Nintendo has yet again issued a series of DMCA takedowns across GitHub that specfically target popular Nintendo Switch emulators. Nintendo's reasoning is to protect its copyrighted IP and prevent unauthorized distribution.

It's common knowledge that most emulators worth their weight do not themselves include any cryptographic keys - with most requiring users provide their own. However, Nintendo has previously insisted that such emulators facilitate copyright infringement rather than claiming them to be illegal as such, and as of now, no court has formally ruled that using or distributing emulators without games violates copyright.

Of course, emulators offer many benefits rather than simply "facilitating piracy". One of the big ones, being of course; game preservation - allowing future generations to experience games that might no longer be available for purchase or that have been delisted. Emulators can also be a great help to users with accessiblity needs, providing alternate input options for those that need it.

What do you think? Is Nintendo justified in its crusade against emulators or should they take a step back?

Source

 

[Exnor]

No, the base isn't the issue, Nintendo would still issue DMCA notices to completely original emulators as well. Since Nintendo ultimately didn't go to court against Yuzu or Ryujinx there's no legal precedent against them that makes them more susceptible to DMCA take downs than any other emulator.

Post automatically merged: Feb 16, 2026

Copyright law prohibits any technology that can harm TPM protected works. Whether the emulator technically did anything wrong doesn't matter. If emulators are being used for piracy then they can be prohibited. Intentions don't matter in copyright law.

i don't think that would stick in a EU court. IANAL but if that was true all computers would technically be ilegal.
Actually by extend, using electricity would be ilegal.

And if Nintendo really wanted, well being human would be ilegal too, by that logic.

Post automatically merged: Feb 16, 2026

Nintendo actually needs to be the ones to pursue legal action here. Just because you get a DMCA notice doesn't mean you have to abide by it.

Then their case can get thrown out because the legality of emulation has been established for nearly 3 decades .

That is what i think too.

I remember these last 2 cases: Emulation Lawsuits.

 

[Captain-Z]

i don't think that would stick in a EU court. IANAL but if that was true all computers would technically be ilegal.
Actually by extend, using electricity would be ilegal.

And if Nintendo really wanted, well being human would be ilegal too, by that logic.

Hard to say. The US basically forces it's copyright laws onto other countries, but that might not matter much anymore.

Computers themselves would be hard to challenge because they don't directly facilitate piracy and quite obviously have a commercial use case outside piracy. In contrast Nintendo does have evidence that emulators are used for piracy and don't have any sort of commercial viability beyond that. You could, of course, argue that emulators can be use for homebrew game and personal backups, but you'd need to actually demonstrate that is the case to a significant extent, not just say it as a hypothetical.

 

[KidIce]

Nuking emulation generally is a terrible thing in my opinion. Unless it contains illegal content(s), it should be allowed to stay. HOWEVER, I can't in good conscious look at this completely one sided, and keep all fingers pointed at that one side (Nintendo in this case). I have other points that could be made, but I am just going to stick to one major point that I feel takes a bit more precedence.

I'm just going to rip the band-aid off with this one, I can't think of a less harsher way to express this. A lot of people in general are just preaching thumpers when it comes to the "preservation" argument(s). We can list all the good reasons of why emulators are essential, genuinely good resources overall, and have a lengthy conversation, breaking each point down. We could even talk about the benefits of piracy if one was so inclined to. The problem is, most people preaching this stuff don't actually function by preservation logic at all, let alone doesn't even contribute to the cause of preservation. Too many people here and elsewhere are users and abusers of these types of resources. When there are a lot more of you making bad noise, giving these concepts a bad name and a bad look to follow, it's pretty straightforward to understand why a company could consider the idea of going nuts over stuff like an emulator existing, or ROM sites. When most people preaching aren't even genuine examples that add or boost the reputation of such resources in a good light, what the hell does one expect to happen? Should companies just sit idle while you rip through their stuff? You screaming "But preservation!!!" with your fingers crossed behind your back, then behind the curtain muttering "...because I can." That's a ton of dirty hypocrisy and selfishness if I'm being honest, especially considering preservation by nature is about everyone and the future (history as a whole), not just you. Keep going with warping the word though, whatever helps you sleep at night I guess.

This relationship isn't perfect, but fingers have to be pointed on both sides of the field, not just one, because it takes two to make this work. Both sides are dysfunctional, just in different ways, but certainly over the same content(s).

Yup, a lot of pirated content is being used on emulators. Some of that content can still be purchased and a lot of it cannot. And that is where preservation becomes an argument. Some content is truly "dead" because the developers and publishers no longer exist or have internal copies of that content...

In fact Nintendo apparently never archived Super Mario Brothers for the NES because the ROM dump on their very own NES mini contains a header that is appended when a certain piracy dumper was used to dump it to disk. That ROM dump has been floating around the internet for decades. Nintendo had to download and use that dump because they didn't bother to archive their own IP. LOL, if you think about it, they are stealing the services of pirates they want to put in jail.

Yes, a lot of people who make the preservation argument are just using it as justification and don't actually know what they're talking about... They just want to feel moral about getting free games. In this you are correct.

Do not however discount the fact that preservation is actually a real reason for so called piracy tools (e.g. dumpers) to duplicate media, tools to archive them and a method to use them when the platform they run on doesn't exist any more.

Who is around to preserve this Samurai Warrior: The Battles of Usagi Yojimbo,for example, but for the pirates? It's a ground breaking game in a lot of ways and I love(d) it. And almost no one could play it today w/o the preservation you condemn. The original disks almost all have bit rot. There is no commercial entity that can sell it to you because they are no longer in business, didn't archive the game and even if they did they don't sell their C=64 titles anymore.

I get your rant, I see the bullshit spouted by people just using preservastion as a justification for their illegal behavior. None the less the preservation argument is very real. There are literally games that would would be lost to time w/o the archivers/pirates.

Even Nintendo would have lost SMB NES w/o them apparently.

 

[Captain-Z]

In fact Nintendo apparently never archived Super Mario Brothers for the NES because the ROM dump on their very own NES mini contains a header that is appended when a certain piracy dumper was used to dump it to disk. That ROM dump has been floating around the internet for decades. Nintendo had to download and use that dump because they didn't bother to archive their own IP. LOL, if you think about it, they are stealing the services of pirates they want to put in jail.

This is actually not true. What you're referring to is the fact that Wii VC games contained the iNES header commonly used in NES ROM dumps. There is no evidence Nintendo downloaded the ROM from the internet. What we do know, however, is that the people Nintendo hired to develop their NES emulator were familiar with unofficial NES emulation, so it's actually more likely they simply reused the header format they already knew how to work with.

 

[RedBlueGreen]

No, the base isn't the issue, Nintendo would still issue DMCA notices to completely original emulators as well. Since Nintendo ultimately didn't go to court against Yuzu or Ryujinx there's no legal precedent against them that makes them more susceptible to DMCA take downs than any other emulator.

Post automatically merged: Feb 16, 2026

Copyright law prohibits any technology that can harm TPM protected works. Whether the emulator technically did anything wrong doesn't matter. If emulators are being used for piracy then they can be prohibited. Intentions don't matter in copyright law.

Except it was established almost 30 years ago that emulation is completely legal as long as they're not distributing copyrighted material when Sony sued the developers of the Bleem! PS1 emulator. An emulator isn't hurting copyrighted works by allowing you to play them on hardware other than what's intended.

It's not up to you to decide how copyright law applies, it's up to the courts, and they've ruled in favour of emulators before.

 

[NitroShell]

Of course, emulators offer many benefits rather than simply "facilitating piracy". One of the big ones, being of course; game preservation - allowing future generations to experience games that might no longer be available for purchase or that have been delisted.

I still don't understand why people say this because how is a emulator preserving games? If the game files don't get preserved you can't even use the files on a emulator or real hardware.

 

[Renos44]

Except it was established almost 30 years ago that emulation is completely legal as long as they're not distributing copyrighted material when Sony sued the developers of the Bleem! PS1 emulator. An emulator isn't hurting copyrighted works by allowing you to play them on hardware other than what's intended.

It's not up to you to decide how copyright law applies, it's up to the courts, and they've ruled in favour of emulators before.

You know I've come to hate how over the years people completely misunderstand the ruling of the bleem case and why it kinda fails to apply to any modern console or emulator.

TLDR in the bleem VS sony Sony sued for unfair competition and copyright violation for the use of Sony game screenshots in Bleem advertising

A judge dismissed the unfair competition claim and sony won the copyright violation
Bleem appealed and got the ruling reversed.
Sony sued again for patent infringement over the PS1 bios this never got a ruling as both parties settled and bleem declared bankruptcy. So only precedent set by this case is you can't be sued for screenshots.


The other major case would have been Sony VS Connectix
TLDR Sony argued copying the PS1 bios and reverse engineering it violated copyright
Connectix argued otherwise and the final product used no original sony code.
Court ruled in favor of connectix and said doing that is fair use and deemed that the PlayStation firmware fell under a lowered degree of copyright protection because it contained unprotected parts (functional elements) that could not be examined without copying.

Now personally i think another major thing at play here is that as far as i know the Virtual game station emulator without hacking it would only play real retail ps1 discs not copies or ISO files. And I have no idea who in 1999 - 2000 would have been mass downloading ps1 ISOs over a 56k modem connection. This is also a time period where DMCA and its surronding laws are brand new.

Fast foward to 2026
Things have drastically changed and nintendo could no doubt get Sony VS connectix ignored as they would tackle a court case in a VERY different manor.
DMCA has matured alot
Console and game security measures are very different.
Mass pirating over the internet is a thing.
Going to court now would likely lead to a modern emulator getting the book thrown at them.

 

[KidIce]

This is actually not true. What you're referring to is the fact that Wii VC games contained the iNES header commonly used in NES ROM dumps. There is no evidence Nintendo downloaded the ROM from the internet. What we do know, however, is that the people Nintendo hired to develop their NES emulator were familiar with unofficial NES emulation, so it's actually more likely they simply reused the header format they already knew how to work with.

Has 8bit Guy been debunked on this topic? That's where I found out about it, and his speech most certainly talked about the NES mini not the Wii VC. Just the same, if the ROM has that header it was obtained via a piracy tool no matter what platform it runs on in the end (mini,VC,etc).

That said, you are suggesting they used a "piracy tool" to dump their own games. Here is why: In the case of the NES there is zero reason to have a header in the first place. It is added by the dumping tool. A raw dump would not contain this header, If Nintendo had a "gold disk" to master from it would not contain that header.

Or are you suggesting Nitendo added that header themselves so it would be more friendly to the pirates that they hired to write an emulator for their platform? You know that's ridiculous, right? The emulator coders don't need that header. No emulator needs that header. That header is pure bragging rights from the group that brought you that piracy device. Useless bytes on a real NES and useless bytes on an emulator. It's not even code, meaningless, just bragging rights.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I thought they'd all moved to gitlab and such. Also, the DMCA takedowns never stopped, did they? Any DMCA reupload on github eventually gets DMCA'd again.

 

[lwiz]

I thought they'd all moved to gitlab and such. Also, the DMCA takedowns never stopped, did they? Any DMCA reupload on github eventually gets DMCA'd again.

None of the relevant projects are in github, but for example Eden has the binaries downloadable from there. Development etc. are done elsewhere. The original news headers (and the one in here) are pure click journalism, and this case is also not that newsworthy to start with as the github dmca has exactly zero effect on the emus.

Also, at least the Eden downloads are still available on github which could mean that either the DMCA was spurious or github feels the request has no legal basis. Usually the DMCA's have taken effect much faster.

 

[ChronoCrossfangirl2002]

I still don't understand why people say this because how is a emulator preserving games? If the game files don't get preserved you can't even use the files on a emulator or real hardware.

it's as simple as the emulator is a console as rom is within a cartridge or disk when you only have the rom and or cartridge/disk, yes you are preserving the game
but that alone doesn't convey what the game is or it's significance, seeing it in motion and or playing is what helps better convey that and both an emulator and rom helps achieve just that.

it's why emulators play a big role in helping preserve video games both are necessary for preserving games as one can't be without the other without it being just something to look at rather than a full picture into how a game looked and played then versus now.

think of it as a puzzle, it's not complete without all the necessary pieces to form a picture

 

[Captain-Z]

Has 8bit Guy been debunked on this topic? That's where I found out about it, and his speech most certainly talked about the NES mini not the Wii VC. Just the same, if the ROM has that header it was obtained via a piracy tool no matter what platform it runs on in the end (mini,VC,etc).

That said, you are suggesting they used a "piracy tool" to dump their own games. Here is why: In the case of the NES there is zero reason to have a header in the first place. It is added by the dumping tool. A raw dump would not contain this header, If Nintendo had a "gold disk" to master from it would not contain that header.

Or are you suggesting Nitendo added that header themselves so it would be more friendly to the pirates that they hired to write an emulator for their platform? You know that's ridiculous, right? The emulator coders don't need that header. No emulator needs that header. That header is pure bragging rights from the group that brought you that piracy device. Useless bytes on a real NES and useless bytes on an emulator. It's not even code, meaningless, just bragging rights.

The NES mini uses the same rom from Wii and WII U VC.

The iNES header is not added by dumping tools, it's added manually by the programmer. Nor is it for "meaningless bragging rights". The Ines header contains data mapping information that nearly all NES emulators require in order for them to work. This was, (and remains), the standard way to emulate NES game at the time, so it's not a stretch to think that it was applied to Nintendo's own archived ROM.

Post automatically merged: Feb 16, 2026

Except it was established almost 30 years ago that emulation is completely legal as long as they're not distributing copyrighted material when Sony sued the developers of the Bleem! PS1 emulator. An emulator isn't hurting copyrighted works by allowing you to play them on hardware other than what's intended.

It's not up to you to decide how copyright law applies, it's up to the courts, and they've ruled in favour of emulators before.

Some one else responded to this quite well so I'll just refer you to him.

 

[lightwo]

Going to court against Nintendo is a deathwish. Lobbying and other means used by companies with big legal powers makes it too risky of an endeavour. Yuzu settling out of court was the closest dodge imaginable. The community has shown to be able to anonymously "rebrand" under a myriad of names, and it appears to be effective, so I guess it's all about intimidation now.

 

[icegod]

I genuinely hate when people use this stupid argument. Intentionally or not, it is extremely disingenuous, by that logic we shouldn't be allowed to preserve something like Super Mario Bros. for the fucking NES. because Nintendo to this day is still milking that and other games from 40 years ago.

These companies exists for the sole purpose of profiting, nothing less, nothing more. We shouldn't gatekeep digital preservation based on corporate interests, that will never workout.

Your argument makes very little sense tbh. Super Mario Bros for the Nes is no longer available in retail. Sure, it's on NSO in emulation form, but even Nintendo doesn't care to take down NES emulators. It's not their money maker nowadays, compared to new releases.

Offcourse Nintendo only cares about profit, every company who doesn't want to go bankrupt does...

But you seem to think of preservation as a right. It isn't.

But if preservation is truly your motivation for emulation, there are no arguments to be made that it can't wait until after the console is at it's EOL. If you're deadset on having emulation for current generation consoles, you're in it for piracy.

 

[WiiWare_lover]

No, it simply isn't. Zero copyrighted material is actually being distributed with the emulators.

The only reason why Nintendo is taking the emulators down is because they "can be used for piracy".

Sure, they can be used for piracy, in the same way that a knife can be used for stabbing someone to death. But both have uses that are useful and legitimate.

They also want people buy their console too (even tho there aren't many that buy the game and dump the ROM from a friend's console)

 

[NinStar]

Your argument makes very little sense tbh. Super Mario Bros for the Nes is no longer available in retail. Sure, it's on NSO in emulation form, but even Nintendo doesn't care to take down NES emulators. It's not their money maker nowadays, compared to new releases.

But you seem to think of preservation as a right. It isn't.

I'm pointing out that if we were to follow your logic we shouldn't be allowed to preserve the game for the NES (the original release) because Nintendo is still re-releasing it on current gen consoles for the 138795165715195 time.

Also, I never said it was a right from a legal standpoint, but doesn't change the fact that I or anyone else can advocate for it, I openly advocate against IP laws all the time, so for ideological reasons I'm in favor of piracy.

But if preservation is truly your motivation for emulation, there are no arguments to be made that it can't wait until after the console is at it's EOL. If you're deadset on having emulation for current generation consoles, you're in it for piracy.

This is just an arbitrary stipulation, most emulators have been developed during the life time of their respective consoles, this has pretty much always been the norm. Do you genuinely believe people should only be allowed to start researching and developing them only after the console is out of the market because, "oh no, people are going to use it for piracy"? Sorry, but this is just plain stupid.

Emulators and preservation of games (the medium) are two distinct things under the same umbrella.

 

[subcon959]

Nintendo + DMCA = guaranteed maximal thread engagement on gbatemp. If only there was as much interest in the actual gaming topics.

 

[RyanTheArchivist]

No, the base isn't the issue, Nintendo would still issue DMCA notices to completely original emulators as well. Since Nintendo ultimately didn't go to court against Yuzu or Ryujinx there's no legal precedent against them that makes them more susceptible to DMCA take downs than any other emulator.

Post automatically merged: Feb 16, 2026

Copyright law prohibits any technology that can harm TPM protected works. Whether the emulator technically did anything wrong doesn't matter. If emulators are being used for piracy then they can be prohibited. Intentions don't matter in copyright law.

You're forgetting something. It not going to court and letting them do is a good thing. Emulation being tested in court would be awful. That could make things worse for the entire emulation community as a whole.

 

[LanHikariDS]

While I agree with your point, something being used for piracy is enough to make it illegal under copyright law. As long as Nintendo can demonstrate emulators have a commercial impact on published works that includes TPMs then they can been deemed illegal in court, An emulator's potential legitimate uses don't matter.

At least for the US and Canada. Pretty sure most other first world countries are similar.

It's literally not though. Do you have any cases to back this up? By that logic, any form of PC is illegal under copyright law, since all piracy in the modern day is done through PCs. That argument doesn't hold up at all.

 

[icegod]

I'm pointing out that if we were to follow your logic we shouldn't be allowed to preserve the game for the NES (the original release) because Nintendo is still re-releasing it on current gen consoles for the 138795165715195 time.

Also, I never said it was a right from a legal standpoint, but doesn't change the fact that I or anyone else can advocate for it, I openly advocate against IP laws all the time, so for ideological reasons I'm in favor of piracy.


This is just an arbitrary stipulation, most emulators have been developed during the life time of their respective consoles, this has pretty much always been the norm. Do you genuinely believe people should only be allowed to start researching and developing them only after the console is out of the market because, "oh no, people are going to use it for piracy"? Sorry, but this is just plain stupid.

Emulators and preservation of games (the medium) are two distinct things under the same umbrella.

Using the term "stupid" to set down others opinions, takes all validity away from your own imo, but let's not digress.

Again, there is a difference between a first "new in store sale", and a re-release through a classic device. It's a huge difference in income.

The fact that you advocate against IP laws, and advocate piracy, actually shows your true intentions beyond emulation. You don't truly care about preservation it feels. It's a point of view I personally am against, and I would describe with words that wouldn't be fitting here. But that's all another topic.

While it's true that emulation always went hand in hand with current life consoles, it was rarely if ever at a point where it could be emulated better than it could be played in the original hardware. One could also program an emulator, perfect it over time, without releasing it for the mass.

If preservation is the true intention of emulation, it would be a very small price to pay to just wait to release it.

At this point, I have the feeling emulators will become illegal in the near future.