Nintendo’s famously…efficient lawyers have issued GitHub four DMCA notices over the last week, effectively wiping roughly 217 Nintendo Switch-related repositories and forks (alternative versions of the console’s source code) from the site. However, while three of the four DMCA notices targeted repositories for Switch emulators, the largest one appears to be a first for Nintendo: a legal takedown notice for the firmware of a Nintendo Switch modchip named Picofly, a chip that can be soldered onto the console and used to bypass security checks.
As first reported by TorrentFreak, the latest wave of Nintendo GitHub DMCA notices appeared on the site on November 9. Three of the four notices are for Nintendo’s old nemesis, Yuzu, the Nintendo Switch emulator created by Tropic Haze LLC, which agreed to pay Nintendo $2.4 million in damages back in 2024. One of these three targeted Citron Neo, which is a fork of the Yuzu emulator. The Citron Neo DMCA notice wiped 71 repositories from GitHub in one fell swoop. Nintendo justified the legal notice by referencing the same “Nintendo of America Inc. v. Tropic Haze LLC” case that led to Yuzu being taken offline.
This is par for the course as far as Nintendo’s litigious history is concerned, which is why the final DMCA notice is arguably a lot more interesting. As TorrentFreak notes, the notice for the Picofly GitHub repo specifically targets firmware for Nintendo Switch modchips; the software that allows said modchips to run unauthorised programs.
Picofly is a “compatible alternative” to the SX Core and SX Lite modchips; the same modchips that landed Team Xecuter’s Gary Bowser (no relation) in jail for 40 months back in 2022. According to the takedown notice, Nintendo justified the Picofly firmware massacre on GitHub as the repos contain the same “technological protection measures that permit the Nintendo Switch console to interact only with legitimate Nintendo video game files.”
Nintendo’s November 9 DMCA notices don’t appear to be related to the vibe-coded Switch ports that exploded onto GitHub over the past two months.