Emulation should eventually become the primary way to play older games, and Nintendo Switch Online does exactly that!
As part of its fight against Switch emulation, Nintendo has carried out another wave of DMCA-based takedowns. In May 2024, Nintendo removed over 8,500 Yuzu Switch emulator clones from GitHub with a single DMCA notice. This resulted in GitHub removing 8,535 repositories containing various versions of the emulator. In February 2026, Nintendo filed another DMCA notice, asking GitHub to remove repositories containing Yuzu and at least 12 other Switch emulators.
Nintendo filed seven more DMCA notices, again asking GitHub to remove all instances of Switch emulators from the site. As a result, 401 GitHub repositories containing Switch emulators were removed. Suyu, one of the most popular successors to the now-defunct Yuzu, was the most affected emulator. Of the 401 repositories removed, 311 contained Suyu. Those removed included the Android Switch emulator Skyline, the C#-based MonoNX, and numerous emulator forks that used Yuzu as their starting point. Now, when someone visits one of the affected repositories, a notification appears explaining that the repository has been removed and includes a link to Nintendo’s DMCA notice.
“The reported repositories offer, link to, or otherwise provide access to Nintendo Switch emulators. These emulators are primarily designed to play Nintendo Switch games. Specifically, these emulators illegally circumvent Nintendo’s TPMs to run illegal copies of Nintendo Switch games. Nintendo Switch games are encrypted using proprietary cryptographic keys (prod.keys), which protect against unauthorized access to and copying of the copyrighted games.
During operation, the emulators necessarily use unauthorized copies of these cryptographic keys to decrypt unauthorized copies of Nintendo Switch games, or ROMs, without Nintendo’s authorization. Thus, the emulators are designed primarily to unlawfully ‘circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under’ the DMCA. Distribution of these emulators constitutes unlawful trafficking in technology that is ‘primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access’ to copyrighted works,” the notice reads.
In 2024, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against Topic Haze, the developer of Yuzu, alleging that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom had been pirated more than one million times in the week and a half leading up to its May release. Nintendo claimed that Yuzu had facilitated piracy on a massive scale. Weeks later, Topic Haze reached an out-of-court settlement and agreed to pay $2.4 million in damages.
Why should someone who buys a game but chooses to emulate it be punished for doing so? After all, the law permits the use of backup copies.
Source: VGC, TorrentFreak
