New documents filed Monday, February 26 reveal that videogame giant Nintendo is taking action against the creators of the popular emulator tool Yuzu.
The copyright infringement filing, from Nintendo of America, states that the Yuzu tool (from developer Tropic Haze LLC) illegally circumvents the software encryption and copyright protection systems of Nintendo Switch titles, and thus facilitates piracy and infringes copyright under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Nintendo alleges that Tropic Haze’s free Yuzu emulator tool unlawfully allows pirated Switch games to be played on PCs and other devices, bypassing Nintendo’s protection measures.
The official Yuzu website suggests that the tool is to be used with software you yourself own: “You are legally required to dump your games from your Nintendo Switch” — but it’s common knowledge, that this is not how these tools are primarily used.
Yuzu, to my knowledge, is PC only.
To get the information you need to use it, you’ll either download it illegally or hack a switch (legally?) To get encryption keys and dump a copy of your game.
PC only implies it’s a windows program, yuzu runs on any x86_64 and ARMv8a or newer device.
I heard about the keys and the other website that serves them, seems an extremely important detail. I imagine the game dumps/copies are available as disk images of some sort online?
Thanks a lot for the info, skankhunt42!
.xci files are physical switch game images and .nsp files are updates or games from the eShop. Everything is online somewhere.
It runs on Android now, which might be what’s gotten Nintendo extra annoyed here, since there are some relatively affordable Android handhelds that can run Switch games at close to full speed with some tweaking.
Having said that, I have an Odin 2 handheld, and it would have been cheaper and easier to just buy a Switch and the games I want to play.