Nintendo is doing what Nintendo does: issuing DMCA takedown notices to anyone who illegally offers access to any of the company’s games. That’s exactly what happened earlier this week, as Nintendo wiped out over 400 Switch emulators from GitHub.
According to an August 21 TorrentFreak report, the Mario maker sent the proprietary developer platform seven DMCA takedown notices targeting Nintendo Switch emulator repositories. This includes Suyu (the Yuzu successor that became popular after Yuzu shut down in March 2024), the Android emulator Skyline, and a few lingering Yuzu forks.
In total, some 401 repositories were nuked off GitHub, with 311 of them being Suyu. Now that they’re removed, if you attempt to visit the repository on GitHub, you’ll receive either a 404 error or a pop-up notification that it’s been taken down.
In the DMCA pop-up notification, Nintendo states that the targeted repositories “offer, link to, or otherwise provide access to Nintendo Switch emulators.” The company said these emulators violate Technological Protection Measures (TPMs), which act as digital locks controlled by copyright owners to prevent copying data illegally.
“Specifically, these Nintendo Switch emulators illegally circumvent Nintendo’s TPMs in order to run illegal copies of Nintendo Switch games,” the notice reads. “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 at the reported repositories necessarily use unauthorized copies of these cryptographic keys to decrypt unauthorized copies of Nintendo Switch games, or ROMs, at or immediately before runtime without Nintendo’s authorization.”
With Nintendo summoning the Eye of Mario on 401 repositories earlier this week, and over 8,500 repositories in May 2024, this brings the company’s repository death count to almost 9,000 on GitHub alone. And with Nintendo filing a lawsuit against Yuzu creator Tropic Haze in February 2024, which resulted in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom being pirated over one million times before it launched, the company’s war on emulators continues.
