‘They can never kill emulation’: Players vexed as Nintendo continues its siege on Switch emulation, handing DMCAs to various emulators on GitHub

Nintendo Switch emulation has had a rough go of it. The first big Switch emulator, Yuzu, got targeted by a lawsuit in 2024 that its creators settled out of for $2.4 million, which PC Gamer senior editor Wes Fenlon called “an enormous blow to console emulation.” Similarly, Ryujinx was subsequently discontinued after its creators were given an offer they could not refuse. Switch emulation scattered into all sorts of different forks, and now they’re all feeling a familiar gaze cast their direction.

A thread from user Devile on Reddit spread the news online Thursday, noting that all manner of Switch emulators including Yuzu forks like Eden and Citron received DMCA takedown notices on GitHub. Replies quickly piled in with evidence from various emulation discords and frustration with the whole situation.

Commenter rappidkill stated on the thread, “If they kill one, 10 more will pop up. Kill 10, 100 more will pop up. They can never kill emulation.” Redditor DWRedd commented, “It’s never a bad time to back up your favourite emulators.”

Notably, any self-hosted repositories (in other words, places that host the files not on GitHub) are still up and seemingly unaffected, at least for now. The Citron and Eden websites appear to be doing fine.

“It is true, but nothing major,” claimed Eden developer maufeat on the project’s 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.”

When another Discord user replied with relief that “doomsday” wasn’t “upon us,” maufeat replied, “Not yet” with a custom server emoji of a pensive-looking cat. The consumer right to develop and use emulators has largely been held up by US case law, but it’s not entirely cut and dry.

The association of emulation with piracy, fair or not, has often been used as a justification for legal action against emulator developers. Nintendo, always precious with its intellectual property, has been on the warpath against emulator developers, particularly for Nintendo Switch games, in recent years.