Nintendo’s win against Yuzu has either fostered an aggressive fanbase hellbent on making emulation a chore with modern consoles or a lot more brazen to hit even projects that are openly non-profit. Obviously, we’re talking Suyu, the fork of the emulator that was sued into oblivion by Nintendo, leading to a whirlwind of other emulators rushing in a panic to get its ducks in a row. Now, it seems that despite being made entirely free and retaining its open source nature, it’s faced the wrath — possibly — of the Nintendo legal team.
Suyu went live only days ago and not long later, it disappeared from GitLab, the site where it was hosted, amid an alleged DMCA notice. The problem here is it sounds like it’s all a hoax, as the letter shared to the public contained no identification outside of it being a “legal representative.” Of course, GitLab is just doing its job as part of its DMCA policy, but we won’t lie — this seems kind of shady. There’s also the fact that the rep didn’t capitalize Yuzu during its section mention, a weird thing for a legal rep to miss.
Regardless, the email seems to piggyback off of DMCA 1201, but from the dev’s point of view, it’s different as it doesn’t have the same circumvention protocol that its precursor had. In fact, the team was very anti-piracy, with only legit Switch ROMs to be used. Of course, considering the source code is Yuzu, it’s kind of not shocking that it could face legal issues, but without confirmation that it was Nintendo, we aren’t too sure.
Nonetheless, we already know that fan projects run the risk of DMCA takedowns should they get too popular in the press circuit, which Suyu got some write-ups from some big publications. so really, the only ones that can survive are non-profit and with its nose to the ground.
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GWare is a gaming industry reporter with over five years of experience and a massive supporter of ethical game preservation efforts.