The Zelda PC port that got 5,000 stars in 8 days: anyone can build the tech; the winner is the first to make it install with a double-click

A developer with no prior notable projects recompiled Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom from Switch into native Windows and Linux programs, and in 8 days it earned over 5,000 stars and 160k downloads. That same month, more than a dozen repos were working on this one game alone. Some came earlier, some got tech-press coverage, yet they only pulled a few hundred stars. Below: why this one won, and what you'd need to get similar stars, which paths work, and which to avoid.

A "releasing next week" post

In 2026 October 23, Reddit user u/valentderah posted in r/decomps (the subreddit for game decompilation and recompilation) with the title "Zelda: TotK PC recomp is coming out next week", with a video: the Tears of the Kingdom title screen, then cutting to save selection, then Link running around Hyrule. No link, no code, just "next week." The post got about 3,150 votes and 341 comments (Reddit search summary, 11-06).

The same day, Nintendo sent GitHub a DMCA takedown notice naming more than twenty repos at once: all were decompilation projects for Rhythm Heaven and their PC ports (GitHub's public DMCA archive, 2026-10-23). Two days earlier, r/decomps had people discussing "Nintendo starting to notice recompilations of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom."

Six days later, on October 29, the repo valentderah/totk-pc-recomp was created, and the first version of the installer went out with it. The release post got about 5,000 votes and 679 comments.

The author, Valiantsin Dzerakh, registered his GitHub account in 2018, has 171 followers, and this is his only repo. The README is candid: most of the code and docs were written by Claude Code under his direction, and he personally played each version before deciding what to merge.

What it actually is

It's not an emulator. An emulator pretends the computer is a Switch and can run any game, but it is CPU-heavy. This is "static recompilation": it translates the ARM64 code of this one game into a native x86-64 program all at once, converts graphics calls to Vulkan, and what runs is an ordinary totk.exe.

The repo contains no game files. Users must export the game from their own Switch, open the installer, choose the files, language, and directory, then press Start, and the installer "compiles" the game locally. The README is deliberately compliant: no files included, no instructions on how to export, don't share the output, and no money changes hands.

Why the earlier ones didn't take off

October was a month when console game recompilations clustered: Windwaker Island, Breath of the Wild, Smash, Bayonetta 2 all made news in a row. Tears of the Kingdom alone has more than 10 repos on GitHub.

Technically, these Tears of the Kingdom projects are nearly identical. It wasn't the first either: SkyboundTotk teased a week earlier, created its repo two days earlier, and got media coverage first. But in the "Tears of the Kingdom × Windows / Linux" slot, its stars are 6.7 times those of the runner-up and 10 times SkyboundTotk's.

The difference is entirely whether an ordinary player can actually install it:

• The installer takes the player's files directly. It accepts NSP and XCI, even compressed NSZ and XCZ, and unpacks them itself.
• Supports three versions. 1.1.0, 1.2.1, and 1.4.3 all work, and saves are interchangeable. Rivals only accept one, so players have to go find the matching version first.
• Linux and Steam Deck have ready-made AppImages, and on the Deck you can switch to desktop mode to install.
• Ships with what PC players want out of the box: up to 144fps, automatically downloads NVIDIA's official DLSS if you have an RTX card, HDR10, 21:9 ultrawide and 16:10 handheld aspect ratios, precompiled shaders at install time (no stutter during play), and emulator mods and cheats still work.
• The installer UI is available in English, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Simplified Chinese.

Where the stars came from

GitHub daily stars:

What matters more is downloads: across 10 versions, there are about 165k downloads in total (GitHub, 11-06), which is 30 times the stars. Most of them are players, not developers just looking around. Forks 400 and issues 300 are also strong signs that people are actually running it.

The first wave was Reddit. The teaser post built a week of anticipation, the release post exploded that day, then an r/pcmasterrace post "out now… Up to 4k/120fps" got 1,100 votes, an r/decomps low- and mid-spec performance test got 808 votes, and people on r/SteamDeck posted their own tests.

The second wave was YouTube. After 10-25, the top 30 videos searching "TotK Recomp PC" totaled about 1.02M views. The most-watched was Karan Benchmarks running a row of GPUs (137k), UFD Tech explaining RecompLauncher (99k), and the Brazilian channel Teaser Games with two videos (69k and 52k). A large share was Portuguese and Spanish install tutorials, plus benchmarks on older cards like the GTX 1650, RX 580, and integrated graphics. Its real audience is clearly players in Brazil, Latin America, and on low-end PCs: their machines struggle to run emulators, so they most need a solution that uses fewer resources than an emulator, and an installer in Brazilian Portuguese fits that exactly.

Release cadence kept the creators fed. 8 days, 10 versions, and 10-31 alone shipped 3 builds. Each one gave creators a new topic: Teaser Games titled it "MAIS UM UPDATE BRUTAL" (another brutal update), and other creators simply wrote "all the problems are fixed." The README's feature list reads like ready-made video titles: "4K 120FPS", "DLSS", "MODS Y CHEATS".

Then the ecosystem starts growing on its own. The Russian game site GameGPU 10-30 covered it, reaching roughly 16k views; RecompLauncher (a site that gathers various recompiled games into one launcher) listed it; SourceForge has a mirror; someone on GameBanana built a mod manager for it; and in early November totkrecomp.wiki appeared, dedicated to installation guides, clearly aimed at search traffic.

Hacker News has no post about it, and I didn't find any clear big-account reposts on X (unverified). It lives almost entirely within gaming and emulation circles.

Why it moved so fast

One person, 8 days, 10 versions, for two reasons. First, as the README itself says, most of the code was written by AI, while the human handled playtesting and quality control. Second, it stood on the shoulders of a pile of upstream projects: LAS Recomp, MacNativeGames, nxnative, SavageWindRecomp (the Breath of the Wild one), Ryujinx, deko3d, all listed one by one in the credits. These upstream projects only came out in mid-October, and it shipped at the end of the month.

This also means the technical barrier to this kind of work has dropped a lot since October. Plenty of people can do it now, and more will.

The letter hanging overhead

Nintendo has always come down hard on Tears of the Kingdom. During the 2023 game leak, it issued DMCA takedowns against tools like Lockpick. In October 2026, it had already sent several takedown notices: 10-01 two targeting a Ryujinx mirror and a project called nswitch, and 10-23 one targeting the Rhythm Heaven decompilations and PC ports, more than twenty repos. As of 11-06, GitHub's public DMCA archive has no notice against this repo or any Tears of the Kingdom recompilation, and the repo is still up.

But stars grow on the repo. If the repo gets taken down, all 5,000 stars go with it.

Also, its growth is clearly slowing: from over 1,000 a day down to just over 300. The Tears of the Kingdom slot is already full: a dozen-plus same-theme repos, plus near-copy descriptions like ZuanCrisp/Zelda-TOTK-Port, an Android version TOTKDroid, an iOS version, even a PS4 version, and someone has already gone after a Switch 2 target (drakolordx7/switch2-recomp, 11-02).

If it were you

Verdict: C. You can learn a lot here, but copying it isn't a good deal. It shows one very clear thing: when a new technical path lets many people build the same thing at once, the stars don't go to whoever built it first, they go to whoever first let ordinary people double-click and use it. But the Tears of the Kingdom slot is already crowded, and other big-IP recompilations are being chased by the same crowd. If you pile in, the stars you get could be wiped by a single DMCA notice at any time.

Who it suits: people already working in game reverse engineering, emulation, or graphics APIs; people who can get deep into one upstream project on their own, are willing to ship releases every day, and have actually played the game themselves.

Who it doesn't suit: people who want a repo to keep on their resume long-term (Nintendo's games, and the repo may not survive a few months); people hoping to use AI to write a recompiler from scratch (it moved this fast because upstream already solved the hardest part); people who don't play games and don't understand what players want.

How to do it, ranked by how worthwhile:

1. Build the "make it installable" layer, not the game itself. For example, a one-click cross-game installer / launcher, a mod manager for a specific recompilation, or presets and benchmarking tools for low-end GPUs. This layer doesn't touch game code, carries far less DMCA risk, and each additional recompilation project makes it more useful. Note that RecompLauncher is already doing launchers, so look for the parts it hasn't done well.
2. Productize recompilations that only ship source. Plenty of projects in this wave, like SkyboundTotk, only provide source and require you to compile it yourself. Pick a game that's hot enough and whose upstream license allows it, then add the installer, multi-version support, PC graphics options, and multi-language support. Prefer non-Nintendo games, but don't assume other companies won't send notices either: Take-Two took down a GTA decompilation project, re3, in 2021.
3. Switch to a different audience. Brazil, LatAm and low-spec players have already proven to be the most enthusiastic group. Contribute Portuguese, Spanish and Indonesian install guides and docs to existing projects, or build a "how to run it on an old GPU" tutorial site. You're building reputation, not stars, but it's much safer.

How to get users: follow its rhythm. A week before launch, post a playable clip to a niche subreddit like r/decomps, saying only "next week". On launch day, post the official thread in the same subreddit. Write the README as punchy bullet points that work as video titles (frame rates, resolution, DLSS, mods). Then ship releases often, giving YouTube creators doing benchmarks and tutorials a fresh topic every time, especially Portuguese and Spanish channels.

Window closes: This recompilation wave started in mid-October and interest already looks like it's cooling, so aim to ship by the end of 2026. Any later and the good games will be taken and players will be bored of it (inferred).

What would show we're wrong: (1) Nintendo sends a batch of takedowns over the next month or two against the TotK, BotW and similar recompilations, and the launchers and mod managers around them get named too. That would show even the first path isn't safe. (2) If the repo is still around in December, gaining hundreds of stars a day and with a mod ecosystem growing, the topic lasts longer than estimated, and the second path is worth starting earlier. (3) If a hit game outside Nintendo's catalog appears next month and gets several thousand stars within two weeks through a one-click installer, the approach is replicable and the grade should go up.

Data and sources

GitHub: valentderah/totk-pc-recomp repo page, README, Releases download counts, daily stars (10-30 to 11-06); stars and downloads for similar repos (11-06); Nintendo notices publicly archived under github/dmca 2026/10. Reddit (from search snippets, full threads not opened one by one): r/decomps 10-23 preview thread, 10-29 launch thread, performance thread, 10-21 Nintendo discussion thread, plus related threads on r/pcmasterrace and r/SteamDeck. YouTube: searched "TotK Recomp PC" sorted by views after 10-25 (11-06). Media: GameGPU 10-30, Notebookcheck 10-28, Wccftech 10-15. Other: RecompLauncher, SourceForge, GameBanana, totkrecomp.wiki. Anything marked "inferred" or "unverified" is an inference or unconfirmed.