It appears Nintendo isn’t easing up on targeting Tropic Haze’s Nintendo Switch emulator, “Yuzu.”
Despite Tropic Haze settling out of court to the sum of a $2.4 million payment alongside the complete abolishment of the Yuzu emulator moving forward, Nintendo are proactively issuing DMCA takedown requests to Discord, leading to the shutdown of official Discord servers linked to “Suyu” and “Sudachi,” which are forked emulators derived from Yuzu.
Discord is infamous for its lack of resistance to DMCA requests, promptly complying regardless of their merit. The creators of Suyu and Sudachi received vague notices alleging intellectual property infringement, resulting in the shutdown of their official servers and the disabling of their Discord accounts.
It’s easy to forget that Nintendo actually makes games and aren’t just a legal firm.
The developers of these Yuzu forks asserted that they extensively modified the code to distance themselves from Yuzu, a clear attempt to avoid Nintendo’s scrutiny. However, despite Suyu and Sudachi not hosting any of their code on Discord, Nintendo, in its authoritative stance, aims to eradicate the Yuzu emulator entirely, including any and all derivatives.
Isn’t that just nice of Nintendo, I suppose this implies that the big N will generously offer access to their ancient and long-abandoned games from systems such as the NES, GameBoy, DS, and more. (Just in case it wasn’t clear, that is sarcasm.)
Nintendo’s disregard for game preservation is evident in their reluctance to provide consumers access to their extensive back catalog of first-party games. Instead, they vehemently oppose any attempt to profit from their iconic intellectual properties. This likely motivated their direct targeting of Yuzu, an emulator that was profiting substantially through its Patreon by paywalling emulator builds.
Nintendo’s legal complaint against Yuzu accused the emulator of facilitating widespread piracy by providing detailed instructions on running unlawful copies of Nintendo Switch games. However, their lack of action against Ryujinx, a truly open-source emulator, raises doubts about the validity of these claims.
Yuzu’s prominence and commercialization made it a prime target for seeking damages.
Despite legal actions, both emulator projects continue to operate, seemingly untouched by Nintendo. However, creators now face the challenge of finding alternative platforms to discuss their projects with their communities.
Hopefully, they’ll learn from this experience and opt to avoid Discord in the future. As far as I’m aware, Suyu has already taken steps in this direction by hosting their own group chat platform based on rocket.chat. You can sign up here.
Despite its reputation as invasive spyware, Discord dominates the market for gaming and casual group chat platforms. It’s advisable for those concerned about privacy to avoid using Discord, particularly for larger groups engaged in legally gray activities like emulation or PC piracy.
Its handling of so-called “problematic” users leaves much to be desired, especially considering it’s staffed by genuine predators of both animals and children.
