Nintendo removes Switch Mod chip firmware in GitHub DMCA sweep

Nintendo has sent four DMCA takedown notices to GitHub targeting two Nintendo Switch emulators, Yuzu and Citron Neo, as well as mod chip firmware.

This isn’t the first time Nintendo has sent takedown notices to GitHub, and it’s not even the first time it has attempted to remove Yuzu, but this time around the focus seems to be on mod chip firmware. This particular firmware contained 144 repositories, all of which were removed by GitHub and replaced with a DMCA takedown notice. Mod chips like Picofly can be soldered onto the Nintendo Switch motherboard and can be flashed with this firmware to bypass Nintendo’s copy protection.

GitHub posted Nintendo’s November 6 DMCA notice, which says: “The Nintendo Switch console and video games contain technological protection measures (“TPMs”) that allow the Nintendo Switch console to interact only with legitimate Nintendo video game files.

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However, while this removal effectively wiped out a ton of repositories containing the mod chip’s firmware, it appears that it is still hosted elsewhere on the site, according to TorrentFreak. It’s possible, however, that Nintendo isn’t done yet; In 2024, Nintendo effectively removed 8,500 copies of Yuzu by issuing a takedown targeting 12 different mirrors of the emulator.

This particular removal also comes days after emulators were able to run The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake on PC, so this could be a sign that Nintendo is ending its lawyers to crack down on emulation once again.

If anything, emulation is a completely different beast in 2026 than it was in 2024, thanks to the rise of AI. There has already been a wave of AI-created mashup mods that took over Twitter for a few weeks and led to Anthropic coding a lock to prevent Claude from outright copying games. Game developers have also started cracking down on AI ports of games. Last month, Rockstar had to remove a browser version of GTA 5, and Bethesda removed an AI-generated Fallout New York game.

Jackie Thomas is the senior technical editor at IGN and the queen of PC components. She’s been covering gaming hardware for over a decade for IGN, TechRadar, Gizmodo, PC Gamer and more. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

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