News has been circulating that Nintendo has managed to win its lawsuit against the owner of LoveROMS and LoveRETRO, two emulation sites that hosted ROMs for Nintendo games. According to a PDF on TorrentFreak that GBA Temp spotted, the owners of the site, Jacob and his wife Cristian Mathias, pleaded guilty to the charges and opted to settle with Nintendo to the tune of $12 million.

According to the document…

“This matter came before the Court on the parties’ joint motion for entry of a judgment granting monetary relief against all Defendants, jointly and severally, and in favor of Plaintiff. This Final Judgment is based on the consent of all Defendants.

 

“Based on the parties’ joint motion and Defendants’ consent to the judgment, the Court enters judgment as follows: Plaintiff is hereby awarded judgment against all Defendants, jointly and severally, in the amount of $12,230,000. Each party shall bear its own costs and attorneys’ fees”

As pointed out by GBA Temp, this has had a chilling effect on the emulation community. More importantly, it has greatly affected ROM hosting sites, which have begun cleaning out their ROM stashes in order to avoid tempting the fate that has befallen LoveROMs and LoveRETRO.

Back in August of 2018, sites like Emuparadise closed down its ROM section, removing all the ROMs from the site to avoid being hit by the legal arm of Nintendo.

The ISO Zone also closed down its ROM sharing and ISO sections. Some thought that the sections would re-open on another site but the removal of the ROMs was quite obvious that it was in response to Nintendo getting legal on ROM sites.

Some suspected that this is because the Nintendo Switch has already been hacked and the Nintendo Switch emulator, RyujiNX, can run full Nintendo Switch ROMs and ISO files, including Super Mario Odyssey. So with the emulators floating around and ROM files popping up, for most people there’s no longer a reason to purchase a Nintendo Switch or any of its software.

(Thanks for the news tip Joey)