They have code from the interpreter for the Yuzu Switch on them.
A notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was sent by Nintendo for more than 8,000 GitHub repositories that hosted code from the Yuzu Switch emulator. The Zelda developer had previously described the emulator as enabling “piracy on a colossal scale.” The widespread takedown comes two months after the authors of Yuzu hastily settled a lawsuit with Nintendo and its notoriously trigger-happy legal team for $2.4 million. The lawsuit was filed against Nintendo.
It was GamesIndustry.biz that initially reported on the DMCA notification, which affected 8,535 repositories on GitHub. It has been asserted by companies representing Nintendo that the Yuzu source code that is included in the repositories “illegally circumvents Nintendo’s technological protection measures and runs illegal copies of Switch games.”
According to the notice that was posted on GitHub, developers will have the opportunity to make changes to their content before it is disabled. The platform, which is owned by Microsoft, also provided legal materials and assistance on how to send DMCA counter-notices. This was done in order to maintain its developer-friendly attitude and branding.
Perhaps it is not a coincidence that Nintendo is launching a legal assault at the same time as game emulators are seeing a renaissance. Last month, Apple lifted its limits on vintage game players in the App Store (presumably in response to regulatory concerns), resulting to the Delta emulator establishing itself as the de facto choice and achieving the App Store’s top spot. Nintendo may have deduced that the popularity of emulators posed a threat to the company’s bottom line, and as a result, the company started by putting an end to those emulators that posed the greatest immediate damage to its revenue stream.
It is unfortunate that Nintendo’s legal campaign against emulators, which is generally undefended, ignores a vital function for emulators that is not related to piracy. Game historians consider the program to be an essential component in the preservation of games. In the absence of emulators, Nintendo and other copyright holders have the potential to render a portion of history irrelevant for future generations. This is because the hardware that corresponds to emulators will gradually become more difficult to acquire.