Some fallout from the early leak of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom appears to be taking place. As players are loading the game into emulators and playing them unofficially on their computers, prior to the launch date, Nintendo is taking action to prevent that from happening. Lockpick and Lockpick_RCM are homebrew tools that allow users to dump unique keys from their Nintendo Switch console, which are required for numerous Switch hacking-related programs, including the Ryujinx and Yuzu Switch emulators. While Lockpick has been around for years, Nintendo has reportedly decided to go after it, by issuing a DMCA takedown to the GitHub project page, igniting concern and discussion within the community.

At the time of writing, Lockpick_RCM's repository is still active, it could be due to GitHub providing a grace period following a DMCA notice. Twitter user Simon Aarons was made aware of the takedown, after forking Lockpick, and allegedly receiving an email from GitHub, on behalf of Nintendo of America's legal team, who asserts that Lockpick is "circumvention software that infringes Nintendo’s intellectual property rights. Specifically, the reported repository provides Lockpick to users. The use of Lockpick with a modified Nintendo Switch console allows users to bypass Nintendo’s Technological Measures for video games; specifically, Lockpick bypasses the Console TPMs to permit unauthorized access to, extraction of, and decryption of all the cryptographic keys, including product keys, contained in the Nintendo Switch. The decrypted keys facilitate copyright infringement by permitting users to play pirated versions of Nintendo’s copyright-protected game software on systems without Nintendo’s Console TPMs or systems on which Nintendo’s Console TPMs have been disabled. Trafficking in circumvention software, such as Lockpick, violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the United States (specifically, 17 U.S.C. §1201), and infringes copyrights owned by Nintendo."

Shortly after this, Skyline Emulator, a Switch emulator for Android devices, made the decision to shut down development, via a post on their Discord Server. Since you need the keys dumped from Lockpick in order to run Skyline, the team behind the emulator is concerned that it means Nintendo will target them for also violating their copyright.

It is with great sadness that we bring you this news. Recently, Nintendo has issued a DMCA takedown notice against Lockpick RCM which will likely come into effect on Monday, Lockpick is a core part of legally dumping keys from the Switch. They claim that it circumvents their copy protection (TPMs) and therefore violates their copyright. We find ourselves in a position where we are potentially violating their copyright by continuing to develop our project, Skyline, by dumping keys from our own Switches.

The Skyline team will be making their incomplete source code public, at the very least, and will keep the emulator's GitHub page active. Other homebrew projects are rumored to have been hit with DMCA notices as well. Ryujinx's emulator team stated that they will not be shutting down, following worries after Skyline.

 

[SG-17]

Some of the posts in this thread are hilarious. It might be bad for pirates but Nintendo wanting to nuke projects that enable piracy or at the very least break their TOS doesn’t seem unreasonable.

Also, a thread full of weirdly angry posts threatening to boycott them is going to achieve precisely nothing when I would bet that 90%+ of Switch users aren’t even aware of Switch piracy at all, and only a small proportion of those who are aware actually care lol

It is explicitly not illegal to bypass DRM for content you paid for, so long as you don't then share it with other people. Backups have long been legal. Section 117 of the US Copyright Act specifically allows it.

What Nintendo is trying to do here is use their financial might to bully people who are creating completely legal methods to backup Switch games into shutting down their projects. Nintendo is circumventing the law.

 

[thekarter104]

Some of the posts in this thread are hilarious. It might be bad for pirates but Nintendo wanting to nuke projects that enable piracy or at the very least break their TOS doesn’t seem unreasonable.

Also, a thread full of weirdly angry posts threatening to boycott them is going to achieve precisely nothing when I would bet that 90%+ of Switch users aren’t even aware of Switch piracy at all, and only a small proportion of those who are aware actually care lol

The average user on GBATemp lol.
Maybe if it wasn't for the huge unpatchable Tegra exploit... Things would've been way different.

 

[Dark_Ansem]

It's already been 6 years?!

I refuse to believe that is real.

 

[EpikJimmer]

i'm not even gonna do some kind of special reaction like OHHH WHAAT UNBELIEVABLE!!!11
this is common knowledge at this point

 

[gaga941021]

Nintendont doing the Nintendont things as usual.

How is this funny?

 

[dh3lix-pooch]

How is this funny?

It totally is fine if you dont find sarkasm funny.

 

[kisamesama]

I have a switch and was not going to dload the leaked Zelda game but Nintendo again doing his stupid stuff.
I am going to dload the leaked zelda game and emulate it on pc.

 

[thekarter104]

Literally every person in the world should tweet leaked gameplay to Nintendo, including Sony and Microsoft XD, see how Nintendo deals with BILLIONS of people in the world. Nintendo is going to have a really hard time dealing with literally everyone, taking down 10000s of websites, if those billions of people registers domains with leaked stuff, 100% gameplay way before the game comes out. Oh yes, and email and call customer support about the game.
Good luck Nintendo.

Think twice of shipping out games too early.

 

[M7L7NK7]

Literally every person in the world should tweet leaked gameplay to Nintendo, including Sony and Microsoft XD, see how Nintendo deals with BILLIONS of people in the world. Nintendo is going to have a really hard time dealing with literally everyone, taking down 10000s of websites, if those billions of people registers domains with leaked stuff, 100% gameplay way before the game comes out. Good luck Nintendo.

Think twice of shipping out games too early.

Lmao what

 

[TomSwitch]

Literally every person in the world should tweet leaked gameplay to Nintendo, including Sony and Microsoft XD, see how Nintendo deals with BILLIONS of people in the world. Nintendo is going to have a really hard time dealing with literally everyone, taking down 10000s of websites, if those billions of people registers domains with leaked stuff, 100% gameplay way before the game comes out. Good luck Nintendo.

Think twice of shipping out games too early.

The game cards weren't shipped early. It's just how logistic works that you can't have everything arriving all at once.

Nintendo is wise enough to not be bother by the possibility ( actually certainty ) that some one will dump the game.

They have long accepted unpatched Switch (it's like peanuts). It is probably PC( to a small extend) and Android(to a big extend) that they mind. Android is where you can have a billion people playing Nintendo games.

Actually having a billion people playing your game without paying isn't that bad a deal. Just convert a small fraction of them into fans that buy every game you release and you will never worry about money again.

 

[ertaboy356b]

Do you mean those that played every Nintendo game while telling others how much they hated it? Those are die hard fans who has developed a Nintendo dependency that they can't escape from. They are confused between love and hate.

Probably those who keep saying "I have played 60 hours of BOTW and I hated it" lmao. Why keep playing then? Move on.

Post automatically merged: May 7, 2023

It is explicitly not illegal to bypass DRM for content you paid for, so long as you don't then share it with other people. Backups have long been legal. Section 117 of the US Copyright Act specifically allows it.

What Nintendo is trying to do here is use their financial might to bully people who are creating completely legal methods to backup Switch games into shutting down their projects. Nintendo is circumventing the law.

Unfortunately, those claiming they played switch games on the Steam Deck never dumped their keys or they never had a switch to begin with.

Post automatically merged: May 7, 2023

Actually having a billion people playing your game without paying isn't that bad a deal. Just convert a small fraction of them into fans that buy every game you release and you will never worry about money again.

That would be a perfect scenario, but you know, those android "gamers" are used to not paying for games. Just look at the review of Chinese Parents on Android Play Store? They are full of "twas a fun game but pay walled so 1 star" lmao.

 

[Centrix]

Shame about Skyline, but I’ll be interested to see what their team is moving onto next.

As well as who pics up the project next. I think this DMCA take down is dumb. Unless you know how jailbreak a switch and use these teams projects, I think what Nintendo is doing is useless. On top of that, there will always be away around this, just give it time. Personally, if I had created any of these homebrew projects I'd leave them up. It's like emulation, there's that gray area that unless you have the rom, emulation is fine. So I'd think that the same or similar rules would apply to homebrew applications.

 

[Deleted member 194275]

As well as who pics up the project next. I think this DMCA take down is dumb. Unless you know how jailbreak a switch and use these teams projects, I think what Nintendo is doing is useless. On top of that, there will always be away around this, just give it time. Personally, if I had created any of these homebrew projects I'd leave them up. It's like emulation, there's that gray area that unless you have the rom, emulation is fine. So I'd think that the same or similar rules would apply to homebrew applications.

Nintendo is trying to make people give up trying on the future. The switch piracy will never stop, but if a n% of skilled people give up messing with Nintendo, future consoles hacking and emulation will develop in a much slower pace. Fear is the game here.

Even gbatemp is afraid. See what will happen to you if you post a totk screenshot here.

 

[Centrix]

Nintendo is trying to make people give up trying on the future. The switch piracy will never stop, but if a n% of skilled people give up messing with Nintendo, future consoles hacking and emulation will develop in a much slower pace. Fear is the game here.

Even gbatemp is afraid. See what will happen to you if you post a totk screenshot here.

I mean, on one hand I fully understand were Big N is coming from. A whole slew of ppl spent like 6 years on Tears of the Kingdom only for it to be leaked two weeks in advanced! So I'd be pretty peeved too. However, Going after the emulation/homebrew community won't actually fix the problem I think. Try getting better security and such. How many times a year to they get security breaches? A lot. Sure they give out review copies early, so why not wait until the games out before doing that? I'm just saying there are way more "Effective" ways they could go about this than blowing smoke with a DMCA take down.

 

[stanleyopar2000]

The keys probably will always be not far from a search away

Post automatically merged: May 7, 2023

How do you think those keys get distributed from the internet? They don't magically appear.....they use Lockpick to get them. That's why they pinpointed their aggression towards it.

 

[smf]

It is explicitly not illegal to bypass DRM for content you paid for, so long as you don't then share it with other people. Backups have long been legal. Section 117 of the US Copyright Act specifically allows it.

Backups are legal in the US, selling or otherwise distributing something that can circumvent the DRM to use those backups however is unlawful according to the DMCA.

What Nintendo is trying to do here is use their financial might to bully people who are creating completely legal methods to backup Switch games into shutting down their projects. Nintendo is circumventing the law.

The DMCA makes it illegal to do it whether it's for legal backups or not, because there is no way for those distributing this type of thing to know whether it's for legal backups or not.

 

[Sphaa]

This will properly be a unpopular opinion, but I can understand that Nintendo will use any means available to try and stop piracy, and emulation of newly released games. And to be honest in some way I don't blame them, especially when someone leaks their biggest game before release-date - it's kind of a di*k-move.
I'm a big supporter of emulation and I think it's important for preservation and to be able to play games from your childhood - I've spent countless hours using them myself. But to be able to play games for the current generation for free on your PC is really in a grey-zone, and I'm not really sure I support Emulation being soo good for the current generation.
When people recommend others to rather buy a steam-deck instead of a official Nintendo Switch to play the newest games I think it's gone a little too far. Sorry, but it's my personal opinion.

 

[Goku1992A]

Forgive me mods this comment may be offensive so I apologize in advance. Some of you guys SERIOUSLY need to get a grip. Blame the leakers who leaked the game 2 weeks early. Nintendo has a LONG HISTORY of suing people, issuing DMCA notices , canceling fan made projects nothing is new.

If you guys hate Nintendo so much stop using their products... I'm a pirate I have no shame in my game but I do own alot of switch games some of you guys seen my collection....

I'm not blaming Nintendo for this I'm blaming the leakers for this. Every action has a reaction. If Piracy was UNDERGROUND we wouldn't have the issues we have today. A company have the RIGHT to protect their products but you will find more the exposure is why we have this issue. CFW users don't even take up 10% of the market but it is the online postings and easy accessibility that is notifying Nintendo.

Nintendo don't care what you do with your system. In reality no company does but when you start showing to the masses posting online that's when you have these issues. If a group of guys leaked Tears of the Kingdom and KEPT IT TO THEMSELVES and naturally released the game maybe 2 weeks after release date we wouldn't have this uproar.

Lot of these guys do things for "clout" or "5 minutes of game" and don't think of the long term. This is why we never can have nice things.

But idk I buy my games I don't have these type of problems.

 

[Pickle_Rick]

Some of you guys SERIOUSLY need to get a grip. Blame the leakers who leaked the game 2 weeks early. Nintendo has a LONG HISTORY of suing people, issuing DMCA notices , canceling fan made projects nothing is new.

Is that supposed to make their behavior OK? Lol.

 

[Zajumino]

Blame the leakers who leaked the game 2 weeks early. Nintendo has a LONG HISTORY of suing people, issuing DMCA notices , canceling fan made projects nothing is new.

The logic here makes no sense. If Nintendo behaves like this anyways, then what impact did the leak even have? What exactly are we blaming them for?