A little over a week ago, it was announced that Nintendo was taking action against Yuzu, the open-source emulator for the Nintendo Switch. Nintendo came after them with the impression that Yuzu is just a way for people to play Switch games across multiple devices for free (though Yuzu does not provide the games, only a platform to play them on), infringing on Nintendo IPs and promoting the idea of piracy. Today a final judgment has been proposed with Tropic Haze, the team behind Yuzu, agreeing to pay $2,400,000 and stop all operations that regard Yuzu. That includes hosting Yuzu, distributing it, hosting any other platforms that promote Yuzu, giving up its own domain name, and essentially erasing any and all traces of the emulator from the internet. It is important to note that this settlement has yet to be approved by a judge.
Since Yuzu was free software that could be played on computers and phones, it also allows people to play games early and for free should they leak. Yuzu claims to never promote the idea of piracy, but if people want to play something they will find a way to do it. According to Nintendo in their civil lawsuit filing, over 1 million people played Tears of the Kingdom through Yuzu. However, the only way to have been able to access the emulated version of the game was by supporting their Patreon for the only version of Yuzu that would be able to run Tears of the Kingdom. And since Yuzu’s patreon makes about $30,000 a month Nintendo can look at it as someone profiting off their works.
It’s easy to just say this is Nintendo being Nintendo once again, as they have quite the track record when it comes to any other forms of distribution regarding their properties. In 2021, Nintendo won $2.1 million from taking down RomUniverse for distributing games. Nintendo have cracked down and arrested members, one of which named Gary Bowser, from a console hacking/piracy organization called Team Xecuter. The list goes on, but it should be clear to anyone that Nintendo is not to be messed with. Hell, they wouldn’t even let a simple Palworld mod slide.
It also sparked up the debate over whether or not emulation is even legal. With physical media generally fading away, it is important to preserve the things that cannot be obtained anymore for the sake of preserving history. Emulation serves as a way to keep games alive. That implies something had to have died first, and here that’s in terms of commercial availability. The Switch, of course, is still on sale, still actively supported, still Nintendo’s most recent hardware, and in fact the only one the company currently makes and supports. But it’s important that we keep all our media alive, and emulation is a vital part of that. It should be a legitimate debate but no matter what your stance on emulation is it seems Nintendo will always have the last word.