The GitHub links that host Yuzu are considered illicit by the company, which has sent a takedown request to GitHub for more than 8,500 repositories. According to Nintendo, Yuzu is “ designed to illegally circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under the DMCA » (as a reminder, the DMCA is the American law aimed at protecting copyright). It is true that the emulator in question uses encryption keys in order to be able to unlock and play Switch games, and these remain – even today – quite simple to find on the web.
Note also that Yuzu copy links are not the only ones targeted by this global disconnection: other emulators (more or less inspired by Yuzu) like Suyu were entitled to the same treatment. However, Suyu had tried a different approach by pushing players to integrate their own encrypted key (from their Nintendo Switch) in order to emulate the chosen games. But nothing happened: GitLab directly deleted the deposit after Nintendo's DMCA request. Be careful, however: some Switch emulators have not yet been attacked by Nintendo's legal team, such as Ryujinx, the open source emulator (still in active development) accessible only on PC or Mac. But perhaps it is only a matter of time. Regardless, it is still obviously possible to find various versions of Yuzu on the web as long as you like to poke around a little, which raises even more questions about the necessity of such a crusade.
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Emulation, the only method of playing certain Nintendo games?
If, despite their singular aggressiveness, the actions of Nintendo's legal team can nevertheless prove understandable (after all, it is an emulator capable of running – and sometimes illegally – games from a console currently on the market), what about software whose aim is to emulate old consoles? This is particularly the case of Citra, which suffered at the same time as Yuzu from the total cessation of its development. Especially since Nintendo recently removed access to the Nintendo 3DS eShop: in other words, certain games, accessible only digitally via the eShop of the portable console, are now lost in the nothing. We are thinking in particular of the excellent Crimson Shroud, which is no longer accessible to anyone, unless they had already purchased it at the time and installed it on their 3DS. For such games, emulation is the last resort, unless it falls into absolute oblivion.