Nintendo is accusing this Rhode Island company of enabling piracy at a 'colossal scale.'
PROVIDENCE – Nintendo of America Inc. is suing Rhode Island-based Tropic Haze LLC, accusing the makers of the Yuzu emulator of "facilitating piracy at a colossal scale" of video games developed exclusively for Nintendo Switch consoles.
The maker of hit games Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong and other favorites alleges that Tropic Haze is violating the anti-trafficking provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by instructing users on how get around protections to download games on PCs and Android devices “without paying a dime.”
Yuzu emulator was used for Nintendo Switch games
Tropic Haze, with a corporate address listed on Centerville Road in Warwick, owns, develops and operates “Yuzu,” a video game emulator for Nintendo Switch games. A video game emulator is software that allows users to unlawfully play pirated video games, according to the complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court.
Eric Nadeau of Somerville, Massachusetts, is listed as the manager of Tropic Haze in Rhode Island Secretary of State records. Nadeau didn’t respond to email or phone inquiries Wednesday.
The lead developer of Yuzu is known online by the alias “Bunnei,” according to the complaint.
“Today, Yuzu provides any internet user in the world with the means to unlawfully decrypt and play virtually any Nintendo Switch game – including Nintendo’s current generation and most popular games – without ever paying a dime for a Nintendo console or for that game. And to be clear, there is no lawful way to use Yuzu to play Nintendo Switch games, including because it must decrypt the games’ encryption,” the company wrote.
“Defendant must be held accountable for willfully providing users the means to violate Nintendo’s intellectual property rights at such a scale. The harm to Nintendo is manifest and irreparable,” the complaint continued.
By the numbers
According to the complaint, Yuzu offers paid “early access” versions of Nintendo Switch games and a free version for Android devices. Yuzu’s membership account on Patreon has more than 7,000 patrons and, according to Yuzu's Patreon page, earns Tropic Haze and its developers about $30,000 a month.
As to piracy, one recent major Nintendo video game – "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom" – was unlawfully distributed a week and a half before its release by Nintendo, the lawsuit says. Infringing copies of the game were downloaded from pirate websites more than a million times before the game was published and made available for lawful sale.
“This piracy causes Nintendo tremendous harm, including millions of dollars of monetary harm from lost video game sales both of Nintendo’s and its licensees’ copyrighted games, and loss of goodwill,” the lawsuit states.
In effect, Nintendo claims, Yuzu turns computing devices into tools for “massive intellectual property infringement of Nintendo and others’ copyrighted works.”
Allegations of unauthorized reproduction of protected works
According to Nintendo, it has expended significant resources to stop the illegal copying, marketing, sale and distribution of unauthorized copies of its video games, only to have Yuzu circumvent those measures.
Nintendo of America is a subsidiary of Nintendo Co. Ltd., headquartered in Kyoto, Japan.
The company accuses Tropic Haze of circumventing technological measures, unauthorized reproduction and distribution of protected works and of contributory and inducement liability for unauthorized reproduction of protected works by others, all in violation of federal law.
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It asks for a court order barring Tropic Haze from disseminating, marketing or manufacturing the Yuzu emulator and forcing the company to surrender and cease to use the domain name YUZU-EMU.ORG.
In addition, Nintendo calls for the seizure, impoundment and destruction of all copies of the Yuzu emulator or other devices or software within 30 days.
Nintendo is seeking $2,500 for each act of offering to the public, provision or otherwise trafficking of the circumvention technology.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Nintendo sues maker of Yuzu emulator, says it enables 'colossal' piracy
