Nintendo has never been a fan of emulators copying and “pirating” their games – even though a lot of the games players and fans of Nintendo use these emulators for older games that are no longer available, such as the Wii, Nintendo 64, Super Nintendo, 3DS, and others. Each of these consoles have officially lost their online services and no longer have a e-Shop.
With all that being said, it is almost understandable why die-hard fans try to do this, while it also can be wrong since a lot of ROMs are illegally obtained. However, if you own said game, you can create a ROM for it as long as it remains within personal use.
There was a popular Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu, and a $2.4 milion settlement with Nintendo is what put a stop to it according to Gamesradar+. Getting rid of anything off of the internet is not always as easy though, so Nintendo has currently sent out many DMCA to get rid of clones of Yuzu, which has reached up to the massive number of 8,535.
GitHub also made a statement talking about this news with Nintendo, sharing how the DMCA takedown request has been targetting those who have created clones of the software.
“Because the reported network that contained the allegedly infringing content was larger than one hundred (100) repositories,” GitHub said. “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.”