GitHub Removes 144 Switch Modchip Repositories After Nintendo Takedown
GitHub has removed 144 repositories that offered information and firmware for Nintendo Switch modchips, after Nintendo filed a copyright takedown notice with the code-hosting site.
A takedown notice is a request under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act asking a website to remove material that infringes copyright. A repository, or "repo", is a project folder on GitHub where developers store code and files. Firmware is the low-level software that controls a device's hardware.
The removed repositories covered four modchips: the SX Core, SX Lite, Picofly and HWFLY. A modchip is a small add-on, often fitted inside a console, that can change how the device runs software.
Nintendo's notice says the modchip firmware gets around the Switch's technological protection measures, the locks designed to stop unauthorised copying. According to the notice, it does this by bypassing the boot sequence, the start-up process that checks what is allowed to run, so that illegal copies of games can be played. Video Game Chronicle reported the notice on 11 November 2026.
The notice also looks back at earlier cases. It cites a 2020 matter in which three people were indicted for modchip use, which led to the arrest of Gary Bowser. Bowser was sentenced to 40 months in prison for his role in Switch modchip activities. He was released in 2023 after serving that sentence.
Bowser was a member of Team-Xecuter, a hacking group that began in 2013. The group created and sold circumvention devices, tools that get around a console's protections, which let people play illegal ROMs, or digital copies of games, on Switch and 3DS consoles.
Nintendo has long pursued piracy and modding through legal channels, and this takedown adds a new target to that effort. The removals cover the repositories named in the notice. Modchip sellers and users are not named in the notice's list of repositories, and the notice itself does not set out any further action.
For readers following the wider story, the key points are simple. A major platform holder used a copyright request to get code removed from a public site. The request names specific devices and points to a past prosecution as part of its case.
