New Switch emulator 'Suyu' making changes to avoid being shut down by Nintendo (UPDATE)

Last week, Nintendo successfully sued the creators of Yuzu, a high profile Switch emulator. As a result, the emulator was shut down completely. In Yuzu’s wake, a new emulator called Suyu is now looking to take its place.

How does Suyu plan on succeeding where Yuzu failed? In a new interview with Ars Technica, the creators share what’s different about their software. First of all, there will no monetization involved whatsoever (unlike Yuzu which had a Patreon page). Suyu will also refrain from giving any specific instructions in regards to emulation, or how and where to acquire the encryption keys needed to run games on their software. Essentially, Suyu looked at the grievances Nintendo had with Yuzu, and is taking the opposite approach in an attempt to avoid any hassle.

According to the Suyu team, they have consulted with a legal professional in order to ensure that they’ll be able to stay afloat. As stated by team contributor and Discord moderator Sharpie, “Suyu currently exists in a legal gray area we are trying to work our way out of. There are multiple plans and possibilities for what to do next. Things are still being organized and planned.”

Suyu will have a slow rollout over the coming months, so don’t expect to be able to find it any time soon. We’ll see if it’s successful, or if Nintendo’s lawyers persist in finding a way to take this one down as well.

UPDATE: GitLab has removed access to Suyu and disabled dev accounts following a DMCA takedown request. GitLab didn’t say who was responsible for the DMCA takedown specifically, but they did note it came from a “representative of the rightsholder.”