Nintendo filed a lawsuit against the developers of the Yuzu emulator

[Teacher]

Nintendo has filed a lawsuit against Tropic Haze LLC, which oversees the development of the open-source Yuzu project that develops the Nintendo Switch game console emulator. Nintendo demands compensation for damages caused by launching pirated games using the emulator, and an injunction against the development, promotion and distribution of the Yuzu emulator, which allows you to run games outside of Nintendo Switch devices.

In order to prevent the launch of pirated copies of games and protect against copying games, Nintendo consoles use cryptographic keys to encrypt the contents of the firmware and game files. Nintendo owns or manages the copyright to games for its consoles and is responsible for providing licenses to distribute games for its devices. The terms of use of the games allow you to run exclusively on your game console and prohibit the use of unauthorized devices.

According to the lawyers of Nintendo, the use of the emulator leads to illegal circumvention of methods of technical protection of access to content that is subject to copyright. To run the game in the Yuzu emulator, you must have keys to decrypt the game files. Despite the fact that the extraction of keys for decrypting games falls on users and is performed using third-party tools, the very fact of decryption on the side of the emulator is perceived by Nintendo as an illegal bypass of technical protection measures. Even if the user uses keys extracted from their own purchased copy, this violates the terms of use that prohibit creating copies to run on other platforms.

Nintendo also states that the distribution of the emulator creates a favorable environment for the distribution of pirated copies, since the emulator allows you to run games not only on the console, but also on any computer. Yuzu is seen as a tool that turns ordinary computers into a vehicle for massive infringement of Nintendo's intellectual property and copyrighted products.

The lawsuit mentions that one of the developers of Yuzu publicly mentioned that most users of the emulator use pirated keys, and the Yuzu website has instructions for extracting keys (prod.keys) from their consoles and provides links to tools for obtaining keys and unauthorized copying of games to run on another device. The Yuzu guide also mentions that for games to work correctly, you need system files copied from the hacked Nintendo Switch console.

With these examples, Nintendo shows that the developers of Yuzu were initially aware of the use of their program to circumvent protection and their activities can be considered as promoting piracy. Moreover, Nintendo is ready to prove that the developers of Yuzu violated the DMCA law, while working on the emulator, receiving keys from the hacked console and copying games to run in the emulator.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, a pirated copy of which became available a week and a half before the official release for the Nintendo Switch and was downloaded more than a million times, is an example of the profit lost due to Yuzu. 20% of links to pirated downloads of this game explicitly mentioned running in the emulator. The fact that Yuzu developers have benefited from the introduction of pirated copies is evidenced by the rapid growth of participants who supported Yuzu in Patreon at the time of the appearance of the pirated copy, as participants in Patreon are given the opportunity to access early builds of new versions of Yuzu.

Last summer, Nintendo has already achieved the removal of the Dolphin emulator from the Steam catalog under the pretext of violating the US Copyright Law in the Digital Age in the project. The reason for the deletion was that the Dolphin code base included a data encryption key for Nintendo Wii consoles, which was made publicly available after the information leak in 2008. Prior to this, after a complaint from Nintendo, the Lockpick and Lockpick_RCM repositories on GitHub were blocked, which developed utilities for extracting keys and operating system components from Nintendo Switch game consoles. Unlike Dolphin and Lockpick, the Yuzu project does not distribute keys or extract them, but requires them to run games and provides instructions with links to key extraction tools.

 

[Teacher]

Yuzu developers agreed to close the project and pay Nintendo compensation of $ 2.4 million.

Tropic Haze LLC, which represents the developers of the open-source Yuzu emulator, has reached an agreement with Nintendo to terminate the legal proceedings in exchange for a complete curtailment of the development of the emulator, the closure of all related resources and compensation payments in the amount of $ 2.4 million. In addition to Yuzu, an emulator of the Nintendo Switch video game console, the discontinuation of development also affected Citra, an emulator of the Nintendo 3DS console developed by the same development team.

Currently, the content of the Yuzu and Citra sites has been removed, and a message to users has been posted on the main page. Project repositories have also been removed from GitHub. In the near future, it is planned to disable the Discord servers, delete the page on Patreon and transfer the rights to the domains to Nintendo. Representatives from the community have already tried to create a fork of Yuzu-Nuzu, but it is not yet clear how Nintendo will react to it and whether its founders will be able to support the project at the proper level. The Ryujinx project, which develops another Nintendo Switch emulator,is also still in service.

In their appeal to users, the developers of Yuzu stated that their activities did not intend to cause harm and developed the project out of love for computer games and Nintendo game consoles. At the same time, they admit that the software they developed contributed to the development of game piracy for Nintendo, as it allowed them to bypass technical protection and play without using authorized equipment. The developers apologized to users, condemned the use of pirated copies of video games and expressed the hope that their decision will be a small step towards eliminating piracy.

In order to prevent the launch of pirated copies of games and protect against copying games, Nintendo consoles use cryptographic keys to encrypt the contents of the firmware and game files. Nintendo owns or manages the copyright to games for its consoles and is responsible for providing licenses to distribute games for its devices. The terms of use of the games allow you to run exclusively on your game console and prohibit the use of unauthorized devices.

According to the lawyers of Nintendo, the use of the emulator leads to illegal circumvention of methods of technical protection of access to content that is subject to copyright. To run the game in the Yuzu emulator, you must have keys to decrypt the game files. Despite the fact that the extraction of keys for decrypting games falls on users and is performed using third-party tools, the very fact of decryption on the side of the emulator is perceived by Nintendo as an illegal bypass of technical protection measures. Even if the user uses keys extracted from their own purchased copy, this violates the terms of use that prohibit creating copies to run on other platforms.

 

[Man]

In the course of the fight against Nintendo Switch emulators, Nintendo managed to close the Ryujinx project, the repository of which was deleted yesterday (copy) by the main developer. Judging by the explanation published by one of the active participants in the project, Nintendo has reached an agreement with the founder of Ryujinx, providing for the cessation of further work on the emulator. The details of the agreement have not been disclosed, so it is not yet clear what forced the developer to agree to Nintendo's conditions - threats of lawsuit, financial incentives or some other arguments.

The Ryujinx project has been developing since 2017 and, unlike other Nintendo Switch emulators, was written from scratch in C#. The key goal of the project was high performance, emulation accuracy, and a user-friendly interface. ARMv8 CPU and GPU Maxwell emulation, game controllers, sound, and GUI content loading control were supported. The code was distributed under the MIT license. The emulator was tested on 4300 games, of which 3550 could be successfully played, 550 had problems with the gameplay, and 200 did not start.

Earlier, Nintendo has already achieved the closure or removal from the catalogs of programs emulators Yuzu, Suyu, Skyline Switch and Dolphin, as well as about 8500 repositories with forks of the Yuzu emulator. The fight against emulators is due to Nintendo's dissatisfaction with the possibility of using them to bypass technical protection methods, as well as condoning the illegal distribution of games and violation of the terms of use. Despite the fact that the responsibility for extracting the keys to decrypt games falls on users and is carried out using third-party tools, the very fact of decryption on the emulator side is perceived by Nintendo as an illegal circumvention of technical protection measures.

Nintendo consoles encrypt the contents of the firmware and game files using cryptographic keys to prevent the launch of pirated copies of games and protect against copying games. Nintendo owns or controls the copyright in the games for its consoles and is responsible for licensing the distribution of games for its devices. The Terms of Use only allow you to play games on your game console and prohibit the use of unauthorized devices.