Nintendo has filed a lawsuit against Tropic Haze, the maker of the popular Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu, alleging that its technology was used to allow more than a million copies of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom to be downloaded illegally a week and a half before its official release.
The lawsuit, filed on February 26 in the US District Court of Rhode Island, alleges that Tropic Haze is responsible for the illegal distribution of pirated copies of Tears of the Kingdom prior to its release on Switch on May 12, 2023.
“Today, Yuzu provides any internet user in the world with the means to illegally decode and play any Nintendo Switch game – including Nintendo's current generation and most popular games – without ever paying a dime for that Nintendo console or game.” Be Obviously, there is no legal way for Yuzu to be used to play Nintendo Switch games, including because she must decrypt the games,” the lawsuit states.
Nintendo is taking legal action against Tropic Haze, demanding that the simulator's creators face a jury trial to pay $150,000 in damages “in respect of each copyrighted work.” Nintendo is also electing to seek actual damages in addition to any profits Yuzu made “from its violations.”
Nintendo's lawsuit also alleges that Yuzu's Patreon page allows its developers to earn $30,000 a month by providing subscribers with “daily updates,” “early access,” and “unreleased special features” to games like Tears of the Kingdom by circumventing security measures that… Taken by Nintendo. A place to prevent video game piracy.
The lawsuit also states that Yuzu's website provides detailed instructions on “how to illegally obtain” the encryption keys used to decrypt and run unauthorized copies of Nintendo games through Yuzu. He points out that membership in Yuzu's Patreon “doubled” between May 1 and May 12 and allowed the Tears of the Kingdom story and spoilers for the game to be leaked online before its release.
This is not the first time Nintendo has sought legal action against the creator of the emulator. In 2019, Nintendo sued a ROM-hosting website called RomUniverse for copyright infringement and federal trademark infringement. Nintendo won a lawsuit in 2021 and was awarded $2.1 million in damages. Prior to Nintendo's multimillion-dollar lawsuit against RomUniverse, the company had received over $12 million in damages from rom hosting sites LoveRETRO and LoveROMS in 2018.
Isaiah Colbert is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow them on Twitter @ShinEyeZehUhh.
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