The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: Nintendo takes legal action against Yuzu emulator

Nintendo has apparently blown its collar. As has now been announced, Nintendo of America has filed a lawsuit against the manufacturer of a popular Switch emulator.

The Yuzu emulator enjoys questionable popularity as it allows you to play pirated copies of Switch games on Windows, Linux or Android and no manufacturer likes to see pirated copies. Accordingly, Nintendo of America has now filed a lawsuit against Tropic Haze, the manufacturer of the emulator.

The reasoning: “Defendant and its agents are aware of the use of Yuzu by others to circumvent and facilitate piracy on a large scale.” And by large scale we really mean large, because in the lawsuit Nintendo claims that The Legend of Zelda: Tear of the Kingdom alone was pirated more than a million times before its release due to a leak, while at the same time the Patreon income increased of Yuzu have doubled.

“With Yuzu, it is possible to obtain and play illegal copies of virtually any game for the Nintendo Switch without paying a dime to Nintendo or any of the hundreds of other game developers and publishers developing games for the Nintendo Switch and sell,” says the company. “Yuzu turns common computing devices into tools for massive intellectual property infringements by Nintendo and other companies.”

Nintendo is demanding damages for the alleged violations and deactivation of the emulator. Could be exciting, because emulators per se are not illegal, in contrast to the use of pirated copies. Nintendo alleges that Yuzu executes codes that “bypass” Nintendo’s security measures, including decryption using an “illegally obtained copy of the prod.keys.”