Last week Nintendo of America filed a lawsuit in Rhode Island against Tropic Haze, the company behind their popular emulator products Yuzu and Citra. In the suit, NoA claimed that Yuzu was chiefly responsible for the massive leak of Tears of the Kingdom a week and a half before its launch on May 12, 2023. More than one million copies were illegally downloaded.
One week later on Monday March 4, Tropic Haze agreed to pay a monetary settlement of $2.4 million USD in damages to Nintendo and accepted a permanent injunction by the U.S. District Court of Rhode Island. Per the binding court order, Tropic Haze is pulling Yuzu off the market immediately and any of its source code. They agreed to take down the Yuzu website and surrender any information required by the court regarding the emulator at hand. Yuzu’s members are also prevented from creating any software in the future that circumvents Nintendo’s security. Any violations made by Tropic Haze or any of Yuzu’s members that breaks the binding court order will subject them to sanctions by the court to the fullest extent of the law.
On the same day, Yuzu released a public statement concerning the matter at hand. “We write today to inform you that yuzu and yuzu’s support of citra are being discontinued, effective immediately. yuzu and its team have always been against piracy.”
”We have come to the decision that we cannot continue to allow this to occur. Piracy was never our intention, and we believe that piracy of video games and on video game consoles should end,” Yuzu continued in their statement. “Thank you for your years of support and for understanding our decision.”
