A top lawyer for Nintendo recently claimed that emulation is "technically" legal despite the video game company making efforts to shut down various emulators in the last year.
Nintendo pressured various emulation projects last year, such as Yuzu, Citra, and Ryujinx, and forced them to shut down their operations. What is noteworthy is that none of the cases actually went to court.
Are Emulators Legal?
This means that the actual legality of emulation in general is still largely a mystery until now. Top lawyers and intellectual property leaders from Capcom, Koei, Sega, Konami, and Nintendo got together at the Tokyo eSports Festa earlier this week.
The legal experts talked about a variety of issues that concern copyright and intellectual property in the gaming industry.
When they discussed emulators, patent attorney and deputy general manager of Nintendo's intellectual property department, Koji Nishiura, agreed that they are "technically" completely legal.
However, it was said that emulators still have a number of things about them that violate law.
One example of this for the Nintendo Switch is that the console has "technical restriction measures" that prevent it from playing pirated games, according to Android Authority.
This means that if a particular Nintendo Switch emulator tries to bypass these security measures, they could open themselves up to legal troubles. The discussion between the legal experts was based on Japanese law.
However, similar language is found in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Section 1201(a)(1)(A). This part says, "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
Potential Illegal Actions or Features
This is the defense that Nintendo used in March 2024 when it ordered Yuzu to pay $2.4 million in damages following a court settlement. In October 2024, the company contacted Ryujinx, which led to the latter ceasing development of their emulator, IGN said.
The developers behind Dolphin, which was an emulator for Gamecube and Wii, were advised in 2023 against a full Steam release by Valve's lawyers. The latter were apparently contacted by Nintendo's own legal experts who gave "strong legal wording."
Nishiura also gave other examples of how emulators could be considered illegal, such as when they copy a program that belongs to a game device, which constitutes copyright infringement.
Another example is if an emulator has various links to sources where people can download pirated games.
The latter is what is known in Japanese law as a "reach app" and is considered to be under copyright infringement, according to Eurogamer.
