Nintendo dealt another major blow to the emulation industry when it blocked more than 400 repositories on GitHub in a coordinated campaign. The company’s lawyers filed seven anti-piracy DMCA notices covering various forks of the previously shut down Yuzu emulator, Project Suyu (which blocked 311 pages at one time), Skyline Action Emulator and other related tools.
In official requests, Nintendo has traditionally referred to violations of technical protection measures (TPMs). The company’s position is that emulators inevitably use proprietary encryption keys (product key) decrypts copyrighted games and ROM files during operation, which is an illegal bypass and distribution of bypass tools.
While fans often recreate deleted projects under new names, this mass purge once again demonstrates the strictness of the company’s legal policies regarding any software associated with its console releases.