Nintendo Switch Emulation and Piracy Subreddit Shut Down

By Ricky Frech

One of the most prominent subreddits for Nintendo Switch emulation and piracy is r/NewYuzuPiracy. Over the last few months, it has become a hotbed for players looking to mod The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, especially for anyone who decided to pirate the game instead of purchasing it through official sources. That subreddit has now been shut down by Reddit late last week. It's unclear if Nintendo had anything to do with the closure but given the company's stance on piracy in the past, that wouldn't be too surprising.

The closure was first spotted by PC Gamer, who noted that the subreddit has grown to nearly 70,000 members. That means it has essentially doubled since the launch of Tears of the Kingdom, which could be part of the reason that Reddit shut it down. After all, it's possible the subreddit could've gone unnoticed for longer if it hadn't had such an influx of players turn it into a high-profile community. That said, the subreddit was often openly talking about pirating games and users sometimes distributed in-development mods which is probably what ultimately led to Reddit shutting it down.

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What's maybe more interesting is that it's taken so long for it to happen. As PC Gamer points out, the subreddit was only created after r/YuzuPiracy was shut down. For anyone who isn't aware, Yuzu is the name of the Switch emulator, which is always something that's going to be a bit iffy with Nintendo. Having something that so brazenly mentions that it's about piracy was probably always destined to come down, so seeing it take around three years is a bit perplexing.

Given how r/NewYuzuPiracy originally came about, it'll be worth keeping an eye on if anyone decides to create yet another subreddit. It seems likely, though users could just take the forum to a different service if they feel stifled by Reddit. Maybe this time they'll go with something that isn't quite as brazen as this one, though it might not matter if they're going to continue to butt up against Reddit and Nintendo's policies.

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