Yuzu developer to cease distribution of Switch emulator & pay Nintendo $2.4 million in settlement

UPDATE (March 4, 2024 @ 12:33 p.m. PT): When asked for a comment, Nintendo directed us to the ESA, which then provided the following statement:

Meanwhile, Tropic Haze has offered its own statement on the matter, which can be read below. It's worth noting that Citra (an emulator for 3DS run by the same group) offered the exact same statement:

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. 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 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.

Original Story: A major twist has occurred in Nintendo’s copyright lawsuit against Switch emulator developer Tropic Haze as the latter has agreed to a settlement with the Mario publisher. According to published details of the settlement, Tropic Haze will pay Nintendo $2.4 million USD in monetary relief. It will also cease distributing its emulator, Yuzu, and hand management of its website URL over to Nintendo.

The details of the lawsuit settlement between Nintendo and Tropic Haze were published in a Court Listener PDF this week. As of the March 4, 2024 filing, Nintendo and Tropic Haze have reportedly come to an agreement on the following noteworthy terms:

Nintendo will be awarded judgment against Tropic Haze in the amount of US$2,400,000.
A permanent injunction dictating that Tropic Haze can no longer offer Yuzu to the public, including “marketing, advertising, promoting, selling, testing, hosting, cloning, distributing or otherwise travel” of Yuzu, its source code, or features.
The website for Yuzu’s details and distribution (YUZUEMU.ORG) will be handed over to Nintendo and Tropic Haze will be barred from launching or operating “successor websites, chatrooms, and other social media websites or apps” relating to the Yuzu emulator.

In its lawsuit, Nintendo claimed Yuzu had cost the company millions in revenue on games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
Source: Nintendo

With such a quick turnaround from the announcement of the lawsuit last week, this marks another win in court for the famously litigious Nintendo in regards to its IP. However, it may have bigger implications in the long run. The settlement directly refers to certain actions taken in establishing Yuzu that could prove detrimental to any similar emulators similarly taken to court:

The matter revolving around cryptographic keys could set a precedent that opens up further developers to possible legal issues. While it remains to be seen if we see additional lawsuits using this one as the basis, one can likely bet that if Nintendo sees a way to swing at those who would use its IP without permission, it will. Stay tuned as we continue to follow this topic for further updates.