Nintendo sues makers of biggest Switch emulator, call for complete shutdown

Nintendo has taken aim at Tropic Haze LLC, today filing a lawsuit against the company over its ultra-popular Switch emulator Yuzu.

In the lawsuit filed earlier this week, first reported by Bloomberg, Nintendo alleges Yuzu can circumvent software encryption facilitating piracy. The gaming giant is looking to receive payment for damages incurred due to Yuzu, and for the program to be shut down permanently.

Nintendo says Yuzu’s business model is growing the gaming piracy space and points to its Patreon support to show that. According to the Mario-maker, when The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom leaked online, it was downloaded more than one million times before its release. During this same time, it is alleged Yuzu’s Patreon doubled in size.

This leak was one of the biggest Nintendo has faced during the Switch era and it eventually resulted in the entire game, its story, and more leaking online before the actual launch. As you’d expect, this meant many players had the game spoiled before getting a chance to play.

In the lawsuit, Nintendo calls Tropic Haze out directly, claiming they have direct knowledge that Yuzu is regularly being used for piracy. To support this, Reddit forum /r/YuzuPirates was highlighted, along with the many links for Zelda: TOTK that referenced the Yuzu emulator.

Yuzu being Nintendo’s latest target shouldn’t be any surprise given the popularity that the Switch emulator has gained in recent years. With more handheld PC devices joining the market, Yuzu has slowly become one of the go-to ways for those gamers to enjoy Switch games, despite that being against the creator’s desires.

Nintendo reiterates in its lawsuit that it only ever intends for Switch games to be played on official hardware. It remains to be seen how this lawsuit will play out but as of right now, there has been no public response from the Yuzu side regarding the filing.