Discord would be removing the servers of the Nintendo Switch emulators Suyu and Sudachi, and would be suspending the accounts of their respective developers. According to The Verge, the developers of the emulators would have received a communication from Discord accusing them of having been sharing content that violates intellectual property.
In a statement obtained by The Verge, Discord states that there is a court order for the removal of this type of material, suggesting that the action is directly related to previous legal issues surrounding the Yuzu emulator for Switch.
“Discord responds to and complies with all legal and valid requests under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA),” Discord says in the statement. “In this case, there was also a court order for the removal of these materials, and we took action in accordance with the court order.”
However, what is not clear is whether the Discord channels themselves were violating intellectual property rights. The developers previously stated that they were taking appropriate measures to prevent actions by Nintendo, but it is also possible that some people in the channels were sharing material that would indeed infringe Discord’s policy.
However, even if that were the case, Discord’s copyright and intellectual property policy states that only specific content that is deemed to infringe copyright law will be removed, while accounts of repeat infringers will be permanently disabled. According to Sudachi developer Jarrod Norwell, the removal of his account by Discord happened suddenly, with very little information justifying the action.
Therefore, it is likely that the removal of entire channels and developer accounts on Discord has been carried out preventively to avoid Nintendo’s anger, whose modus operandi in these cases is usually “sue first, ask questions later“. And sometimes it doesn’t even ask.
