Switch emulator Yuzu is dead: abruptly settles lawsuit with Nintendo for $2.4 million in an enormous blow to console emulation

Last week Nintendo filed a lawsuit against Switch emulator Yuzu, blaming the emulator for mass piracy of 2023's The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and declaring «there is no lawful way to use Yuzu to play Nintendo Switch games.» The developers of Yuzu hired a lawyer, seemingly setting the suit up for the first legal showdown over emulation in more than 20 years. But today Yuzu and Nintendo filed a surprise joint motion to settle the suit, with the Yuzu developers agreeing to pay Nintendo «monetary relief in the sum of $2.4 million.»

As a result of the settlement, development of Yuzu will be shut down and cease distribution.

It's a dramatic turn for a case that didn't seem completely certain to go in Nintendo's favor. Sony's early 2000s lawsuits against emulators from Connectix and Bleem! both went in favor of the emulator developers, but advances in technology since then leave a big question mark about how a court would rule on circumventing the Switch's encryption, something that is broadly forbidden by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Nintendo pointedly claimed that Yuzu is «primarily designed to circumvent technological measures,» a very specific bit of language that indicates the emulator runs afoul of the DMCA.

It's possible a judge would rule that circumvention isn't the primary purpose of the emulator, just a necessary act of reverse-engineering to, y'know, play videogames. A judgment like that would be a huge win for the legality of emulation of modern systems, while a judgment that went Nintendo's way would threaten many other emulators. A loss could have been extremely expensive for the Yuzu developers—and even a win may have resulted in years of legal fees as the case made its way through the trial and appeal process. Apparently the emulator developers decided a quick settlement was a safer choice.

Today's joint motion states that «Defendant and its members acknowledge and agree that the award of monetary relief here bears a reasonable