Nintendo Has Killed Yuzu… Long Live Nuzu and Suyu!

There are a few things you don’t piss off, such as John Wick, Zues and Nintendo. Unfortunately for the developers of Switch emulator Yuzu and handheld emulator Citra, the Nintendo lawyers came out for blood and were ready to take them to court over technologies and features that, while they may have had the best intentions for legal emulation, were heavily enabling piracy of Nintendo software on PC. Most of this boiled down to the circumvention of Nintendo software encryption.

Yuzu lawyered up, and it looked like this one going to be a legal battle for the ages. However, within less than two days, Yuzu has settled, pulling all software, code, and websites, while also agreeing to submit all hardware and devices they may have in their possession, and finally, a payout to Nintendo of $2.4 million in damages… ouch.

TLDR, Yuzu is Dead!

However, the internet never forgets, and in this case, the internet is freaking fast to remind us of what happens with open-source code. Sure, Yuzu has taken their stuff down, but anyone with a copy of the GitHub pages, software packages, etc, can simply re-upload it to… well, anywhere.

Two new emulators have since popped up, called Nuzu and Suyu, and surprise-surprise, they’re built around the latest version of Yuzu. They don’t appear to be in active development, but rather just a straight-up clone of where Yuzu was up to. This could go on forever, if Nintendo DMCA this, we’ll likely just see Buzu and Wuyu, and so on. That, and Nintendo may have great lawyers, but some countries are less restricted on certainly copywriting laws, and some users are pretty darn good at remaining anonymous.

It also looks like Ryujinx is still in active development, but who knows, Nintendo may be gunning for them next.

All any new emulators have to do is avoid the mistakes of those who came before them, such as putting early builds behind a Patreon wall, and avoiding using any stolen code from various Nintendo leaks in recent years.

Where to Download

The “new” emulators Nuzu and Suyu are available here and here.