Nintendo hits 8,500 Yuzu repositories with DMCA takedowns

The Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu may be no more, but that hasn’t stopped Nintendo from going after those holding onto its code.

As spotted by GamesIndustry, the console maker filed DMCA takedowns against 8,535 repositories on Github that held the emulator’s code. In its takedown notice, Github said it contacted owners to “give them an opportunity to make changes.”

In March, Yuzu was forced to shut down following a $2.4 million settlement with Nintendo after a lawsuit was filed. As part of the agreement with developer Tropic Haze, everyhing Yuzu was shut down: repositories, Patreon, Discord, and websites.

Github’s notice also provided a list of URLs being taken down, one of which was explicitly titled “Yuzu will live.” Others had names like “Yuzu mirror” and “Yuzu downloads.”

Having searched through the forks of the repositories, it found that “all or most of [them] are infringing to the same extent as the parent repositories.”

The aggressive push to kill piracy and emulation

Nintendo’s had a history of legally dealing with emulators and piracy, but the last year has seen some of its most direct attacks yet.

Along with the Yuzu lawsuit, it worked with Valve to take down the famous Dolphin emulator that was being developed for Steam. Had it gone up, Steam players would’ve been able to play titles from the Nintendo Wii and GameCube.

When Microsoft suddenly killed a loophole that let Xbox Series X|S players emulate GameCube and PlayStation 2 games, it was claimed Nintendo had a hand in its ban.

In Denuvo’s case, its anti-piracy software for Nintendo was just the start of a larger crackdown against emulation, with game leaks now being brought into the mix.