A senior Nintendo lawyer has explained what makes an emulator illegal, especially when it comes to newer releases.
As reported by Denfaminicogamer, a recent conference organized by the Japanese Computer Software Copyright Association was attended by Nintendo’s patent attorney and general director of the intellectual property department, Koji Nishiura.
While the conference, which also included contributions from intellectual property executives at Sega, Capcom and Konami, among others, focused on a number of topics, one of them was the question of emulation.
Nishiura explained that while emulators themselves are not illegal by definition, they can become illegal if they operate in a way that infringes on a company’s rights.
“To begin with, are emulators illegal or not?” Nishiura asked (translated by Automaton). “This is a point that is often debated. While it cannot immediately be stated that an emulator is illegal in itself, it can become illegal depending on how it is used.”
He went on to explain that while an emulator that imitates a gaming device may be legal on paper, if the emulator also copies a program belonging to that device, that may constitute copyright infringement.
Nishiura added that if the emulator also disables security measures such as encryption, that could also be considered illegal. He said this counts for other methods such as flash carts, citing the use of Nintendo DS flash carts (such as the R4) that bypassed security by imitating a legitimate DS game.
He noted that Nintendo and more than 50 software makers filed a joint lawsuit against flash cart sellers and won a ruling for violating Japan’s Unfair Competition Prevention Law.
In another example of what makes emulators illegal, Nishiura noted that if an emulator links users to resources where pirated games can be downloaded, this is also considered copyright infringement.
In 2024, Nintendo removed two prominent Switch emulators as part of a broader effort to combat unauthorized access to its games.
The Yuzu Switch emulator was removed in May after Nintendo issued a DMCA notice to GitHub, resulting in the removal of more than 8,500 repositories containing versions of the emulator.
This was followed in October by the removal of Switch emulator Ryujinx, which was shut down by its main developer after being approached by Nintendo.
