Reaction: Nintendo’s Switch Emulator Fallout Is Shocking Only Because It Took This Long

Image: Zion Grassl / Nintendo LifeWell, that was quick… But also slow.

That Nintendo would take action against programs that circumvent security and open up obvious avenues to playing Switch games without having purchased them is entirely unsurprising given the platform holder’s historic ’emulation is piracy’ stance. But the speed with which Tropic Haze, the makers of Switch emulator Yuzu, capitulated to the platform holder’s demands is yet another indication of the sobering strength of Nintendo’s legal teams.

Less than a week after taking legal action, and just a day or so after Tropic Haze engaged its own legal counsel, you can imagine the swift advice the emulation group must have received. When Nintendo’s cease-and-desist and a $2.4 million fine were agreed to without any contest whatsoever, Yuzu’s creators saw the writing on the wall as clearly as the rest of us. It’s an eventuality they must have considered for years at this point.

Bearing in mind the progress Yuzu had made since its 2018 launch — it was already running Super Mario Odyssey by November of that year — it’s really only surprising that it’s taken Nintendo this long to aim the lawyers in Tropic Haze’s direction given its consistent focus on preventing the ‘illegal circumvention’ of its software security measures. It’s been an uncharacteristically slow build-up to what turned out to be a very quick game. Switch is Nintendo’s current system — Nintendo’s only system, too — so yes, of course the ninjas were going to release a ton of brick-blocks on Yuzu, eventually.

We’ve seen that approach before, most recently with Gary Bowser, whose role with Team Xecuter saddled him with a $14 million debt as well as a prison sentence. That enormous figure probably made a measly 2.4 mil seem reasonable. The intention here could only be to make examples of the highest-profile hackers and emulation experts on the block and dissuade lesser-knowns from pursuing similar activities. The message couldn’t be louder or clearer.

Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life
Nintendo has taken possession of yuzu-emu.org and, heading there, you’ll see the same statement Tropic Haze put out on social channels:

Hello yuz-ers and Citra fans:

We write today to inform you that yuzu and yuzu’s support of Citra are being discontinued, effective immediately.

yuzu and its team have always been against piracy. We started the projects in good faith, out of passion for Nintendo and its consoles and games, and were not intending to cause harm. But we see now that because our projects can circumvent Nintendo’s technological protection measures and allow users to play games outside of authorized hardware, they have led to extensive piracy. In particular, we have been deeply disappointed when users have used our software to leak game content prior to its release and ruin the experience for legitimate purchasers and fans.

We have come to the decision that we cannot continue to allow this to occur. Piracy was never our intention, and we believe that piracy of video games and on video game consoles should end. Effective today, we will be pulling our code repositories offline, discontinuing our Patreon accounts and Discord servers, and, soon, shutting down our websites. We hope our actions will be a small step toward ending piracy of all creators’ works.

Thank you for your years of support and for understanding our decision.

Regardless of your position on piracy — or the undeniably neat things that are possible via non-official firmware — it’s tough for even ardent console hardware modders to deny that the most attractive aspect of the open-source emulator amongst the majority of ‘yuz-ers’ was likely the ability to play Nintendo’s games without buying them. With high-profile leaks leading to people playing Switch games on PC before they’re even released, it’s difficult to imagine many of those early players sourcing and buying the game once it had launched, notionally hopping back over the fence into legality. Honestly, it’s shocking only that the hounds hadn’t ripped poor Yuzu to shreds long ago.

With an R4-style Switch flashcard now doing the rounds, Nintendo will be keen to avoid the situation we have now with DS — cruising eBay these days, it’s hard to find a secondhand DS console that’s not bundled with an R4 and a micro SD. Nintendo bundles all these things into the same category, and though Switch may be well into its twilight years, there’s life (and profit) in the old dog yet.

Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life
For Nintendo fans and anyone interested in game preservation or fan-made efforts to restore official, now-defunct functionality to old Nintendo systems, it’s disappointing to see support for the 3DS emulator Citra cut off as a result of this settlement. Memes about how easy the system is to hack aside, the 3DS eShop is gone and online functionality for its library will be terminated in April. For all the headlines highlighting its demise as Switch’s success rocketed from 2017 onwards, the 3DS truly is a dead system now, with many eShop-only titles now unavailable to purchase anywhere. Seeing Citra support halted along with Yuzu is a shame.

Rarely is anything ever truly gone on the internet, of course. It remains surprisingly easy to have unsanctioned fun with your 3DS — a system that resides among the glorious dead in our books. As for Switch, we’ll see what the future holds. But, regardless of how you feel about it, Yuzu’s shutdown was a long time coming.