Nintendo has been going after Switch emulator makers after it claimed they were used to circulate pirated copies of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom before it was officially released. Nintendo sued Yuzu emulator makers Tropic Haze in February. The following month, Yuzu was shut down and the developers agreed to pay $2.4 million in damages to Nintendo.
Earlier this week, Nintendo issued a DMCA notice on GitHub. In response, GitHub removed 8,535 repositories containing versions of the Yuzu emulator. GitHub pointed out that Nintendo had identified over 100 repositories that infringed on its copyright and the platform applied a blanket action on all of them.
“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 8,535 repositories, inclusive of the parent repository,” the platform stated.
Many believe the outcome of the Tropic Haze verdict may have influenced the swiftness and size of the takedown. By acting swiftly, GitHub will hope to avoid any legal actions that may eventually cost them millions of dollars in settlement.
After shutting down Yuzu, some developers who had leveraged the platform for various projects redistributed variations of the emulator through GitHub. Making a case against Yuzu, Nintendo said it facilitated piracy at a colossal scale.
“With Yuzu in hand, nothing stops a user from obtaining and playing unlawful copies of virtually any game made for the Nintendo Switch, all without paying a dime to Nintendo or to any of the hundreds of other game developers and publishers making and selling games for the Nintendo Switch,” Nintendo said in its lawsuit.
“In effect, Yuzu turns general computing devices into tools for massive intellectual property infringement of Nintendo and others’ copyrighted works.”
