Nintendo blitzes GitHub with over 8,000 emulator-related DMCA takedowns

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Nintendo sent a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice for
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hosting code from the
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, which the Zelda maker
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“piracy at a colossal scale.” The sweeping takedown comes two months after
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a lawsuit with Nintendo and its notoriously trigger-happy legal team for $2.4 million.

GamesIndustry.biz first
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on the DMCA notice, affecting 8,535 GitHub repos. Redacted entities representing Nintendo assert that the Yuzu source code contained in the repos “illegally circumvents Nintendo’s technological protection measures and runs illegal copies of Switch games.”


GitHub wrote on the notice that developers will have time to change their content before it’s disabled. In keeping with its developer-friendly approach and branding, the
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also offered legal resources and guidance on submitting DMCA counter-notices.

Nintendo’s legal blitz, perhaps not coincidentally, comes as game emulators are enjoying a resurgence. Last month, Apple
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on retro game players in the App Store (likely in response to
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), leading to the
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and reaching the App Store’s top spot. Nintendo may have calculated that emulators’ moment in the sun threatened its bottom line and began by squashing those that most immediately imperiled its income stream.

Sadly, Nintendo’s largely undefended legal assault against emulators ignores a
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for them that isn’t about piracy. Game historians see the software as a linchpin of
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. Without emulators, Nintendo and other copyright holders could make a part of history obsolete for future generations, as their corresponding hardware will eventually be harder to come by.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
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