Switch emulator Yuzu shuts down as creator agrees to pay Nintendo $2.4m

Tropical Haze, the developer of open-source Switch emulator Yuzu, has agreed to pay $2.4m in damages to Nintendo and cease all operations in response to the Mario maker's recent lawsuit.

News of Nintendo's legal action against Yuzu surfaced last week, with the company claiming the emulator facilitated piracy «at a colossal scale». By way of example, it said over 1m copies of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom had been illegally downloaded ahead of its official launch — and that «many» pirate websites specified the game file was playable on Yuzu.

«Defendant [Tropic Haze] is thus secondarily liable for the infringement committed by the users to whom it distributes Yuzu», Nintendo's lawyers argued, with the lawsuit ultimately seeking damages and demanding the emulator be shut down.

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Over the weekend, Tropic Haze announced it had retained the legal services of an attorney and would be responding Nintendo's lawsuit within 60 days, but a new filing has now been spotted confirming both parties have reached a settlement — pending the court's final approval — that will see Tropical Haze pay Nintendo $2.4m.

Additionally, Tropic Haze faces a permanent injunction preventing it from «offering to the public, providing, marketing, advertising, promoting, selling, testing, hosting, cloning, distributing, or otherwise trafficking in Yuzu or any source code or features of Yuzu», as well as «other software or devices that circumvent Nintendo's technical protection measures». This means the Yuzu team's 3DS emulator Citra will also be withdrawn.

Furthermore, Tropic Haze must surrender its website domains, hand over any physical circumvention devices it holds, and its creators agree not to form new entities or associations to develop similar Nintendo emulation software in the future.

Tropic Haze addressed today's developments on its Discord (thanks