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The Nintendo Switch emulator Suyu, which was released earlier this month as a replacement for the struck-down Yuzu, has been removed from GitLab due to an alleged DMCA takedown. However, it's still not clear who issued this notice.
In case you missed it, Yuzu was recently taken down following a lawsuit from Nintendo, which ended in a $2.4 million settlement. Despite this legal action, however, it took absolutely no encouragement for new devs to run in with replacements, including Suyu. Although its name literally sounds like "sue you," one of the emulator's contributors previously expressed confidence that the new developers could avoid following in Yuzu's footsteps and dodge legal troubles, by following extra steps based on advice allegedly provided by someone who'd been to law school.
A couple of weeks later, and although it doesn't appear that the Suyu team has been hit with a full-fledged lawsuit, its page is no longer accessible on GitLab. In a statement, The Verge was told by a GitLab spokesperson that the company had simply followed its DMCA policy after receiving "a DMCA takedown notice from a representative of the rightsholder." The publication wasn't told if Nintendo had submitted it, however – something which isn't currently clear to the Suyu team, either, which is apparently investigating the situation.
Without clarity over who the DMCA was issued by, questions have been raised over its legitimacy within the community. Multiple Suyu developers have branded it as "fake," and suspect that it could have just been sent out as a troll rather than as a real claim from Nintendo. This is partially due to the way that the email notice (shared by Overkill) that was allegedly sent to Suyu's developers reads, as it was noted that it includes a capitalization error and generally doesn't appear to be very detailed.
Regardless, the emulator is gone from GitLab, but the community is still clearly alive. It remains to be seen whether the development team pushes on and hosts the emulator elsewhere (something which some members have already expressed interest in doing). Alternatively, if the DMCA was issued by Nintendo, this could be the beginning of the end for Suyu, as the company has expressed its strong anti-emulation stance many times before, and is strictly against users downloading ROMs for games they already own.
If you're on the lookout for more games to play on Nintendo's console, be sure to check out our recommendations for the best Nintendo Switch games.
