Nintendo is cracking down on the app that allows Switch games to be played for free
An app has been shut down and team Tropic Haze will pay Nintendo $2.4 million (£1.9 million) after a lawsuit was filed against them.
The team behind the Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu has decided to settle with Nintendo instead of taking the case to court.
Emulators aren’t illegal because they simply let people run console games on PC.
However, this case revolves around the claim that Yuzu circumvented the technological measures that Nintendo had implemented on the Switch by decrypting the Nintendo Switch software at runtime.
This would allow users to pirate Nintendo Switch games instead of paying to play them on the console.
The settlement agreed to by both Tropic Haze and Nintendo means that Yuzu will close and Tropic Haze will no longer be able to develop or distribute the source code.
Tropic Haze was also developing Citra, a popular 3DS emulator that has also been discontinued.
The official Yuzu Twitter account announced the settlement alongside the closure of the Discord server and Patreon account.
It is believed that Nintendo filed the complaint against Tropic Haze precisely because of the Patreon account, as the Yuzu team was making thousands of dollars every month developing the app.
The statement reads: “We are writing today to inform you that Yuzu and Yuzu’s support of Citra is ending immediately.
“Yuzu and his team have always been against piracy. We started the projects in good faith, out of passion for Nintendo and its consoles and games, and did not intend to cause harm.
“But we now see that because our projects can bypass Nintendo’s technology protection measures and allow users to play games outside of authorized hardware, they have led to extensive piracy.
“In particular, we are deeply disappointed when users have used our software to leak game content before release and ruin the experience for legitimate buyers and fans.”
To read more about Nintendo, check out March’s biggest game releases.
Written by Georgina Young on behalf of GLHF.
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