Nintendo is on a warpath and the company is issuing DMCA notices all over the internet. This is after the highly anticipated The Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom leaked last week. The leak saw the game being ripped from a retail copy and uploaded as a ROM online.
Nintendo’s latest anti-piracy triad isn’t actually focused on a piracy app. The company targetted Simon Aarons who is the creator of Lockpick. If you don’t know, Lockpick is the only legal way to emulate Switch games on a PC. It allows users to transfer their digital rights from their Nintendo Switch console to a PC.
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So if you want to emulate a Switch game on PC to perhaps benefit from some performance enhancements such as the Pokemon Scarlet 60FPS mod, this is the legal way to do it. It doesn’t require downloading a ROM and pirating the game. However, that might change now.
Nintendo has issued a DCMA notice to the creator of Lockpick meaning without the program, users won’t be able to legally emulate games on PC. Of course, the “legal” word here still has its loopholes. The ripping of Switch games to PC, even if you own that game, still goes against Nintendo’s Terms of Use. So the company has the right to take it down.
At the moment, the GitHub for Lockpick is still available but it will likely be taken down in the coming days after this DMCA notice. After which, you’ll need to find alternate ways to get the app or obtain illegal keys to emulate Switch games. The latter is likely easier so Nintendo is shooting itself in the foot here in a way.
Nintendo has just issued multiple DMCA takedown requests to GitHub, including for Lockpick, the tool for dumping keys from YOUR OWN Switch, which is absolutely ludicrous – pirates aren’t gonna be sourcing keys from their own consoles!https://t.co/QePiLPTjmm
— Simon Aarons (@ItsSimonTime) May 4, 2023
The Lockpick DCMA notice has caused a ripple in the Homebrew community. The developers of Skyline, which is an Android Switch emulator, have also decided to pull the plug on its project. The dev team announced that to avoid any legal issues, Skyline will no longer be in development.
Skyline admitted that the app does violate Nintendo’s copyright. It also allows users to dump their own Switch keys from their own consoles. So it is just a matter of time before Nintendo targets the app too. For now, the developers have left its GitHub online until such a time as Nintendo takes it down.
The latest wave of DCMA notices is a result of the Tears of The Kingdom leak which happened last week. While Nintendo has always had a forceful legal approach to piracy on its platforms, the leak has caused the company to target all sorts of ways users would potentially play the upcoming game early.
Nintendo has also been targeting Twitch, YouTube, Twitter and Reddit as it tries to pull down gameplay videos and spoilers.
