Nintendo is in the middle of suing the creators of Yuzu, an open-source free emulator that plays Switch Games on PC and other devices, citing major issues with piracy.
Update: Yuzu has ceased all operations on the development of the popular emulator in a $2.4 million settlement. The official Github page and website have now been taken down.
The suit says “there is no lawful way to use Yuzu to play Nintendo Switch games.” Discovered by Stephen Totilo of Game File, the lawsuit is seeking “equitable relief and damages” from Yuzu creator Tropic Haze.
Allegations claim that the emulator unlawfully circumvents copyright protections with the knowledge that it is “facilitating piracy at a colossal scale.”
A key point in Nintendo’s argument includes pirated copies of Tears of the Kingdom, which leaked prior to the game’s release, under the pretext that the game files were downloaded over 1 million times from sites that said they could be played using Yuzu.
Nintendo added that Yuzu has a Patreon, whose subscriptions doubled during the time in which the leaked game became available, claiming “on information and belief, thousands of additional paid members of Yuzu’s Patreon signed up so that they could download the early access build and play unlawful copies of Zelda: TotK.” Nintendo also noted that discussion of Tears of the Kingdom emulation was banned on Discord during this period, pointing to this decision as proof the developers knew their software was being used for piracy.
Although Yuzu, by itself, is essentially just a virtual machine that can run the software it does not own, the core of Nintendo’s lawsuit is predicated on the fact that Yuzu requires decryption keys from a real Nintendo Switch to play games on its emulator. While Yuzu doesn’t provide these, it offers links to software that can extract them from the console.
Nintendo also quoted Discord messages from “Bunnei”, the lead developer, acknowledging that most Yuzu users pirate these keys and Switch games they desire to play, although Nintendo says that ripping keys and games from your own Switch is still against the law.
This has been a struggle for other third-party organizations too, as the Dolphin Emulator (most famously known for supporting Wii and GameCube games), had to indefinitely delay their official Steam release. However, there is a workaround for this.
Tears of the Kingdom is not the first example of a popular AAA Nintendo game being pirated with Yuzu. Metroid Dread was already available via the well-known emulator before it hit store shelves back in 2021.