Efforts to stop Switch games being playable on emulators ramp up, with the availability of Denuvo anti-emulation tooling.
Despite the Nintendo Switch being, presumably, in the last couple of years of its life cycle now, what with it being six-and-a-half years old and underpowered throughout that lifespan, Denuvo anti-emulation tools are "now registered as authorised Nintendo Switch middleware". The intention here is to stop Switch games being playable on emulators, and to attempt to curb piracy.
This is a surprising move given how old the console is, but does make some sense given that any Switch-specific games will likely be hard to get ahold of, and therefore it's logical that there would be a potential uptick of emulation once the console has been put to rest.
In a blog post on Irdeto (the company that makes Denuvo), states that "Denuvo is the first security partner added to the portal, where developers are now able to access the Nintendo Switch Emulator Protection, a [..] technology to protect games launching on Nintendo Switch from piracy".
They also claim that even if PC games are protected from "piracy", that the Switch versions of those games have been vulnerable, which effectively negates the protections on other versions of that game.
"By blocking unauthorized emulations on PC, studios are able to increase their revenue during the game launch window, which is the most important period for monetization. The Nintendo Switch Emulator Protection will ensure that anyone wishing to play the game has to buy a legitimate copy".
They state that the tool is easy to insert into the "build toolchain" and will have no impact on the game itself outside of the additional security.
It'd be interesting to see some proper research into how piracy affects launch window games on different platforms, and whether or not those who do pirate at launch would actually buy the game if they couldn't do so.
