Irdeto today published a press release about its Nintendo Switch Emulator Protection solution, as a call to developers and publishers who may be interested in including it with their games. In its statement, Irdeto targets not only first-party and second-party Switch games, but ports of PC games too. “Nintendo consoles have long suffered from piracy issues and the Switch is no different,” the company wrote. “Even if a game is protected against piracy on its PC version, the released version on Switch can be emulated from day one and played on PC, therefore bypassing the strong protections offered on the PC version.” The announcement has not gone down well. Irdeto’s official tweet regarding the news is getting ratioed (an easy sign of when something is unpopular), with many replies mentioning the effects Denuvo may have on performance, as with Resident Evil Village last year - especially on a console which can already struggle in the performance department. To be clear, this isn’t something that Nintendo has partnered with Irdeto on, so it’s unknown how many publishers will choose to include it. Though I can imagine Monolith Soft wishes this was available for Xenoblade Chronicles 3. You can read Irdeto’s statement in full on its official website.
