Nintendo Switch Developers Can Utilize Denuvo to Combat Piracy

Since its inception, the Nintendo Switch emulation community has been flourishing secretly, thanks to an initial hardware vulnerability. The process of illegally obtaining and playing Switch games on various devices such as PCs, portable consoles like the Steam Deck, and less powerful Android phones has been relatively straightforward. This poses a significant challenge for Nintendo, prompting them to collaborate with cybersecurity firm Irdeto and utilize their anti-tampering software suite, Denuvo, in order to combat this issue.

Denuvo is one of the most popular software packages for minimizing tampering and related emulation. This is middleware that developers pay for and integrate into the actual code of the game, making it much harder to emulate on other devices. The tools are common in PC titles, but until now they weren’t available to Switch developers.

While Denuvo is useful beyond preventing emulation, that seems to be the primary purpose as Irdeto promotes a new developer portal called the Nintendo Switch Emulation Protection program. The company calls it a “revolutionary technology that protects games launched on Nintendo Switch from piracy.” It also points out that Switch piracy is also hurting PC sales, as pirated games from Nintendo’s console can be played on PC bypassing Steam, Epic and other official online retailers.

Now this might be good news for Switch developers, but Denuvo has a spotty record despite boasting that it has protected over 1,000 games from emulation. This is DRM software, plain and simple, so it’s known to slow down performance when installed, which is why some publishers remove the middleware after release. Additionally, the software has had some high-priority ignition failures, with hackers cracking Middle-Earth: Shadow of War in less than a day, and this is after installing Denuvo. It’s also known to be quite expensive, which likely puts the software out of reach for smaller studios and development teams.

The Nintendo Switch is over six years old, and a successor is expected in the near future. In other words, why did this take so long? No one knows. Like it or not, the developer portal is going live this week.