No, they could’t just remove a few lines of code and text - if they could, they would have done exactly that. Yuzu was fucked because they sold early access to day one compat with new games. That’s clearly illegal and scummy, even if it’s big bad corporation on the losing end of it. If they hadn’t complied they likely would have lost any litigation and might also get into other legal troubles because of likely pre-release access to games. No judge would have taken any of it lightly.