Nintendo claims another victory in their fight against the advocacy of video game emulation, as the results of the 2024 lawsuit will see the manufacturer Yuzu pay the developer/publisher $2.4 million dollars in a settlement ruled on March 4th. Nintendo launched the lawsuit last week, citing copyright infringement and the circumvention of Nintendo's Switch protections. Following the settlement Yuzu will cease operations.

A public statement was published on Discord by Yuzu maker Bunnie:

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

“Piracy was never our intention, and we believe that piracy of video games and on video game consoles should end," Bunnie wrote. "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.”

While the Discord server remains, their website, Patreon page, and the GitHub repositories for Yuzu and the 3DS emulator Citra have all been removed as of this writing.  

While emulator companies aim to preserve video games via emulation, Nintendo has always posed as a very strong advocate against the practice of tampering and hacking their hardware for any purpose, as well as distribution of their software via emulation sites. In 2021, they struck RomUniverse with a $2.1 million dollar suit. They've also cracked down on Super Smash Bros. Melee online tournaments for using the Dolphin emulator. 

It likely won't be the last time cases like these will be faced. Video game preservation may seem like a noble cause, but it comes with taking great risks.