Nintendo Easily Kills 4,238 Switch Emu Repos on Yuzu Lawsuit Anniversary

A single DMCA anti-circumvention notice, sent by Nintendo on the one-year anniversary of its 2024 lawsuit against Yuzu, showed just how much things can change in a year. Targeting nine repos linked to Switch emulator Ryujinx, the domino effect led to the removal of 4,238 repos. Elsewhere, the distilled components of Yuzu's demise can be found in recent takedown notices

 Late September 2024, the developer of Switch emulator Ryujinx announced an end to the project. Launched by ‘gdkchan’ in 2017, Ryujinx enjoyed years of success only to succumb to the same pressure that had claimed another emulator, Yuzu, just a few months earlier.

Within a seemingly flawless design that could’ve been crafted by Shigeru Miyamoto himself, Nintendo filed an arguably perfect lawsuit against Yuzu on February 26, 2024. A previously unknown business entity behind Yuzu quickly acknowledged its veracity, and a settlement was formally announced to the court exactly a week later, March 4, 2024.

Specific conduct detailed in the lawsuit laid the foundations for Yuzu’s swift demise and provided a blueprint for similar Nintendo victories moving forward. With the market leader defeated so easily, it seemed that only the brave or very rich would gamble on a different outcome.

In September, just months after the filing of the original lawsuit against Yuzu on February 26, Nintendo “offered an agreement” to gdkchan. Once accepted, that ended his involvement in the Ryujinx project.

During November 2024, domains including ryujinx.org and ryujinx.blog were transferred to Nintendo ownership. They join other domains previously secured by Nintendo for permanent safekeeping, including jailbreakmyswitch.com and donkeykong.porn.

One-Year Anniversary

A pair of Nintendo DMCA notices sent to GitHub last week coincided with the one-year anniversary of the Yuzu lawsuit. Dated February 26, they contained requests to remove repos that had been helping to keep the open source Ryujinx emulator alive. Before taking action, GitHub contacted the nine repositories listed in the first notice and gave their owners an opportunity to make changes to avoid being taken down.

Ultimately, deletion couldn’t be avoided, not for the nine repos named in the notice, or for more than 4,200 others in the same network.

 “Because the reported network that contained the allegedly infringing content was larger than one hundred (100) repositories, and the submitter alleged that all or most of the forks were infringing to the same extent as the parent repository, GitHub processed the takedown notice against the entire network of 4,238 repositories, inclusive of the parent repository,” GitHub reports.

The second Nintendo notice also targeted Ryujinx repos; just three this time, but once again the notice punched above its weight. After giving repo owners a chance to address Nintendo’s complaint, GitHub processed the notice against a network of 113 repositories.

Removing so many repos at once would’ve likely been less straightforward a year ago. The law today stands completely unchanged but the effect of the Yuzu lawsuit and settlement suggests that if perceptions have shifted, any change strongly favors Nintendo.

Technical Measures and Circumvention

Nintendo “owns or exclusively controls” numerous copyrights in games that are protected from unlawful access and copying by so-called ‘technological protection measures’ (TPM). For example, Switch games are encrypted, so before they can be played, decryption takes place using Nintendo keys, also known as ‘prod keys’.

Circumventing TPMs that “effectively control access” to copyrighted works is outlawed under the DMCA. In this context, anyone doing so without obtaining permission from Nintendo commits an offense under the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions.

Yuzu lawsuit allegations distilled in a takedown notice

The text of the Nintendo notice notes that the Ryujinx emulator is primarily designed to play illegal copies of Nintendo Switch games and does so by illegally circumventing Nintendo’s TPMs. Since that can only be achieved through use of unauthorized copies of Nintendo prod keys, that means Ryujinx is primarily designed to unlawfully circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under the DMCA.

Distribution of Ryujinx, therefore, constitutes unlawful trafficking in a technology that is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure, contrary to 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1) and (2).

Nintendo goes on to reference the final judgment in Nintendo of America Inc. v. Tropic Haze LLC, highlighting the finding that “the distribution of software which primarily decrypts Nintendo Switch games without authorization, violates the DMCA’s anti-trafficking provisions.”

Anti-Circumvention Notices

GitHub’s ‘developer first’ policy takes DMCA takedown notices seriously while arguably fixing a potential avenue of abuse. DMCA anti-circumvention notices differ from regular notices due to the absence of a mechanism to dispute the claim via a counternotice. By granting a right of reply, GitHub ensures that bogus claims can’t be used for censorship purposes. Google also makes best efforts to weed out potential abuse but in general, URLs targeted by anti-circumvention notices are unlikely to see the light of day again.

Having reviewed many recent Nintendo anti-circumvention notices (1,2), there are no signs of any questionable takedowns. Most use a format historically used to remove URLs offering SX OS, SX Pro, SX Core and SX Lite devices, with Nintendo using exactly the same terms to describe these obvious piracy devices as it does to describe the emulators.

The URLs listed below promote, offer for sale directly or direct visitors to resellers of, circumvention software and devices called the SX OS, SX Pro, SX Core and SX Lite, among others. The SX OS, SX Pro, SX Core and SX Lite are designed to bypass technological protection measures in the Nintendo Switch video game system and allows users to play unauthorized copies of Nintendo’s video game files that are offered unlawfully via the Internet. circumvention mechanism: Nintendo’s technological protection measures (“TPMs”) ensure that only official copies of its game software can be played on Nintendo’s video game systems. The circumvention devices, products or components offered at the reported links bypass Nintendo’s TPMs so that users can play unauthorized copies of Nintendo’s game files that are offered unlawfully via the Internet.

Nintendo now uses the same format to target SX devices, prod keys, sig patches and emulators in the same notice (1).

Essentially, the Yuzu lawsuit didn’t change a thing under law but may have succeeded in shaping perceptions of the emulation landscape. Whether that will reduce Switch 2 piracy will remain to be seen.

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