Nintendo is stepping up its fight against Switch emulators and game piracy

Nintendo has filed a lawsuit against the makers 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, the company claims Yuzu violates the anti-circumvention and anti-trafficking provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

While Nintendo taking down online infringers is nothing new, this case could set a precedent for future lawsuits against emulators that aren’t illegal per se. Nintendo claims that their very nature is illegal. It can be a big deal.

Nintendo says it protects its games with encryption and other security features designed to prevent people from playing pirated copies: “Without Yuzu’s Nintendo encryption decryption, unauthorized copies of games cannot be played on PCs or Android devices “, the company wrote in its complaint.

Nintendo revealed The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was illegally distributed a week and a half before its official release. It has apparently been downloaded over a million times by pirate websites that specifically note that people can play the game file through Yuzu. The company also mentioned that Yuzu’s creators make money from their emulator: $30,000 a month from their Patreon backers and about $50,000 from the paid version of their Google Play app.

— Matt Smith

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