The first of the tools Denuvo is offering to Switch developers is Nintendo Switch Emulator Protection, a “revolutionary technology to protect games launching on Nintendo Switch from piracy”.
According to Denuvo, the new tech can be applied to Switch games to block the ability to play them on PC emulators.
“Even if a game is protected against piracy on its PC version, the version released on Nintendo Switch can be emulated from day one and played on PC, therefore bypassing the strong protections offered on the PC version,” the company says. “This can happen with any of the numerous games available on Nintendo Switch.
Yuzu (and Ryukahr) are not 1:1 emulators though, and they aren’t attempting to. Attempting 1:1 emulation of the hardware is only feasible with very old hardware like the NES or whatever, where modern hardware doesn’t have a problem simulating every detail of the CPU. Yuzu doesn’t try to simulate the Tegra SoC that’s in the Switch, I think it works by transpiling game code and hooking into system calls and whatnot, similar to what Proton does on Linux (only probably more complex).
If the Denuvo team studied how these emulators work well, it’s probably very hard to effectively defeat Denuvo DRM in general (as opposed to on a per-game basis).