Nintendo filed a lawsuit last month against the development team behind the Switch emulator, Yuzu, known as Tropic Haze. After consulting with their legal advisors, the team concluded that reaching a settlement with Nintendo was the best course of action. Ultimately, they agreed to pay Nintendo $2.4 million in compensation. As part of the settlement, Tropic Haze has disbanded the team and permanently taken down both the Switch emulator, Yuzu, and the 3DS emulator, Citra.
It has been confirmed that Tropic Haze has acknowledged all copyright infringement allegations. In the presence of both legal teams, a settlement agreement was signed, stipulating the $2.4 million compensation to be paid to Nintendo. Additionally, Tropic Haze is required to cease all distribution of the Yuzu emulator, including its source code. The team must disband immediately and is prohibited from establishing any future emulator development organizations associated with Nintendo.
Tropic Haze issued the following statement on X (Twitter):
Hello yuz-ers and Citra fans:
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. But 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 accounts 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.
Thank you for your years of support and for understanding our decision.