The developers of the popular Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu entered a settlement with Nintendo, agreeing to pay the company $2.4 million in damages while ceasing development and distribution of the third-party software. Sadly, as a result of this settlement, Citra, the 3DS emulator also made by the creators of Yuzu, has been taken offline as well.
On X/Twitter, the official Citra account posted a message originally shared on Discord, addressing fans and stating that “Yuzu and Yuzu’s support of Citra are being discontinued, effective immediately.”
The Github repository that was holding both Yuzu and Citra’s code has been shut down. In the settlement, the emulator developers made the agreement to “surrender, and permanently cease to use… any other website or system that Defendant or its members own or control, directly or indirectly, that involves Nintendo’s Intellectual Property, to Plaintiff’s control.”
Nintendo’s lawsuit was directed towards Tropic Haze, LLC, the company that the Yuzu developers formed to facilitate income from Patreon.
Citra was created before Yuzu, originally released in 2014, and over time became the world-renowned solution to 3DS emulation on PC and Android phones. Many of the core developers of Citra went on to work for Yuzu, which became a much larger focus as the Switch was the newer console. The Patreon for Yuzu proved quite lucrative, earning tens of thousands of dollars per month by the time The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom came out in 2023.
This 3DS emulator is likely dead in the water, at least with its current name. Fortunately, like most open-source software, Citra has had numerous contributors, some of whom were not involved with Yuzu, and forks and archives of the emulator’s code sit out on the Internet. It could always return with a new team and name in the coming weeks.
What’s more, there exist alternative emulators for both the Switch and 3DS. Here are some of the best examples:
Disclaimer: This publication does not condone piracy of any kind, and is merely relaying information about events taking place in the gaming industry.