Nintendo has sent four DMCA takedown notices to GitHub targeting two Nintendo Switch emulators, Yuzu and Citron Neo, along with mod chip firmware.
This isn’t the first time Nintendo has sent takedown notices to GitHub, and it’s not even the first time it’s tried to take down Yuzu, but the focus this time around seems to be on firmware for mod chips. This particular firmware had 144 repositories, all of which have been removed by GitHub and replaced by a DMCA takedown notice. Mod chips like Picofly can be soldered onto the Nintendo Switch’s mainboard, and can be flashed with this firmware to circumvent Nintendo’s copy protection.
GitHub has posted Nintendo’s November 6 DMCA notice, which says, “The Nintendo Switch console and video games contain technological protection measures (‘TPMs’) that permit the Nintendo Switch console to interact only with legitimate Nintendo video game files. This process protects Nintendo’s copyright-protected video games, (…) by preventing users from playing pirated copies of Nintendo’s video games on the Nintendo Switch console and by preventing users from unlawfully copying and playing Nintendo’s video games on unauthorized devices.”
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However, while this takedown has effectively wiped out a ton of repositories with mod chip firmware, it seems like it’s still being hosted elsewhere on the site though, that Nintendo isn’t finished yet; back in 2024, Nintendo effectively took down 8,500 copies of Yuzu by issuing a takedown that targeted 12 different mirrors of the emulator
This particular takedown also comes a few days after emulators were able to run the remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on PC, so this could be a sign that Nintendo is winding up its lawyers to crack down on emulation once again.
If anything, emulation is a completely different beast in 2026 than it was even in 2024, thanks to the rise of AI. There’s already been a wave of AI-made mashup mods that took over Twitter for a couple of weeks, and led Anthropic to coding in a lock to prevent Claude from outright copying games. Game developers have started cracking down on AI ports of games, too. Just last month Rockstar had to take down a browser version of GTA 5, and Bethesda took down an AI-generated Fallout New York game.
Jackie Thomas is the Senior Tech Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. She’s been covering gaming hardware for more than a decade for IGN, TechRadar, Gizmodo, PC Gamer and more. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
