Nintendo DMCA Notice Wipes Out Over 8,500 Switch Emulator Repos

Nintendo has issued a DMCA notice to GitHub on 2nd May 2024, targeting 8,535 repositories of clones of Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu.

GitHub processed the takedown notice against the entire network of 8,535 repositories, inclusive of the parent repository. In the DMCA notice sent to GitHub, Nintendo had stated that the repositories contained codes to specifically bypass technological protection measures intended for Nintendo Switch consoles to interact only with legitimate Nintendo video game files, enabling users to pirate popular Nintendo Switch titles.

Most of these repositories were used to redistribute variations of the emulator following the end of Yuzu’s distribution by its parent company, Tropic Haze.

Previously, the game company had sued the developers of Yuzu in Feburary 2024, claiming that users were illegally circumventing Nintendo’s software encryption and in turn, committing piracy.

The lawsuit also claims that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was unlawfully distributed a week and a half before its release, citing that infringing copies of the game were playable on Yuzu and that the illegal copies were downloaded over 1 million times before the official release.

Yuzu settled the lawsuit in March 2024 for $2.4 million USD, including an agreement to “the destruction by deletion of all circumvention devices, including all copies of Yuzu”.

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