Nintendo lawsuit accuses Switch emulator creators of “piracy on a massive scale”

Nintendo has filed a lawsuit against the creators of a popular Switch emulator called Yuzu, which gives users a way to play games developed for the platform on their PCs and Android devices. In the lawsuit Shared by Stephen Totilo from Game Filethe company alleged that Yuzu violated the anti-fraud and anti-human trafficking provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Nintendo explained that it protects its games with encryption and other security features aimed at preventing people from playing pirated copies. Yuzu has the ability to get around those security measures and decrypt Nintendo games. “[W]”Without Yuzu’s decryption of Nintendo’s encryption, unauthorized copies of the games could not be played on PCs or Android devices,” the company wrote in its complaint.

Nintendo continued that it is illegal to “circumvent technological measures put in place by copyright holders to protect against illegal access to and copying of copyrighted works” under the DMCA. Distribution of “software designed primarily to circumvent technological measures” also constitutes illegal trafficking. The defendants “facilitate piracy on a massive scale,” the lawsuit said. This case could set a precedent for future lawsuits against emulators, which are not illegal in and of themselves. like Ars Technica Note that Nintendo’s arguments describe its nature as illegal.

To illustrate the extent of Yuzu’s impact on its business, Nintendo revealed in its complaint that The Legend of Zelda: Kingdom Tears It was illegally distributed a week and a half before its official release. It appears to have been downloaded over a million times from pirate websites, which specifically noted that people could play the game file through Yuzu. The company also stated that Yuzu creators are making money from their emulator. They get about $30,000 a month from their supporters on Patreon and have earned about $50,000 from the paid version of their software on Google Play, so far.

Nintendo is asking the court to prevent Yuzu’s creators from promoting and distributing the software. It is also demanding an unspecified amount of “just relief and compensation.”