Nintendo Emulators Yuzu and Citra Shut Down

“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 the 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.”

This is an unfortunate series of events that has left a very passionate team once again at the mercy of Nintendo’s legal team. Emulators have a very important role to play in video gaming. Not just in terms of the preservation of video games but in their ability to be played and enjoyed by people all throughout the world.

Of course, emulation can be used for more nefarious purposes. Where people do not have legal access to the games that they are playing and that naturally causes issues. This is where Nintendo are always very keen to put the ban hammer down on anything that could encourage the pirating of their intellectual property or games. Which of course, no one in good conscious can condone.