Nintendo files lawsuit against popular emulator for facilitating piracy

Image showcashing Nintendo Switch and a Judge
Nintendo strikes against another emulator service (Image via Nintendo/Sportskeeda)

Nintendo once again took the limelight, but this time by suing the creators of the popular Switch emulator, Yuzu, for allegedly facilitating piracy. The Japanese game corporation is notorious for its policy of filing lawsuits against anything that remotely resembles or uses its IP or property. Unfortunately, this time, Tropic Haze LLC, the team behind the popular switch emulator, got the short end of the stick.

Keep reading as this article pieces together all the relevant information about why the beloved Japanese company has filed a lawsuit against the Yuzu emulator.


Nintendo sues the creators of Yuzu on the grounds of facilitating piracy for one of its major IP

On January 26, 2024, Nintendo of America filed a lawsuit against Tropic Haze LLC, the creators of the emulator, for facilitating piracy in the US Federal Court and intended to crush the service.

The lawsuit, which was posted by Stephen Totilo on X, states that the Japanese game corporation is out for Tropic Haze LLC's (the team behind the emulator) blood because The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was unlawfully distributed before its release. The following has been stated in the lawsuit:

"A video game emulator is a piece of software that allows users to unlawfully play pirated videogames that were published only for a specific console on a general-purpose computing device."

It further stated:

"The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, was unlawfully distributed a week and a half before its release by Nintendo. Infringing copies of the game that circulated online were able to be played in Yuzu, and those copies were successfully downloaded from pirate websites over one million times before the game was published and made available for lawful purchase."

This is nothing new for Nintendo as it is infamous for filing lawsuits and suing creators. Last year, the company sent a DMCA to Valve over Dolphin Emulator, another software that allowed users to play Gamecube and Wii titles on PC.

The Japanese game corporation plans to extract much money from Tropic Haze LLC, seize everything related to the emulator, such as chatrooms and domains, and surrender yuzu-emu.org to them.

What will happen to Tropic Haze LLC is unclear, but if the Japanese gaming company can prove that the emulator is only designed for the unlawful distribution and piracy of Nintendo IPs, Yuzu will be in trouble. Tropic Haze LLC has not commented on the situation as of the time of writing this article.


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Edited by Ashmita Bhatt
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