When news of Yuzu’s shutdown broke, I was a little disheartened but not surprised. While I saw the value in the project, it felt like they flew too close to the sun with the amount of money they were taking in and some of their business practices, not to mention emulating a console still being sold today. And while we do have Ryujinx, another Nintendo Switch emulator has risen up to try to capture our hearts, and it’s quite interesting.
SteamDeckHQ does not promote, encourage, or tolerate piracy in any way, shape, or form, but we do value emulation and the necessity it brings for game preservation.
Enter Suyu, a self-proclaimed continuation of the Yuzu emulator. Written in C++ with portability in mind, the developers are working to keep the emulation dream alive but not fall into the same pit as the predecessor. They mention that they do not intend to make any money or profit from the project, will not supply keys or any games that could be used with it, and promote needing everything to be legally obtained.
The project was created two weeks ago, on March 5th, and they have officially released their first version. This includes a full rebrand, improved add-ons manager, fix for video playback on AMD devices, multiplayer API getting re-implemented, removal of ALL telemetry, a requirement for all keys and firmware to be user-provided, and more. You can download a Windows, Linux, MacOS, and Android build right now to test it. The Linux build is in .appimage format, so you should be able to use it on the Steam Deck.
You can download it from Gitlab.
While I haven’t tested performance on the Steam Deck, and most likely won’t, it is interesting to see another Switch emulator pop up so soon. But, from everything I am reading, it seems like a significantly better stance on how emulation should be: Prioritizing game preservation, not profits. The project is still extremely early on, and it is very risky after the Yuzu out-of-court settlement agreement, but we will see how it turns out. I am otherwise more optimistic thanks to the standards they have set.
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10 comments
UseThePorsche
You say that it’s not surprising after the “Yuzu ruling”. This is false and misleading, as there was no ruling because there was no court case. It was an out of court settlement, nothing more.
Noah Kupetsky
Fair enough! I meant ruling as “conclusion,” but it isn’t accurate. I will amend that!
Roostrking
404 not found. On all versions… geez that was fast
Gornea
Look like nintendo take it down with dmca strike lol
Jonny
Looks like it has already been taken down
AbySharkie
Apparently nintendo already had it taken down
Anonimouse
There is no ruling. Yuzu decided yo settle out of court
Crono141
This isn’t “new” as in “from scratch” new. It’s the Yuzu source code with rebranding and the other modifications mentioned in the article. It’s the Phoenix rising from Yuzu’s ashes.
Matt
I get that the devs aren’t profiting (per say, they are accepting donations on Patreon) but how are they not overcoming security encryption ? That was ultimately the basis for the Yuzu teams settlement ?
Techy420
That was not the basis for Yuzu team settlement. Nintendo had their own people inside the Yuzu community documenting all of their illegal actions. Yuzu team were caught contributing to piracy. Yuzu team were not paying for their games, they had cloud storage full of roms they were sharing with each other. Yuzu team folded, not because emulation is illegal (emulation is protected in USA), but because they knew Nintendo had all the documentation to prove the illegal things Yuzu team did.