GitLab confirms it’s removed Suyu, a fork of Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu

Nintendo might not need to individually sue emulators out of existence to drive them deeper underground. Today, GitLab cut off access to Nintendo Switch emulator Suyu, and disabled the accounts of its developers, after receiving what appears to be a scary email in the form of a DMCA takedown request.

“GitLab received a DMCA takedown notice from a representative of the rightsholder and followed our standard process outlined here,” spokesperson Kristen Butler tells The Verge.

Suyu was a fork of Yuzu, the emulator that Nintendo successfully sued, but this isn’t about Nintendo now having the rights to Yuzu’s code — or maybe even Nintendo at all? Nintendo didn’t necessarily win the rights to Yuzu’s code in its settlement, and GitLab didn’t tell The Verge that Nintendo is behind the takedown.

Instead, as you can see in the email above — one of several being shared in Suyu’s Discord and published earlier by Overkill.wtf — whoever sent the takedown request is trying to piggyback on how Yuzu allegedly violated DMCA 1201 by circumventing Nintendo’s technical protection measures. Oh, and maybe also subtly threatening GitLab with unlawful trafficking (also part of DMCA 1201) while they’re at it.

I’m not a lawyer, but a couple of lawyers told me two years ago that a valid DMCA takedown request should technically contain “Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed,” and that DMCA 1201 is not the same thing as DMCA 512, which covers takedown requests.

Also, Suyu has claimed it does not include the same circumvention measures as Yuzu.

But those lawyers also told me that valid or invalid, it doesn’t necessarily matter all that much, since a platform like GitLab doesn’t have to host anything that it doesn’t want to host. It may not be worth the time and effort to push back on an invalid DMCA takedown request to protect something you might not even care to protect — particularly if the alternative might be Nintendo coming at you with an actual lawsuit.

GitLab didn’t immediately answer a question about whether it’s company policy to disable user’s accounts before giving them the opportunity to delete their projects or file a DMCA counter-notice. The company’s online handbook does not say why GitLab might decide to block or ban a user from its platform; only that “we may, in appropriate circumstances, disable access or terminate the account(s) of the reported user(s).”

Suyu appears to have already found a new home. About an hour ago, its leader wrote “I’m most certainly going to host a copy of the code.” By that point, another member had already cloned the repository to git.suyu.dev.