The headline undersells the outcome by a lot.
As part of the judgment by the US District Court of Rhode Island, Tropic Haze was issued with a permanent injunction preventing it from offering or marketing Yuzu or any of its source code in the future.
Its members are also prevented from creating any future software that circumvents Nintendo’s technical protection, and Tropic Haze must surrender all website domains and information related to its emulator.
Ownership of all related websites and domains must be turned over, and the developers are barred from further participation in “creating any future software that circumvents Nintendo’s technical protection”.
The wording of the actual settlement will be key here, which we are unlikely to ever see. At a minimum it puts significant controls on how the individual developers can interact with the Nintendo emulation community, if not outright prevents them from contributing code to most Nintendo based emulators. It almost certainly increases their individual liabilities if they are caught assisting such a project again, as they will be forced defend how their contributions don’t violate the settlement. And that’s just to avoid stiffer penalties being thrown at them.
