Nintendo wipes out 400 more Switch emulator repositories on GitHub as it continues its fight on piracy
Seven more emulators have been taken down with DMCA requests
Nintendo has carried out another round of DMCA takedowns as it continues to fight against Switch emulation.
Back in May 2024 the company took down more than 8,500 clones of Switch emulator Yuzu by issuing a single DMCA notice to GitHub, which led to the site removing 8,535 repositories containing versions of the emulator.
This was followed by another DMCA notice submitted in February 2026, in which Nintendo asked GitHub to take down the repositories still containing Yuzu, as well as those containing at least 12 other Switch emulators.
Now, as reported by TorrentFreak, a further seven DMCA notices have been filed by Nintendo, once again asking GitHub to wipe out any instances of Switch emulators on the site.
As a result of these seven DMCA takedown requests, 401 GitHub repositories have been removed, all containing Switch emulators.
The emulator most affected by this is Suyu, one of the more popular successors to the now collapsed Yuzu. Of the 401 repositories removed, 311 of these contained Suyu.
Others removed include Android Switch emulator Skyline, the C#-based MonoNX, and numerous forks of emulators that used Yuzu as a starting point.
Now, if anyone visits any of the 401 GitHub repositories affected, they’re presented with a notice explaining to them that they’ve been taken down, along with a link to the DMCA notice by Nintendo,
“Distribution of these emulators constitutes unlawful trafficking”, Nintendo says
“The reported repositories offer, link to, or otherwise provide access to Nintendo Switch emulators,” the notice reads. “Nintendo Switch emulators are primarily designed to play Nintendo Switch games. Specifically, these Nintendo Switch emulators illegally circumvent Nintendo’s TPMs in order 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 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.
“Thus, they are primarily designed to and unlawfully ‘circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under’ the DMCA, and 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.
Nintendo sued Yuzu creator Topic Haze in 2024, claiming that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, was pirated over one million times in the week and a half before its release in May.
Nintendo claimed that Yuzu was “facilitating piracy at a colossal scale”, and Tropic Haze settled the lawsuit just weeks later, agreeing to pay $2.4 million in damages.
