Manufacturer of Switch emulator Yuzu said it would “agree to a ruling in Nintendo's favor” to resolve a major lawsuit filed by the console maker last week.
In a series of court filings on Monday, Yuzu's developers paid $2.4 million in “financial relief” and said they would not be able to “offer, offer, market, advertise, promote, sell, test, or I agree to cease hosting, cloning, and distribution. , or traffic in Yuzu or any Yuzu source code or functionality. ”
In a statement posted to the Yuzu Discord on Monday afternoon, the developers said that support for this emulator, along with support for the 3DS emulator Citra (which shares many of the same developers), is ending “effective immediately.” Then he said.
Today we are announcing that support for Citra by Yuzu and Yuzu will be discontinued effective immediately.
Yuzu and her team have always opposed piracy. We started this project in good faith out of a passion for Nintendo, its consoles and games, and did not intend to cause any harm. However, we now know that our project bypasses Nintendo's technical safeguards and allows users to play the game on non-authorized hardware, leading to widespread copyright infringement. In particular, we are deeply disappointed that a user used our software to leak the game's content prior to release, ruining the experience for legitimate buyers and fans.
We have come to the conclusion that we cannot continue to let this situation continue. Piracy is not our intention, and we believe that piracy of video games and video game consoles should end. Starting today, we will be taking our code repository offline, deactivating our Patreon account and Discord server, and shutting down our website soon. We hope that our actions will be a small step towards ending copyright infringement in the works of all creators.
we acknowledge that
The final draft ruling, which still needs the consent of the judge in the case, fully accepts Nintendo's position that “Yuzu is primarily designed to evade attack.” [Nintendo’s copy protection] Playing Nintendo Switch games by “using an unauthorized copy of the Nintendo Switch encryption key.”
Although Yuzu's software itself does not contain copies of these Nintendo Switch encryption keys, the proposed ruling states that “in the normal course of things.” [Yuzu] According to the settlement, this means the software is “primarily designed to circumvent technological measures” and violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
This confession does not technically explain Yuzu's ability to run a long list of homebrew programs on the Switch, but it does suggest that such homebrew programs are an important part of the “normal course” of the average Yuzu user's experience. Proving that it was could have been an uphill battle in court. Nintendo alleges in its lawsuit that “the vast majority of Yuzu users use Yuzu to play pirated games they downloaded on Yuzu,” a fact that suggests that even if the emulator's non-infringing The fact is that even if use exists, it could be used against emulator manufacturers in court.
Not worth fighting for?
Currently, Yuzu Patreon generates approximately $30,000 per month in revenue, and a $2.4 million settlement for Tropic Haze LLC, a US company formed to coordinate these Patreon donations for the development of the emulator. will be a large expense. However, the Yuzu developers said in their proposed settlement that this number “is not reasonably related to the damages, attorney's fees, and full costs anticipated by the parties at the time and subsequent trial of this action.” “There is.”
The potential legal fees required to bring the Yuzu case to full trial likely played a significant role in the case's quick settlement. As lawyer John Reuterman told Ars last week, “Unless Yuzu has very deep pockets, they probably won't… [the emulator] The software will survive a downtime, but it will not be centrally distributed by Yuzu. ”
There are also relatively clear indications that Yuzu developers are aiding and abetting potential Switch piracy through various communication channels, including bragging about their success in emulating leaked Switch games before their release date. I also faced some suspicions. “I have personal experience with how strict most emulator communities/Discord servers/forums are when it comes to copyright and piracy, so it's baffling to me that Yuzu's developers don't have that attitude. It's really weird,” emulator developer Lycoder told Ars last week.
