Nintendo will receive $2.4 million from developers of Switch emulators who shut down their projects

Nintendo has a history of harming the lives of video game pirates in addition to putting an end to them. Just last week, the creator of Mario filed a lawsuit against Yuzu, a well-known free Nintendo Switch emulator. According to court records, the Yuzu creators agreed on Monday to pay Nintendo $2.4 million and completely shut down the website. The same corporation also plans to take down Citra, another free and open-source 3DS emulator.

Lead emulator contributor Bunnei stated in a post on Monday, “We write today to inform you that Yuzu and Yuzu’s support of Citra are being discontinued, effective immediately.” “We did not intend to cause harm; we started the projects in good faith, driven by our passion for Nintendo and its consoles and games.”

The creators of Yuzu and Citra, Tropic Haze, were players who created products to facilitate increased accessibility to Nintendo titles. However, the court found that this involved theft and piracy. Nintendo will receive the website yuzu-emu.org right away, and the people who created Yuzu are prohibited by law from making any similar content.

The Yuzu developers did not fight hard in this court case against Nintendo. Github has already deleted the code repositories for Yuzu and Citra, as The Verge originally reported. Other artists might try to imitate the open-sourced concept, but doing so might put someone else in the same position as Tropic Haze.

On the last week, users on the r/yuzu subreddit have hurried to download and save the most recent Yuzu versions before they are forever erased. On Monday, the subreddit with more than 86,000 users was flooded with farewell messages to the cherished platform.

Yuzu’s only goal, according to Nintendo, was to get around the company’s copyright protections. Tropic Haze’s legal case was hindered by the fact that Yuzu’s administrators claimed that their software was frequently utilized to leak game information prior to its official release.

Classic Nintendo games could now run at 60 frames per second, exactly like they would on the Switch hardware, according to a 2019 update from Yuzu. It was a turning point for the emulator, bringing its open-source, free Nintendo games to a level of enjoyment comparable to the originals.

These kinds of piracy ventures are frequently quite low-budget, and the legal bills alone could bankrupt the former Nintendo fans. On Patreon, Yuzu was reportedly generating about $28,000 per month, but it’s unknown how profitable the business is or how many admins there actually are. As part of the legal action, Patreon will close.

The story of Yuzu and Citra is a well-known one. Gary Bowser, a video game pirate, revealed to The Guardian last month that he is facing a lifetime of debt as a result of his legal battle with Nintendo. Nintendo is known for its ruthlessness when it comes to using big video game pirates as props, and Yuzu is no exception.