Nintendo has filed lawsuit against Yuzu, an emulator for Nintendo Switch games. In the preliminary statement, Nintendo says that the “defendant and its agents are fully aware of the use of Yuzu by others in performing circumvention, and in facilitating piracy at a colossal scale.” As an example, Nintendo says that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom “was unlawfully distributed a week and a half before its release.” Copies of the game were able to be played in Yuzu and were successfully downloaded from pirate websites over one million times before game was published and made available for lawful purchase by Nintendo.
“With Yuzu in hand, nothing stops a user from obtaining and playing unlawful copies of virtually any game made for the Nintendo Switch, all without paying a dime to Nintendo or to any of the hundreds of other game developers and publishers making and selling games for the Nintendo Switch,” the company says.
“In effect, Yuzu turns general computing devices into tools for massive intellectual property infringement of Nintendo and others’ copyrighted works.”
Nintendo is seeking damages and a shutdown of the Switch emulator.
Since the news broke, Yuzu released a statement on Discord saying “we do not know anything other than the public filing and we are not able to discuss the matter at this time.”