This week Nintendo brutally slapped down an emulator out of stardom. The Switch emulator known as Yuzu will no longer be promoted or hosted by their parent company Tropic Haze LLC after losing a copyright lawsuit to Nintendo. The domain of the Yuzu website will be surrendered to Nintendo, copies of the program will be wiped from the company’s belongings, and a hefty fine of $2.4 million dollars will be paid in damages. The two parties reached this mutual settlement after recent litigation and Tropic Haze wasn’t able to forge much of a defense.
Nintendo have long been protective of their copyrights. Hell they might be THE most dedicated company in the gaming industry when it comes to owning their IP. They’ve shut down tournaments, streams, content creators, and other community events in the name of IP preservation. Most of the time the world is calling for them to take a damn chill pill and fix their console’s internet capabilities. This time though, I think it’s a rare case where there’s not much to fight over. Usually emulation is utilized to allow people to preserve older games and relive nostalgic memories. In the past there have been emulators for both the Nintendo DS and Wii, among other non-Nintendo consoles. One quick search for such a thing is quick to produce results, and to me the answer is clear. Emulation has always sat in a gray area but as time passes and companies no longer support or sell the outdated consoles and games, they don’t have much incentive to step in. The same popular Wii emulator has been available for years now. However, targeting the Switch is a bold ass move considering it’s Nintendo’s current console. Some may argue the thing is already outclassed and out-dated compared to other console options, but despite its longevity of 7 years, it undeniably remains the primary offering from Nintendo. It would be risky to debut and host an emulator until an entire next generation is released, but doing so before we even arrived at that point had the dangerous potential to raise some eyebrows. And raise they did at the lawyer’s office.
It was a party at the office that day for Nintendo.
Again I want to be clear, I’m not anti-emulation and I’m definitely not pro-Nintendo fucking anyone over when they so much as look at their IP the wrong way, but this seems like a rare case where the emulation team fucked up by coming in swinging way too early into a product’s life cycle. Give it five to ten more years, and I imagine we’ll see a resurgence of Switch emulators that Nintendo won’t bother to burn down assuming they already moved on to the Switch 2, 3 or another generation entirely. Have you heard of the Yuzu emulator? Is Nintendo being too harsh or was this a just outcome? What games and systems are you nostalgic for? Fire up your PC, find some games, and relive those old memories in the comments below!
