Some interesting news in the emulation scene yesterday, as the Skyline Nintendo Switch emulator has announced they are ending development.
This comes in response to legal action coming directly from Nintendo, of course.
It’s not uncommon for Nintendo go to after anybody who messes with their properties.
We recently saw Gary Bowser (unfortunate name) suffer the maximum consequences for his part in the Team Xecuter Switch modding group.
Nintendo made a public example out of him, and he now has to make monthly payments to Nintendo for the rest of his life to avoid jail time.
It would seem that the team over at Skyline hope to avoid a similar fate, and decided it’s just not worth the risks.
Skyline Emulator Shutting Down
In a public announcement yesterday, the Skyline Emulator team announced their official retirement from Nintendo Switch emulation development.
A major part of this related to the Lockpick RCM, which is a tool used to rip product keys from a Nintendo Switch. Which Nintendo has deemed violates their copy protection TPMs.
So, as the Skyline team indicates in their full disclosure on their Discord channel:
“We find ourselves in a position where we are potentially violating their copyright by continuing to develop our project, Skyline, by dumping keys from our own Switches.”
– Skyline Emulator Team
Emulation Legal Issues
As we know, there are legal white areas and grey areas in the emulation world.
You could technically own a game and emulate it, which is supposed to be legal. And you can pull your legally purchased product keys from your own Switch.
But obviously, there’s also a lot of not so legal stuff going on with the sharing of game ROMs and keys that is the primary source of Nintendo’s fury.
I’m not gonna sit here and say oh how sad, they did nothing wrong. Obviously people developing emulators know they are playing with fire.
But it does kind of suck for the emulation community.
And we also wonder what this could mean for the other Nintendo Switch emulators, such as Yuzu.
Nintendo hasn’t really done a lot to shutdown emulators for their older systems. They surely don’t like it, but it’s smaller fish to fry compared to current gen hardware.
When you mess with anything Nintendo Switch, that’s dangerous territory to play around in.
Anthony has been a video game lover ever since he can remember. He became a fulltime nomad in 2018, living throughout most of Asia. He focused his passion in retro gaming and began creating a game for the Game Boy Color while living in Nara, Japan during the 2020 pandemic. He is now in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where he spends most of his time gaming, going on long walks and meeting as many stray dogs as possible.
