© NintendoThis week, the development team behind Switch emulator yuzu added support for online multiplayer. However, a week later, the function has been removed from the emulator – with no reason given by the developers.
The following message was posted on a blog relating to the emulator:
We are saddened to report that we have removed online support from yuzu, indefinitely, and effective immediately. We apologize to our community for the confusion and disappointment surrounding this release, and especially to those who were excited to try this feature.
We have received valid and insightful feedback from our fans and members of the broader Switch and emulation communities. Truthfully, we are all just a bunch of enthusiastic people from around the globe, who were genuinely excited about something we thought we could offer. In hindsight, we 100% understand your concerns.
As always, we will continue working on other features and improvements within yuzu, to make it the best emulator we possibly can. Thank you to everyone who has continued to support us, provided us feedback and been open to constructive discussion on this topic. Now, as always, we value your opinions.
As you can see, no reason is given for the move, but Kotaku speculates that it could be down to the heat the emulator’s creators will have gotten for enabling a feature which is less about preservation and homebrew and more about avoiding having to give Nintendo (or its third-party partners) any money for enjoying Switch titles.
However, Kotaku also points out that, because online play was only made available to paying Patreon supporters, yuzu goes from being a freely-distributed piece of code to a paid service – which would place it firmly in the sights of Nintendo’s legal team.
Whatever the reason, it’s a rather embarrassing about-face for the creators of yuzu.
