in reality they're as ruthless and litigious as any other. Don't be fooled, they don't give a strawberry float about the players.

It's perfectly reasonable for them to stop stuff like this.

I think the issue is how far they go with it. It's heavy handed. I guess that's the point really.

Don't believe I said they weren't being reasonable, more that stuff like this (and that other story about them making a guy repay something ridiculous like $15m, can't remember his name) is a reminder that Nintendo aren't any different from other corporations, despite their cutesy persona. Not that that's a revelatory statement or anything.

site23 wrote:Luckily, both Yuzu and Citra are open-source, so they're sure to re-emerge in some form.

Incidents like this highlight the cold brutality of these corporations. A while ago, I was reading (on here!) that Nintendo effectively forced a man into a lifetime of indentured servitude as a punishment for piracy, so there's really no depths they won't stoop to in making an example of people for the sake of their 'intellectual property'.

It's also a reminder that 'justice' systems, particularly for copyright but also in general, are set up to favour corporations and the rich. An emulator developer might well win a case like this in court, but who could afford to fight it and find out?

Separately to that, I think the Yuzu team were deeply misguided in 1. earning profits from the emulator -- which shifted them towards the wrong side of the grey area; and 2. apparently having links to actual piracy -- I don't personally think there's anything wrong with piracy, but you have to be so diligent about that if you're an emulator developer.

Preezy wrote:

Squinty wrote:

Preezy wrote:People like to pretend that Nintendo are this warm and fluffy company, when in reality they're as ruthless and litigious as any other. Don't be fooled, they don't give a strawberry float about the players.

It's perfectly reasonable for them to stop stuff like this.

I think the issue is how far they go with it. It's heavy handed. I guess that's the point really.

Don't believe I said they weren't being reasonable, more that stuff like this (and that other story about them making a guy repay something ridiculous like $15m, can't remember his name) is a reminder that Nintendo aren't any different from other corporations, despite their cutesy persona. Not that that's a revelatory statement or anything.

Yubel wrote:It seems some people are unable to grasp morals and ethics[...]

[...]that guy who was forced into a 'lifetime of indentured servitude' strawberry floated around and found out.

Yubel wrote:It seems some people are unable to grasp morals and ethics when it comes to big corporations. Just because a company makes millions of dollars doesn't make it okay to steal from them. Theft is theft, and there’s no morally or ethically good reason for a Switch emulator - actually any emulator - to exist when you can buy the hardware/software at retail.

Yuzu and that guy who was forced into a 'lifetime of indentured servitude' strawberry floated around and found out.

OrangeRKN wrote:Have you ever bought a pre-owned game? That's functionally equivalent to pirating a game in that the publisher sees no money from it. Grasp with those morals

jawa_ wrote:

OrangeRKN wrote:Have you ever bought a pre-owned game? That's functionally equivalent to pirating a game in that the publisher sees no money from it. Grasp with those morals

I get the idea that, yes, the publisher isn't getting any money from that sale... but should they? Is it expected to gain repeat income if a game is sold on? We don't usually associate repeated income with the sale of other items - for example, if a car is sold second-hand then the manufacturer isn't paid more money. I can' think of an instance where the sale of an item results in the manufacturer receiving a further payment... there might be outlier cases, but it's not standard.