Switch emulator Eden is surviving life after Nintendo kicked it off GitHub

A hundred years from now the sun will still rise in the east, and Nintendo will still be fighting tooth-and-nail to protect its IP. That’s meant taking an aggressive stance against unauthorized emulators, particularly when we’re talking about its most recent (and still very profitable) consoles like the Switch. A couple weeks back, Nintendo launched its latest volley, sending out DMCA infringement notices to all the big Switch emulators hosting their projects on GitHub. And now we’re getting an update on what the future’s going to look like from the team behind Eden.

As we knew from our earlier coverage, devs expected this was coming, and emulators like Citron and Eden had already made a point to duplicate their code and assets off of GitHub to help mitigate any impact. But more than just having a backup plan, Eden devs share that they’d also taken legal steps to give their project resistance against Nintendo’s possible DMCA claims. Despite that, they say that GitHub didn’t even respond to their counterclaims, and just shut the whole thing down the minute Nintendo asked.

So, what’s a Switch-emulation-loving Android user to do? Just head on over to Eden’s Git backup, of course. While some of the links there (like the main download one) are brokenly pointing at GitHub, the all-important source code is intact, ready for anyone interested to compile. And if you look around a little, you’ll still find pre-built Android APKs.

The devs don’t seem hopeful (or honestly, interested) about returning to GitHub, so we may just be dealing with this development and distribution structure going forward. Even with these headaches to deal with, the project looks to be in good shape, still offering access to archived builds in addition to the latest code. That said, they do warn that this self-hosting could get expensive, so if you want to support Eden, check out their donation page.