News of the Nintendo lawsuit against Yuzu recently surfaced, causing gamers to be worried about the future of perhaps the best Nintendo Switch emulator available. Sadly, the news is not good. Yuzu, the Nintendo Switch Emulator, as well as Citra, the 3DS emulator, have both announced that they will shut down following Nintendo's lawsuit.
— yuzu (@yuzuemu) March 4, 2024
Earlier today, Yuzu uploaded an image on its X (formerly Twitter) containing its final letter to its users. The letter reads:
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.
As mentioned above, not only Yuzu but Citra as well will shut down thanks to the lawsuit. This is likely because, according to OatmealDome, “Yuzu and Citra were under the same management.” They also mentioned that this move is likely due to how the lawsuit itself was worded. According to OatmealDome, “the settlement with Nintendo was broad enough to extend to all their consoles, and not just the Switch.”
Following this announcement, the Yuzu GitHub repository, as well as the one for Citra, have been shut down and deleted. That means that users can no longer download any of the official releases of either emulator. Additionally, the official X accounts of both emulators have been wiped, save for the final letter.
Players have mixed reactions about the Yuzu and Citra's shutdown. Understandably, a lot of players, specifically those who used Citra, are mad at Nintendo. The hardware was discontinued back in 2022, and the Nintendo eShop shut down last year. That means players can no longer buy a brand-new 3DS, or even buy games from Nintendo. Citra is now the only way for players to download and play old 3DS games, so its death means players will no longer be able to enjoy said games.
Others, on the other hand, are saying that Yuzu deserved to be shut down. They brought up the fact that Yuzu was releasing its latest releases and experimental builds behind their Patreon paywall. According to them, the fact that Yuzu was monetizing an emulator made them a hot target for Nintendo. Others were quick to defend Yuzu, saying that for some of their programmers, working on Yuzu was a full-time job, and they had mouths to feed.
Emulation was, is, and always will be a gray area in gaming. While it is true that emulation does help in one way or another in piracy, it is also true that a lot of players rely on emulation to play games that are no longer available on official channels on consoles that are no longer being made. Sadly, this sentiment is not shared by the bigger corporations, so emulation will always remain a big “no” for them.
That's all the information we have about the shut down of Yuzu and Citra following the Nintendo lawsuit. Check out our gaming news articles for the latest in gaming news.
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