It has emerged that Nintendo of America is taking Tropic Haze LLC to court – the company that owns, develops and operates Yuzu, which it claims allows users to “unlawfully” play pirated Nintendo Switch games.
In its preliminary statement, partly shared by Game File reporter Stephen Totilo, Nintendo has stated that Tropic Haze is “fully aware of the use of Yuzu by others in performing circumvention, and in facilitating piracy at a colossal scale.
“As to circumvention, Yuzu’s website acknowledges that the Nintendo Switch’s decryption keys (the prod.keys) are required to decrypt games and includes links to software that unlawfully extract those keys from the Nintendo Switch.”
In looking to demonstrate the severe piracy risk that Yuzu presents, Nintendo explains that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom “was unlawfully distributed a week and a half before its release by Nintendo.
“Infringing copies of the game that circulated online were to be played in Yuzu, and those copies were successfully downloaded from pirate websites over one million times before the game was published and made available for lawful purchase by Nintendo. Many of the pirate websites specifically noted the ability to play the game file in Yuzu.”
Its clear argument is that emulators such as Yuzu are helping piracy become more prevalent, making it increasingly harmful to the games industry, impacting its profitability and sustainability.
