Nintendo says Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was pirated a million times before it even came out, chucks tweets about Zelda spoilers into lawsuit

According to Nintendo, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was illegally downloaded a million times in the week or so leading up to its actual release, with the publisher alleging that the Yuzu Switch emulator played a big role in making that happen as part of a fresh lawsuit.

Yep, Nintendo’s rolled out its lawyers to try and deal with a thing again - as all big corporations do, to be fair - with Tropic Haze, the creator of the Yuzu emulator, being the target of its legal ire. Alongside the kind of things you’d expect to find in a lawsuit of this nature, there are some interesting allegations being aimed at Yuzu by the Lionel Hutzes attatched to the folks behind that plumber and the little pink blob.

In the lawsuit, which was filed in the US state of Rhode Island and has been shared in excerpts by Game File’s Stephen Totilo, Nintendo alleges those behind the emulator, including Yuzu project lead Bunnei, are “fully aware of the use of Yuzu by others in performing circumvention, and in facilitating piracy at a colossal scale.” It argues that Yuzu has caused it “great and irreparable injury for which there is no adequate remedy at law”, and has the potential to continue doing so unless the lawsuit is successful in its aims.

Naturally, there are a bunch of justifications cited as reasons behind the accusation I’ve just outlined above, but the general crux of the whole thing seems to be outlined in a section that sees Nintendo argue the following. “With Yuzu in hand, nothing stops a user from obtaining and playing unlawful copies of virtually any game made for the Nintendo Switch,” it says, “all without paying a dime to Nintendo or to any of the hundreds of other game developers and publishers making and selling games for the Nintendo Switch.”

So yeah, there you go.

Interestingly, nestled among those other accusations, Nintendo cites Tears of the Kingdom as a specific example of Yuzu, in the publisher’s view, having aided piracy, by making it possible for people to play “copies [of the game that were] were successfully downloaded from pirate websites over one million times” in the week and a half prior to its official release. The “one million times” bit is in bold and italics, in case you were wondering.

Further on in the suit, Nintendo also accuses Yuzu of having contributed to the prevalence of TOTK spoilers that were doing the rounds on social media in the run up to the game’s arrival. It genuinely follows that up with some screenshots of actual tweets from Zelda fans unhappy about the idea of seeing spoilers for the game, including one that sees the person not correctly capitalise the letter I once in six occasions within the post.

Look, I know it’s a minor thing, but the caps lock is right there on whatever keyboard you’re using, man.

We'll have to see what comes of this suit, so make sure to stay tuned to our site so you're in the loop if/when any substantial updates on the situation emerge.