Nintendo goes all in on Switch emulators
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is one of Nintendo's new titles and for several days (just before its official release) sand I create a great chaos both for those who reserved the title digitally as well as for those who bought the game physically in stores and even online.
The point of mentioning this is that just before it was released The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom the game was already leaked and a large number of users played the title, which consequently upset Nintendo a lot.
This situation led Nintendo to make a request to GitHub to lock the Lockpick and Lockpick_RCM repositories, as well as some 80 forks of them.
It looks like some fallout from the initial The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom leak is in the works. As gamers load the game onto emulators and unofficially play it on their computers ahead of the release date, Nintendo is taking steps to prevent that from happening.
Lockpick and Lockpick_RCM are homemade tools that allow users to download unique keys for their Nintendo Switch console, which are required for numerous Switch hacking-related programs, including the Ryujinx and Yuzu Switch emulators. While Lockpick has been around for years, Nintendo reportedly decided to go after it, issuing a DMCA takedown on the project's GitHub page, sparking concern and discussion within the community.
The claim is filed under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in which the projects are accused of violating Nintendo's intellectual property and circumventing protection technologies used on Nintendo consoles. Switch. Currently, the application of said request has already been processed by GitHub, as it has met Nintendo's requirements and blocked access to repositories whose pages now display a DMCA stub code instead of content when trying to open them.
For those who were unaware of the repository lockpick, they should know that in this developed (yes, since it was now blocked) an open source key extraction utility for Nintendo Switch game consoles, while the Lockpick_RCM repository hosts downloadable console components for obtaining encryption keys for various operating system components. Using the tools in question, the user can extract the keys for the firmware components installed on his console and his legally purchased games.
The authors of Lockpick imply that the user is free to have the console and games acquired in any way for personal purposes, not related to the distribution of games to third parties. For example, the resulting keys can be used when running on the emulator, to install additional programs on your decoder, or to experiment with debugging utilities like hactool, LibHac, and ChoiDujour.
In this context, the Nintendo Switch, as well as the games it ships with, have several security mechanisms to ensure that only legally purchased video games can run on the console. Such a restriction is intended to prevent the release of pirated copies of games and to protect users from copying their games for subsequent release on unauthorized devices.
It is because of that Nintendo claims that using Lockpick allows users to bypass video game protections and gain unauthorized access to all cryptographic keys stored in the console's TPM, and the resulting keys can be used to violate manufacturers' copyrights and run pirated copies of games on third-party devices or on systems with Console TPM disabled .
The last straw was supposed to be the appearance on May 1 in the pirate access of the game "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom", which was available for release on emulators two weeks before the next official release for the video console.
On the other hand, and in relation to the topic, it was also announced that the Skyline Emulator Developers, that allows you to run games from Nintendo Switch on Android devices, have announced the decision to halt the development of their project, fearing charges of infringing Nintendo's intellectual property, as the emulator requires encryption keys obtained using the Lockpick utility to run.
Source: https://gbatemp.net/