Yuzu Online Multiplayer Netplay Guide for PC

If you’re looking for how to play Nintendo Switch games with friends online using Yuzu online multiplayer for the emulator, you’ve found the right article!

Yuzu is one of the best Nintendo Switch emulators and not only does it offer local wireless multiplayer, but it also has the ability to play online because it is able to emulate local wireless multiplayer over the internet.

It may sound complicated, but that’s just a fancy way of saying that it enables online support because it tricks your internet connection into thinking that the other person is in the same room as you by simulating their inputs on your machine.

If you were playing games on a real Switch console, you’d only be able to play using the local wireless multiplayer feature with other players nearby, but the Yuzu Nintendo Switch emulator has servers setup that allow you to play with friends near or far.

How Does Yuzu Online Multiplayer Work?

The best part is that unlike other emulators available that use single console netplay, the Yuzu emulator doesn’t have the issue of players desyncing from games, syncing save states between players online, or other common issues.

When playing online with Yuzu, each individual player has their own instance of the emulator acting as an individual Switch that is communicating with the others in multiplayer rooms. These rooms are the servers that are hosted by players that anyone can join and start playing on.

How Do You Host Rooms For Online Play?

Before we jump into setting up online multiplayer, you’ll want to be sure that you first have the Yuzu emulator downloaded and installed on your PC. If you don’t, you should first head over to our Yuzu emulator guide and get setup.

The Public Room Browser

For quickly jumping in an playing with friends online, there’s no need to actually host a room. You can simply jump right into one of the public rooms hosted in the Public Room Browser. The Public Room Browser allows you to browse public servers where plenty of other public rooms are hosted and ready to be used to play on.

Hosting A Room

That said, you can setup individual rooms for just you and your friends to play on instead of joining public rooms. You can do so by:

• Heading to the Yuzu main menu and selecting Mulitplayer > Create Room

Keep in mind that if you and your friends aren’t on the same internet network, you’ll need to setup Port forwarding for it to work correctly.

Keep in mind the following when creating a new room:

• The room will be deleted and no longer exist when the room host exits out of the Yuzu emulator
• Because created rooms are servers, the host room will need to be actively running the server constantly – if turned off, the room will no longer exist
• The room host will want to be sure that they have the best internet quality available to ensure lag is at a minimum; this is even more important if the room you host is a public room where people from all over the world might join
• Yuzu rooms can be data intensive when hosting so be sure you aren’t using your phone as a WiFi hotspot or that your ISP doesn’t have any hard limits that you can’t exceed if you’re the one hosting

Port Forwarding

Port forwarding can be a bit complicated so if you aren’t the most technically inclined, it’s recommended that you and your friends simply join one of the public rooms available on the Public Room Browser. If after reading that you’re still interested in setting up your own server, go ahead and read on to learn about how to port forward.

Routers usually will have one unified public IP address for all of the members on the network. By default, users outside of the network aren’t typically allowed access to any of its ports. If you use a router for your internet connect, you’ll need to setup Port forwarding for your router to allow others to access it.

Keep in mind that the following directions may differ depending on the type of router you’re using as not every single model will work the same. You may need to look up your individual model router and see what steps you need to take if the following instructions don’t work for you.

Port Forwarding for Windows

The simplest way to set this up on Windows is to use the standalone yuzu-room.exe executable file. To do so:

• Find your Yuzu emulator folder on your computer and inside of it go into either the yuzu-windows-mscv folder or the yuzu-windows-msvc-early-access folder (you will only have the second folder option if you are using the early access build of Yuzu)
• Once inside the folder, locate the yuzu-room executable file
• Now create a new text file in this folder and name it host.bat
• Open up your newly created host.bat text file and copy paste the following code into it:
  yuzu-room ^ –room-name “<INSERT ROOM NAME HERE>” ^ –room-description “<INSERT ROOM DESCRIPTION HERE>” ^ –preferred-game “<INSERT GAME TITLE HERE>” ^ –preferred-game-id “<INSERT TITLE ID HERE>” ^ –port 5000 ^ –max_members 4 ^ –token “<INSERT YUZU ACCOUNT TOKEN HERE>” ^ –enable-yuzu-mods ^ –web-api-url https://api.yuzu-emu.org ^ –ban-list-file “<INSERT BAN LIST FILE PATH HERE>” pause
• Edit the contents of the file above to match your information
• Save the file and make sure that it is located in the same folder as the yuzu-room executable
• After saving, go ahead and double click on the host.bat file in the folder to start hosting your room

After creating your room, your friends can then easily find and join it on the Public Room Browser.

Yuzu Moderation and Authentication

Yuzu online multiplayer rooms can authenticate users and grant moderation privileges as well. Users who have been authenticated have the ability to set their own community usernames and can have their avatar shown in the member list of the server. This feature is only available for public rooms hosted in the Public Room Browser.

Yuzu grants the following members in rooms moderation privileges as a default:

• Room hosts
• Yuzu Community Moderators

For users that have moderation privileges available, they will see a Moderation… button in the top right of the room. They can view a list of banned users and have the option to unban users if needed. Right clicking on any member in the member list will allow a moderator to Kick or Ban players in the room.

Summary

That about wraps up our guide on setting up Yuzu online play. You should now be all ready to go. If you run into any issues with Yuzu online play, you can try heading over to the official Yuzu Discord server and asking for some help. The community is very helpful and often are happy to help walk you through resolving your issues.

Be sure you also check out our guide to installing Yuzu mods using the Yuzu Mod Downloader.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Do You Play Yuzu Online With Friends?

The easiest way to play Yuzu online with friends is to all join one of the already exist public servers available on the Public Room Browser. For hosting individual rooms however, we recommend reading our guide above on how to setup your own server and allow your friends to join it. We go over the steps to getting all setup for playing Yuzu online with your friends.