While some gamers swear by emulators, Nintendo decided to bang their fists on the table and issue DMCA takedown notices against the developers after a massive leak of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom.
A few days ago, The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom totally leaked online. Many Internet users had already had access to the title via pirated ROMs, and had a great time sharing their game sessions on social networks. Nintendo first retaliated with copyrights on screenshots, lives or even entire Discord servers hosting links to pirated versions of the game. However, the Japanese giant did not stop there.
The company seems to be going on the offensive by attacking certain emulators. These are often seen as important tools for preserving certain games. However, when a new title is leaked before its scheduled release, emulators can be used as an alternative to try out the game beforehand. For a company as averse to leaks as Nintendo, such products cannot exist.
Also read – Zelda Breath of The Wild: Nintendo declares war on the creator of the multiplayer mode
Nintendo drops a famous Switch emulator
Skyline, an emulator that ran Nintendo Switch games on Android, has unfortunately just closed its doors. Nintendo reportedly filed a DMCA order against Lockpick RCM, which allowed Skyline to legally acquire Switch game keys.
” Nintendo just sent several DMCA takedown requests to GitHub, including for Lockpick, the tool to offload keys to YOUR OWN Switch, which is absolutely ridiculous – hackers aren’t going to source keys from their own consoles! tweeted one of the developers, ItsSimonTime. The Skyline team maintains that they thought what they were doing was legal and that the emulator itself is legal, since Lockpick lets you play the games you already own.
For its part, Nintendo claims that Lockpick ” bypasses console TPMs to allow unauthorized access, extraction and decryption of all cryptographic keys, including product keys, contained within the Nintendo Switch “. Due to the implications of this takedown request, Skyline developers immediately ceased development of the emulator.
On Discord, one of the developers, Mark, announces that “ the risks associated with a potential legal case are too high for us to ignore, and we cannot proceed knowing that we may be in violation of copyright law “. Anyway, despite these new efforts, it seems that it is already too late for Nintendo to prevent further leaks concerning its Zelda game.