Nintendo files lawsuit against Yuzu emulator creators
Firm says the emulator was at fault for an early pirated release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
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Nintendo of America is taking legal action against the developers of the Nintendo Switch emulator, Yuzu.
As reported by Game File's Stephen Totilo, the suit was filed with the US District Court of Rhode Island on February 26.
The Yuzu emulator was released in 2018 and is owned by Tropic Haze. It allows users to play Switch titles on Windows, Linux, and Android consoles.
Nintendo said,"[The] video game emulator is a piece of software that allows users to unlawfully play pirated video games that were published only for a specific console on a general-purpose computing device."
Within the lawsuit, Nintendo explained that the technology infringes upon its intellectual property and that of others.
"With Yuzu in hand, nothing stops a user from obtaining and playing unlawful copies of virtually any game made for the Nintendo Switch, all without paying a dime to Nintendo or to any of the hundreds of other game developers and publishers making and selling games for the Nintendo Switch," it said.
The suit also accused Tropic Haze of violating the Anti-Circumvention and Anti-Trafficking provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which says that it is illegal to circumvent or navigate devices that circumvent technology measures by copyright owners that protect themselves against unlawful access.
Additionally, Nintendo says that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was playable on Yuzu a week and a half before launch, and was downloaded from pirate sites more than one million times.
Nintendo said that it is seeking "equitable relief and damages for unlawful circumvention of copyright protection systems (technological measures) and unlawful trafficking in circumvention technology in violation of the DMCA."
The Mario maker has been active with its legal actions against the makers of emulators and emulator-related tools.
Last year, Nintendo sent a cease and desist order to Dolphin emulator makers, which stopped the program from releasing on Steam.
It also issued a DMCA takedown on the Lock RCM, which let Switch users dump their system's security keys for use in homebrew or emulated software.
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