Nintendo is yet again issuing DMCA notices to Switch emulators on GitHub

Lumstar · Feb 17, 2026

RunningSnakes said:
This thread has mold. The same back/forth keyboard lawyer garbage that always happens.

I have read the thread to entirety, nobody wins the debate! Anyone can have their own view/opinion and post, then blasted by some other opposing opinion, unhealthy thread!

Emulation as a whole is a beautiful existence, the ways it has been abused is not. If the game is current and you want to play it, buy it, then play. Simple as that! Everything else is watered down piracy bullshit talk.

There's little question about what the text of US law decrees.
The real debate is SHOULD it be illegal?

As I was saying earlier, forms of emulation that require circumventing DRM are restricted under the DMCA.

Tofu_mommy · Feb 17, 2026

Nintendo hasn't gotten the memo yet I guess. They'd love to have things work different from reality where emulation is legal.

RunningSnakes · Feb 17, 2026

Lumstar said:
There's little question about what the text of US law decrees.
The real debate is SHOULD it be illegal?

As I was saying earlier, forms of emulation that require circumventing DRM are restricted under the DMCA.

We are talking about Switch emulator(s) I have no clue what is/are capable of. I have never owned a Switch but do have a Switch 2 I have played 3-4 times in 8 months.

Ask myself where the line should be drawn for emulation, I very clearly explained that in my post earlier. If a system is still current with games being released for purchase, YES, it should be illegal, which the original Switch still is (end of life console with monitory value).

If and when circumventing DRM is necessary for your greed, you have bigger issues than your gaming filth.

Lumstar · Feb 17, 2026

RunningSnakes said:
We are talking about Switch emulator(s) I have no clue what is/are capable of. I have never owned a Switch but do have a Switch 2 I have played 3-4 times in 8 months.

Ask myself where the line should be drawn for emulation, I very clearly explained that in my post earlier. If a system is still current with games being released for purchase, YES, it should be illegal, which the original Switch still is (end of life console with monitory value).

If and when circumventing DRM is necessary for your greed, you have bigger issues than your gaming filth.

It's not even about piracy. Legitimate, purchased Switch games are encrypted. An emulator has to deal with the cryptography by some means.

RunningSnakes · Feb 17, 2026

Lumstar said:
It's not even about piracy. Legitimate, purchased Switch games are encrypted. An emulator has to deal with the cryptography by some means.

But, you know it has everything to do with piracy. Call a spade a spade and cut through the bullshit!

Nobody is using a Switch emulator if I cannot perform. So why is this thread 7-8 pages deep?

I am very well aquatinted with many emulators, been around the block and then some. You must understand, your debate will never hold water, you will eventually figure this out.

lordelan · Feb 17, 2026

Don't you dare worsening my experience on the upcoming Steam Machine but pushing emulation forks around!

LanHikariDS · Feb 17, 2026

RunningSnakes said:
Nobody is using a Switch emulator if I cannot perform.

... what does this even mean?

RyanTheArchivist · Feb 17, 2026

The Real Jdbye said:
It should be.

For all intents and purposes, it is. There's nothing of note coming out for the Switch. Nintendo themselves are not releasing more games for it. As far as we know, Metroid Prime 4 was the last retail game to be released for the Switch.

I think the problem here is people tend to use the term "preservation" as an excuse for piracy. Which.... yeah on this forum it generally is.

The Real Jdbye · Feb 17, 2026

icegod said:
I think it's not very high on the priority list of what should be to be honest.

The entire Nintendo vs Switch emulators isn't really a recent thing. If the first Switch emulator came out today, chances are Nintendo would react differently to it.

There are some people trying, like with the Stop Killing Games initiative. Nothing is likely to change any time soon (at least not for the better) but maybe in a decade or two... I think it's gonna get a whole lot worse before people are so fed up that something has to change.

RyanTheArchivist said:
I think the problem here is people tend to use the term "preservation" as an excuse for piracy. Which.... yeah on this forum it generally is.

Everybody has their excuse to justify piracy, for some people it's preservation, for some people it's that they're broke and can't afford things, for some people it's that they pirate things they would never buy regardless. Whatever helps them sleep at night, I guess. Personally, I don't care much what copyright law says, if something isn't available through legal means then I consider it public domain. I think that's morally justifiable.

RyanTheArchivist · Feb 17, 2026

The Real Jdbye said:
There are some people trying, like with the Stop Killing Games initiative. Nothing is likely to change any time soon (at least not for the better) but maybe in a decade or two...

Everybody has their excuse to justify piracy, for some people it's preservation, for some people it's that they're broke and can't afford things, for some people it's that they pirate things they would never buy regardless. Whatever helps them sleep at night, I guess. Personally, I don't care much what copyright law says, if something isn't available through legal means then I consider it public domain. I think that's morally justifiable.

I'm just very easily upset by the "preservation" or "archival" excuse as.... well I'm a genuine archivist lol.

_iggyman_ · Feb 18, 2026

_iggyman_ said:
Citron site (and github) are shutdown...

And Kenji-NX are shutdown...

Captain-Z · Feb 18, 2026

The Real Jdbye said:
For all intents and purposes, it is. There's nothing of note coming out for the Switch. Nintendo themselves are not releasing more games for it. As far as we know, Metroid Prime 4 was the last retail game to be released for the Switch.

Tomodachi Life is a Switch 1 exclusive published by Nintendo and it's not even out yet.

Considering the switch 1's audience size, it's highly unlikely switch 1 games will stop being made anytime soon. Just like how every other successful console continued to get more games well after their successor launched.

subcon959 · Feb 19, 2026

Captain-Z said:
Tomodachi Life is a Switch 1 exclusive published by Nintendo and it's not even out yet.

Considering the switch 1's audience size, it's highly unlikely switch 1 games will stop being made anytime soon. Just like how every other successful console continued to get more games well after their successor launched.

Not to mention with the Switch Lite they still have the monopoly on pocketable consoles. It would be crazy not to continue releasing games for at least a couple more years, if not longer.

Reecey · Feb 19, 2026

mangaTom19 said:
I actually use switch emulators to play the games I own on switchfor better resolution or maybe with some mods. Once I modded my switch lite, I dumped both XC2 and TotK game and save files and played it on my pc. It especially suited my purpose considering how horrible XC2 ran and looked on handheld mode. For TotK, I use it mostly for the 60 fps mod. I agree that some use it for piracy purposes but there are others that use it differently so making a broad statement like that isn't exactly true.

You have done buy dumping your own games and using the save files and playing them on an emulator I don’t think Nintendo would class dumping a copy of a game and copying your save file and using them on an emulator as legal

Post automatically merged: Feb 19, 2026

KidIce said:
They most certainly are used to develop homebrew and in fact also used to develop commercial titles. One doesn't code on the console they are targeting, they do it on a PC. It's a hell of a lot faster and easier to test one's new code on an emulator on that same PC rather then write/burn it to that consoles' medium and test it on the actual target.

One will eventually test it on the "real thing", but for smaller adjustments it's far better to do it on an emulator.

Yes but you’re talking about testing homebrew mods for Switch games for example Mario Odyssey which are developed for using on cfw

KidIce · Mar 1, 2026

Reecey said:
Yes but you’re talking about testing homebrew mods for Switch games for example Mario Odyssey which are developed for using on cfw

No I'm not. Commercial titles for consoles are almost never developed on the target platform, they are developed on PC's and workstations and tested on emulators.

When the developers of The Breath of the Wild were working on it, they did not code, compile or test it on a Switch. They used PC's, workstations and emulators. Eventually they put it on the actual target hardware to make sure it runs as expected on the real thing. And after said testing they went back to their workstations.

doorbell8423 · Mar 2, 2026

CMDreamer · Mar 2, 2026

shaunj66 said:
...
[...] 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.
[...]

I'm a Nintendo supporter, but that argument won't stand for too long.

In the end is the user of the emulator that "presumably commits" copyright infringement, not the emulator's developers, as long as they don't use any copyrighted content or include it with their releases/updates.

What Nintendo is doing is presuming something that hasn't even happened, nor has the means to prove it has happened in a very specific case. Generalization can't be used as an argument legally.

impeeza · Mar 3, 2026

shaunj66 said:
View attachment 556857

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

I told you!

Ambers_Crimson_8K · Mar 4, 2026

Lumstar said:
It's not even about piracy. Legitimate, purchased Switch games are encrypted. An emulator has to deal with the cryptography by some means.

NIntendo's own Lawyers said the Emulators are Legal...and yet they keep attacking them.
Lawyers Admitting

Why are they so focused on this, every other company has emulators for their consoles and they aren't wasting this much time taking them down.
You don't see Sony attacking ShadPS4, or Microsoft attacking Xenia and Xemu, I mean dang!
There are millions of people in this world that use emulators, and these people either own real Switches, or had no intentions on getting one, you can't micro manage them, hoping to just kill all your games from being played without purchase.

Spamzilla · Mar 4, 2026

ut2k4master said:
except that those emulators are used for 99.999% piracy

Reecey said:
What else do you think emulators are used for? other than running 100% piracy software. It’s not as though you can say they are used for homebrew purposes

I've been playing Mario Kart Wii Deluxe X a lot lately. A game which features a modified Mario Kart engine that removed various aspects of the game such as hang-gliders and power sliding. It is a game with mostly fan created content, Some tracks are based on existing tracks but modified, such as Luigi Circuit from Mario Kart 8, to run on an older piece of hardware. Are modified engines and creator content harming Nintendo? Probably not! If this was irreparably damaging their corporation then they would have ceased to exist a long time ago.

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