Right around the end of 2025, Nintendo scored a legal victory against third-party controller maker Nacon and won another lawsuit against a streamer who was advocating for piracy. Nintendo is a strong anti-piracy advocate, so it’s no surprise that it is handing out DMCA notices to over thirteen emulators for the Nintendo Switch on GitHub (h/t PCGamer).
The biggest of these emulators, Yuzu, got hit with a lawsuit back in 2024. The creators of Yuzu settled out of court with Nintendo for an alleged $2.4 million. Another popular emulator, Ryujinx, was shut down shortly after. Switch emulation has been in a frenzy ever since, and Reddit user Devile has revealed that most emulators (Citron, Eden, Yuzu, Ryujinx, Skyline, etc.) have either been taken down or will be taken down in the days to come.
Should You Care About Emulation?
Most people think of emulation as piracy, and to be frank, that’s certainly a big part of it. However, emulation itself isn’t directly piracy; it’s a form of digital preservation and a technical bridge that allows software to outlive its original hardware. In the case of the Nintendo Switch, it was a very underpowered console. Most switch emulators allow you to rip game files from the original cartridge and play them at a higher resolution or framerate.
However, this process does turn illegal if you obtain ROMs for free from unverified sources. Those are 100% pirated copies, and piracy is illegal. But does it give Nintendo the right to take down emulators? Debatable. The community argues that emulators are essential for ensuring games don’t vanish once a console reaches the end of life.
The legal crux of this latest takedown rests on the “prod keys.” These are proprietary cryptographic keys required to decrypt and run Switch games. In the DMCA filing, Nintendo asserts the following:
“[Emulators] necessarily use unauthorized copies of these cryptographic keys to decrypt unauthorized copies of Nintendo Switch games.”
This is some very strong wording that frames emulators as unlawful trafficking tech, and Nintendo is attempting to shut down this infrastructure for good. They certainly have their reasons, as The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was allegedly pirated over a million times just days before it even launched.
