Switch emulation leaves GitHub: where the standoff with Nintendo stands
By Tgames · · 2 min read
Two years after Yuzu shut down, Nintendo's legal pressure has not eased. In 2026 it even changed scale, and the result is plain to see: Switch emulators are no longer hosted on the public platforms.
The timeline
Nintendo's argument, and its limit
Nintendo is not attacking “emulation” as such. Its reasoning is narrower: Switch games are encrypted, so an emulator can only work by using decryption keys copied without permission, which would amount to circumventing a protection — regardless of any game copying.
It has to be said plainly, though: that argument has never been ruled on by a court. Yuzu settled, Ryujinx gave in, and the moderator sentenced in September never appeared. There is no ruling on the merits. Conversely, old American decisions from 1999-2000 had established that an emulator, in itself, is lawful.
What it means in practice
The projects that carry on have moved to their own servers. One of them saw its downloads repository return an error code reserved for legal takedowns, and switched to independent infrastructure. Emulation is not disappearing: it is becoming harder to find, and therefore easier for malicious sites to imitate.
What has not changed
Emulating a console you own, from games you own and have dumped yourself, remains the only defensible path — and Tgames' position has never wavered on that point. For everything else, our emulation tutorials for PC and Android deliberately focus on emulators with no litigation around them: Dolphin, PPSSPP, RetroArch, Flycast, melonDS, Azahar.
Sources: Tom's Hardware (400 repositories) · VGC (February 2026) · Kotaku · Nintendo Wire (judgment)
The timeline
- March 2024: Nintendo sues the publisher of Yuzu. The case is settled in six days for 2.4 million dollars and the permanent end of the project. Citra, the same team's 3DS emulator, disappears right after.
- October 2024: Ryujinx is taken down after Nintendo contacts its developer.
- February 2026: a wave of takedown notices targets thirteen projects at once. Some stop, others push back.
- August 2026: seven notices get more than 400 repositories removed in a single day. Most of them are copies of one and the same project: once a repository passes a hundred or so copies, the platform deletes the whole network.
- 23 September 2026: an American federal judge hands down a judgment of 4.5 million dollars against the main moderator of a Switch piracy forum, who had never answered the proceedings in two years.
Nintendo's argument, and its limit
Nintendo is not attacking “emulation” as such. Its reasoning is narrower: Switch games are encrypted, so an emulator can only work by using decryption keys copied without permission, which would amount to circumventing a protection — regardless of any game copying.
It has to be said plainly, though: that argument has never been ruled on by a court. Yuzu settled, Ryujinx gave in, and the moderator sentenced in September never appeared. There is no ruling on the merits. Conversely, old American decisions from 1999-2000 had established that an emulator, in itself, is lawful.
What it means in practice
The projects that carry on have moved to their own servers. One of them saw its downloads repository return an error code reserved for legal takedowns, and switched to independent infrastructure. Emulation is not disappearing: it is becoming harder to find, and therefore easier for malicious sites to imitate.
What has not changed
Emulating a console you own, from games you own and have dumped yourself, remains the only defensible path — and Tgames' position has never wavered on that point. For everything else, our emulation tutorials for PC and Android deliberately focus on emulators with no litigation around them: Dolphin, PPSSPP, RetroArch, Flycast, melonDS, Azahar.
Sources: Tom's Hardware (400 repositories) · VGC (February 2026) · Kotaku · Nintendo Wire (judgment)
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