Discord has made a controversial move by shutting down the Discord servers for the Nintendo Switch emulators Suyu and Sudachi, and has completely disabled their lead developers’ accounts. The company has not provided a clear explanation for its actions, leaving the developers and the community in the dark.
Both Suyu and Sudachi were originally forks of Yuzu, the emulator that Nintendo sued out of existence on March 4th. Discord’s director of product communications, Kellyn Slone, stated that the action was taken in response to legal and valid Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) requests, as well as a court-ordered injunction for the takedown of the materials.
However, the developers of Suyu and Sudachi claim that they only received vague messages about allegedly violating intellectual property rights. They argue that there was no clear evidence of a valid DMCA takedown request or actual infringement of IP rights. This has raised questions about Discord’s adherence to its own policies and procedures.
While Nintendo settled with Yuzu instead of proving its case in court, it did not acquire the rights to Yuzu’s freely copyable GPL v3 code. The developers of Yuzu’s forks also maintained that they were making further changes to the code to avoid legal conflicts with Nintendo. Despite these efforts, it is possible that users in the Discord servers were sharing Nintendo’s cryptographic keys, firmware, or pirated games, which could have led to the drastic actions taken by Discord.
It is unclear whether Suyu and Sudachi were repeat copyright infringers, had received previous warnings, or were forwarded any takedown requests. The sudden and severe measures taken by Discord have left the developers, such as Sudachi developer Jarrod Norwell, bewildered and without clear explanations for the actions taken against them.
The shutdown of these servers has sparked controversy and raised concerns about the handling of DMCA requests and the enforcement of copyright policies on Discord. The lack of transparency and communication from Discord has left the emulator developers and their communities in limbo, with no recourse to address the situation.
