Epic Fake

Happy Monday! Fortnite players saw inside the box, and now know Friday marks the start of an Ancient Greek-themed season.

—Derek Neville, Tim Rhyne

MAIN QUEST: Nintendo settles

Nintendo has successfully settled a lawsuit against the developers of the Yuzu Nintendo Switch emulator, Tropic Haze, which was accused of enabling widespread piracy. In a joint filing, Tropic Haze agreed to pay $2.4 million to Nintendo and cease all activities related to Yuzu, including hosting, distributing code, and promoting the emulator on social media. The company will also surrender the yuzu-emu.org domain name to Nintendo and delete all copies of Yuzu, along with associated circumvention tools. Additionally, Tropic Haze will hand over any physical circumvention devices and modified Nintendo hardware. The decision to discontinue both Yuzu and Citra, a Nintendo 3DS emulator, was confirmed by the developers, citing a commitment to ending piracy in the gaming community. Nintendo and Tropic Haze seek a court ruling confirming that Yuzu violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The settlement stems from Nintendo's allegations that Yuzu was designed to circumvent multiple layers of Switch encryption, enabling users to play Nintendo games on unauthorized devices, such as the Steam Deck. Nintendo claimed Yuzu's Patreon page facilitated the distribution of pirated copies of games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, with up to one million illegal downloads before the official release. This legal action follows a pattern of Nintendo's efforts to combat emulation and piracy, with previous lawsuits against ROM-hosting websites resulting in substantial damages awarded to the company.

Step Back: While Yuzu doesn’t include any of Nintendo’s keys, Nintendo’s lawsuit argued that Yuzu is facilitating piracy at a colossal scale. The settlement Nintendo and Tropic Haze submitted to the court claims Yuzu violated the DMCA by using Nintendo’s keys, even though it did not come with them. It is unclear how this settlement will impact other emulator developers, and any legal action taken against them.

HUD

• 🤡 Epic Games “hack” didn’t happen. It was a scam run by “professional fraudsters.” They advertise themselves as “ransomware-as-a-service” by stirring up news like the one involving Epic Games to acquire new customers for its “ransomware infrastructure.” Only the buyers would later find out they paid for a fake product.

• 💵 TemTem developer Crema has announced it will be removing all monetization from the game in a June update, with another major update to follow. The studio will then focus on bug fixes and balance patches, while they prioritize new projects.

• 🎵 Marty O’Donnell is undergoing a change in career from composing music for video games to running for US Congress. O’Donnell has a history of battling, and winning, for his compensation rights following his termination without cause at Bungie in 2014.

MAJOR W

• 🎦 Xbox’s March Partner Preview will be Wednesday, March 6th at 1pm ET and is expected to have more than a dozen new trailers in its 30-minute runtime.

• 💰️ Gamecity Hamburg opened applications for prototype funding to small and medium-sized studios within Hamburg, Germany. A total of €400,000 will be available in this funding round.

F IN THE CHAT

• 🥽 Meta is continuing to phase out all Oculus branding, as it announced today that users who do not integrate their Oculus account into a Meta account by March 29th will lose access to everything on the account, including games and achievements, as Oculus accounts will be deleted by the end of the month.

• 💿️ Xbox retail versions of Baldur’s Gate 3 copies will require 4 physical discs due to being 500 MB over the limit for 3. Brings back memories of The Legend of Dragoon on the original PlayStation, which also required 4 discs.

CAREER CORNER

• Senior Games Product Manager — Amazon Games (Seattle, WA)

• Marketing Manager - Disney Games — Disney (Glendale, CA)

• Category Manager (PC Gaming Accessories) - Razer Inc. (Irvine, CA)

HIVE MIND

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