Nintendo has reportedly sent out a DMCA takedown notice to publicly available Switch emulators on the basis of copyright infringement.
A new DMCA takedown notice (via Devile on Reddit) submitted by Nintendo to GitHub has targeted repositories for a number of Nintendo Switch emulators as part of the company’s ongoing movement against such projects. The notice, written in GitHub’s standard DMCA format, outlines Nintendo’s argument that these projects unlawfully circumvent the technological protection measures (TPMs) built into the Switch console and its games.
In its notice, Nintendo described the original copyrighted works as the Nintendo Switch console ecosystem and its protected game software. The company specifically referenced major first-party titles including Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. According to the notice, these works are protected by encryption-based TPMs that restrict access to legitimate hardware and authorized copies.
Nintendo explained that Switch games are encrypted using proprietary cryptographic keys, commonly referred to as “prod.keys”, and that the console verifies and decrypts software before it can run. The company stated that these measures effectively control access to its copyrighted works, and that bypassing them violates the anti-circumvention and anti-trafficking provisions of the DMCA under 17 U.S.C. § 1201.
The repositories named in the complaint include Citron, Eden, Kenji-NX, MeloNX, Pine, Pomelo, Ryubing, Ryujinx, Skyline, Sudachi, Sumi, Suyu, and Yuzu. Nintendo stated that these projects are “primarily designed” to circumvent TPMs by enabling the decryption and execution of unauthorized game copies on non-Switch hardware. The notice further mentioned that prior federal court judgments advocated its position, according to which distributing software intended to decrypt and run Switch games without authorization violates the DMCA.
Several affected projects had reportedly attempted to distance themselves from Yuzu’s earlier legal troubles. Citron, Ryubing, and Eden had removed features in an effort to avoid direct association with previously litigated emulator practices. However, according to one Eden developer, the takedown language appears to be largely “copy paste” from earlier actions, largely referencing DRM circumvention and TPM violations. According to them, only two easily replaceable GitHub repositories were affected, noting that the project primarily self-hosts its infrastructure. Other targeted repositories reportedly include dormant forks and legacy codebases.
