Not everyone can afford a Nintendo Switch, but thanks to the free Switch emulator site Yuzu, people who don't have the handheld console managed to play the games for free. Unfortunately for those who enjoyed the website, Nintendo has finally come for the little guy and won.
Nintendo's Brutal Win Against Yuzu
The video game developer is known for being ruthless against piracy and copyright infringement, and it was only a matter of time before it got to Yuzu. That time has come, and anyone who enjoyed the free emulator site will no longer be able to access it.
Tropical Haze was first hit with the lawsuit last week. To make matters for Yuzu creators worse, Nintendo doesn't intend to just shut down the site but have it pay $2.4 million for settlement charges as well.
Nintendo said the lawsuit was for "facilitating piracy at a colossal scale," with Yuzu "primarily designed to circumvent and play Nintendo Switch games."
Unlike others who went head-to-head with Nintendo, Tropical Haze will not be putting up a fight.
Other than the settlement charges being paid and the website shutting down, Yuzu will surrender its domain name to Nintendo, as well as delete copies of the emulator and all other circumvention tools used for developing or using Yuzu, as per The Verge.
That includes TegraRcmGUI, Hekate, Atmosphère, Lockpick_RCM, NDDumpTool, nxDumpFuse and TegraExplorer. Since it falls under the charges of piracy, the Nintendo 3DS emulator Citra will be shut down, too.
This has been confirmed by the developer of both Yuzu and Citra, Bunnei.
"We write today to inform you that yuzu and yuzu's support of Citra are being discontinued, effective immediately," Bunnei stated on the Yuzu Discord server.
"Piracy was never our intention, and we believe that piracy of video games and on video game consoles should end."
Alongside the statement, the source code for Yuzu and Citra has also been taken down from GitHub.
"We hope our actions will be a small step toward ending piracy of all creators' works."
Nintendo Might Still Go after Palworld
One game developer that Nintendo has yet to defeat is Pocket Pair, the company behind the popular game "Palworld." It is still investigating potential grounds for copyright infringement against the developer, but there has been no luck so far.
Called "Pokémon with Guns," the game continues to be among the most-played titles this year. Nintendo is not exactly deprived of the opportunity to sue another party for infringement. According to Games Radar, it went after a different IP that also shares similarities with "Pokémon."
The trading card game "PokeZoo" became the latest target of the video game giant due to the close similarities between The Pokémon Company's IP and "PokeZoo's." For instance, the title itself uses the same font as "Pokémon" and even copies the likeness of Gengar.
"PokeZoo" is even selling gift cards for $25 under the anchor text "Pokemon." If that's not shocking enough, players can actually buy the "1 of 13 in the WORLD MetaZoo Cryptid Nation 1st Place Caster Mothman Trophy Card" for $39,990.
