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Nintendo's continuing its ongoing crusade against Switch emulation as the company just dished out a fresh helping of DMCAs to several major emulators.
As you might remember, Nintendo first came down hard on emulation two years ago when it targeted the first Switch emulator, Yuzu, with a lawsuit that ended with its creator paying $2.4 million in a settlement. A few months later, Ryujinx also went offline after Nintendo apparently "offered an agreement to stop working on the project." At the time, the fates of both were seen as a potentially bad omen for the future of Switch emulation, and that future's now seemingly come to pass.
Redditor Devile shared the news earlier this week, bringing to light that several similar emulators on GitHub, including Citron and Eden, were all hit with DMCA takedown notices. Several replies on the thread spread the news from other emulator communities, though it seems self-hosted repos existing outside of GitHub are unaffected by all the commotion. (Good spot, PC Gamer.)
"If they kill one, ten more will pop up," one reply in the thread reads. "Kill ten, 100 more will pop up. They can never kill emulation."
"It is true, but nothing major," an Eden developer maufeat claimed on its Discord. "Our release repo got the notice so you will probably have to download future releases and nightlies directly from us. Most of them are forks which was just a matter of time to get a DMCA notice on GitHub. But this is why we (and other emulators) don't host the source on GitHub."
Emulation in itself is not illegal, but it does exist in a dubious grey area alongside its shady cousin, piracy. Nintendo's suit against Yuzu was based on the fact that the emulator helped promote a million illegal The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom downloads before its official release, for example.
