It's Still Legal for Now, But Are Game Emulators in Trouble?
Emulation shouldn’t be a dirty word, despite what some hardware manufacturers believe. The good news is that the emulation scene is booming, and emulators aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Nintendo Is on the Warpath
Nintendo has a long history of opposing emulation, going as far as saying that the practice “harms development and ultimately stifles innovation” despite there being little evidence to support that assertion. You could argue that the thriving homebrew scene on platforms like the Wii proves otherwise.
The high-profile takedown of Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu in March 2024 sent shockwaves through the emulator world. Not only was Yuzu immediately shut down, but so too were a handful of other projects including 3DS emulator Citra, Game Boy emulator The Pizza Boy, and Nintendo DS emulator Drastic.
It’s no coincidence that Yuzu was the most high-profile Switch emulator at the time, but there’s more to the Yuzu story than first meets the eye. To start with, Yuzu received financial support via Patreon, something that likely caused Nintendo to see it as more than just a community project. This might also be why Nintendo demanded a $2.4 million settlement (that Yuzu agreed to), rather than simply insisting that development ceased.
In the days following the Yuzu debacle, speculation was rife about whether or not Yuzu was designed in a “clean room” environment. Some have suggested that Yuzu used the leaked Nintendo Switch SDK (software development kit) in its design. There are also claims that the team distributed ROMs on the Yuzu Discord server. Ultimately, neither of these mattered. Nintendo’s main claim was that Yuzu was “facilitating piracy at a colossal scale.”
But not even Nintendo argued that emulation is illegal in its filings. This legal challenge is predicated entirely on Yuzu and its associated projects enabling users to bypass digital rights management (DRM) safeguards designed to prevent piracy. The fact that Yuzu folded like a house of
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