Another day, another anti-consumer move from Nintendo. As I’m sure everyone already knows by now, a couple of emulators by the names of Yuzu and Citra, used to emulate Nintendo Switch and Nintendo 3DS games, were taken down yesterday.
Almost as if to make a point at the end of the Switch’s lifecycle, Nintendo, once again, goes out of their way to remove options and attempts to limit development on emulation, and thus, game preservation and general access to titles that will inevitably disappear from digital store fronts becomes a notch more inconvenient. We’ve seen this episode for decades at this point, and the amount of boot-licking that goes with it, still manages to surprise me.
Fun fact: when I had first started causing trouble writing on Destructoid’s community blogs, part of the ingredients that made me insufferable was my total and complete devotion to Nintendo. To this day, I still believe that Nintendo is the most talented and significant video game publisher of all time: they revolutionized gaming repeatedly and their methods are still revered to this day. I recognize that, and have even gone as far as to write a blog named, “In Defense of Nintendo Loyalty” or something corny to that effect.
But that was about 15 years ago, the video game business was very different, and a lot has happened. And if you’re still cosigning the absolute nonsense Nintendo feels comfortable enough to get away with, then you’re not paying attention. Let me explain.
It was a slow and gradual process, but as the years went, ever so slowly, I started to notice a common thread whenever it came to Nintendo’s general attitude towards its fans.
No one will argue that Nintendo is one of the best video game developers/publishers; their branding and the memories are held dear to the gaming community everywhere in the world. Their franchises are iconic, and to this day, we still study their games and development theory in game design schools. Their brands are celebrated, and their developers are legendary.
But make no mistake, despite the fun-loving look of the company’s characters and franchises; despite the family friendly focus that’s been intrinsic to their brand, they make a point to outright attack and take advantage of the gaming community that holds them dear and I’m absolutely sick of reading these pathetic justifications that are thrown around to defend Nintendo.
And believe me, I understand it: I was once the same guy, but enough time has passed where we, without a doubt, can call this company what it is: pro-video games / anti- video game community, in equal parts. And there’s no excuse to defend them any longer; they literally see you as a sucker, and I’m shocked after many of us have seen their behavior to the video game community for over 20 years, that this even needs to be said.
Let me start off by saying that it doesn’t take emulators getting delisted from a Patrion on the basis of some wishy-washy claim of security codes getting cracked, we can already see the attitude that Nintendo has for its community that loves them dearly, when looking at the countless modern remakes or demakes or spinoffs that repeatedly get strike with cease and desist letters.
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Here we have a collection of indie game developers who simply want to celebrate the very thing that inspired their participation in the business, people who develop freeware based on Nintendo’s IP, and instead of Nintendo looking at it as exposure (an attitude that Atari, Sega and Microsoft have adopted), they repeatedly halt all work that’s put into these creations sighting unauthorized use of their intellectual property. Everyone takes the L; all the fans waiting for these projects to release are disenchanted and now no one gets to play these fan games, in addition to Nintendo’s own creation.
Nintendo deliberately makes the choice to stop the glorification of their brands because they take their audience for granted; a slew of Nintendo fans will always be loyal to their childhood nostalgia and then grasp at unethical patent rights to justify this cold behavior from a corporation. Just gross.
And just to take it to the twilight zone, if Nintendo outright killing fan video games is not enough, remember when they started removing all streams and Youtube videos for using their assets, or pressuring creators to not make videos with competing video game companies on the same channel?
Once again, like a nerd jumping in front of gunfire to defend their dear Elon Musk, a handful of large children are still running to the defense of this abhorrent attitude towards creators, once again making the crappy overblown arguments about Nintendo’s IPs. Do people who defend Nintendo not understand that they’re literally stopping creativity in this case? Why? Do you get paid? Tell me you at least have Nintendo stock?
I see it in the way they treat the Smash community, where the game itself is literally a celebration of Nintendo’s legacy, and still, Nintendo goes out of their way to prohibit Super Smash Bros (Melee in 2013) at Evo for example. Once again, technically, totally within their right to do whatever they want with their assets.
But you see the trend and the spirit of their community philosophy: only trust what you can control. And once again, out of sight out of mind, Breath of the Wild comes out and we make excuses for Nintendo not playing nice with the community that loves them, and that’s because Nintendo games are wonderful.

Not to worry though, Nintendo has also found a way to exploit its fans on this front as well. Question: How many limited addition games can you remember Nintendo not making enough units for? I’m sorry, remember Super Mario 3D All-Stars? Where is the physical copy of this game? Where is this poorly emulated trilogy of old games for the current Nintendo system? Could it be... presently sitting on ebay for double the price?
Make no mistake about it, Nintendo also artificially generates scarcity to drive up prices and demand for its titles. We’ve seen many examples of this, and I’m once again sick of defending this crappy anti-consumer practice. It’s happening and it needs to be called out.
And don’t get me wrong, a corporation like Nintendo is totally within its right to create as many units of its games as it sees fit, and the dopey consumers have every right to get caught up in the hype, but let’s recognize that they’re exploiting and taking advantage of the people who love them dear. They assess the risk, and they expect blowback to be minimal and that’s why they’ll keep doing it.
And that’s why they hate emulation so much. How else are you supposed to package a handful of ports for top dollar if you have pesky emulators running the code 10 times better? I’m exaggerating, but the point is that if it were up to Nintendo, they would resell you everything they can at top dollar, five times over. I think I own 4 different versions of Super Mario Bros 3 in some capacity on 4 different platforms.
Make no mistake about it, Nintendo deliberately puts their games in the Disney Vault, games they know are the cornerstones of our childhood, and they game us with nostalgia with overpriced rereleases. We can’t just coexist with a collective love for the video games that brought us all together as gamers. To Nintendo, there are strictly two sterile categories: the game creator and the consumer.
So no, I don’t care, and you shouldn’t, if someone is playing Pokemon Ruby on a hacked iPhone. Nintendo has outright made these games inaccessible, and make no mistake, this will be the case with all future releases. The Wii U and 3DS eshops just closed 1 year ago.
What’s more, Nintendo being one of the main ambassadors of the gaming world, has a greater responsibility than any other gaming company to preserve these video games: They arguably had the most significant legacy consoles of the 90s and a virtual monopoly in handheld gaming space since its inception. They owe us, and the video game industry, more than a drip-feed release of 20-year-old games on Switch. Again, this is more anti-consumer crap.
And folks, we can’t even play the games (classic or otherwise) we already bought on Nintendo’s previous platforms; our purchases are not respected.
There’s no reason why I can play the original disc of Crimson Skies I bought on the original Xbox in 03 on an Xbox Series X (upscaled in 4K), but a Nintendo Switch doesn’t respect my purchases of 25-year-old Nintendo published gameboy games, bought on 3DS. It’s ridiculous and they owe more to video game industry preservation than this.
I honestly don’t know if it’s due to Nintendo not having the online infrastructure to facilitate it, but I expect more from a multibillion-dollar company. Their online presence has been totally ridiculous, and it’s been ridiculous since 2003. How are we still using friend codes? Why can’t we easily play Mario Kart with voice chat? Nintendo has some of the best family friendly party games, and since Gamecube we still can’t quite seem to get our shit together for online for some reason.

So, in conclusion, never mind everything else that can be said about Nintendo mismanaging gaming soundtracks, suing left-right and center, halting fan hardware projects, halting tournaments etc etc etc.
Everyone cheering Nintendo to give the players less options to play video games, what are you defending here? You are cheerleading a company that disrespects the gaming community and looks at you as an inconvenient detail.
So no, I don’t care if Nintendo’s games are pirated anymore. In many cases they virtually give us no choice, and I couldn’t think of a better company for it to happen to.
Yes, they are the most significant company in video games, but they need to start respecting their fans and the video game industry at large. Beautifully designed video games are not enough at this mature stage of the video game business; modernization and community are necessary and should be respected.
Lastly, I’ll say that this blog for me is tragic because I actually love Nintendo, I’ve been playing their games since the release of the NES, and I still consider them the most important video game company in the world. However, after 20 years of watching this company gradually going down this path and slowly coming to terms with it, I’m so disappointed in them. But you know what, at least I have enough sense to know that they don’t give a shit either way.

