Switch emulator Ryujinx seemingly pulled offline by creator after contact from Nintendo

Following the demise of Yuzu earlier this year, Switch emulator Ryujinx has seemingly ceased development and been taken offline after its creator was contacted by Nintendo.

Ryujinx initially surfaced in 2018, having started development the year before, and was the first Switch emulator capable of booting commercial games. The open source project has continued since then, with creator gdkchan funding development through Patreon.

Now, though, it seems Ryujinx has gone the way of now-defunct Switch emulator Yuzu. Users began reporting a 404 message when trying to access Ryujinx’s Github page earlier today, with concern mounting when the emulator’s download page became inaccessible.

Word of Ryujinx’s fate eventually emerged via a message on the emulator’s Discord server (thanks IGN). “Yesterday, gdkchan was contacted by Nintendo and offered an agreement to stop working on the project, remove the organisation and all related assets he’s in control of,” co-developer riperiperi explained in the post.

“While awaiting confirmation on whether he would take this agreement, the organisation has been removed, so I think it’s safe to say what the outcome is. Rather than leave you with only panic and speculation, I decided to write this short message to give some closure.” A screen capture of of riperiperi’s message was later shared on Ryujinx’s official social media channels, seemingly confirming the claims. At the time of writing, Ryujinx’s Patreon page and project website are still up but its download page remains inaccessible, as does its Github repository.

Ryujinx’s demise comes just seven months after Tropical Haze, the developer of open-source Switch emulator Yuzu, agreed to pay Nintendo $2.4m in damages and cease all operations after the Mario maker launched a lawsuit claiming the emulator facilitated piracy “at a colossal scale”. In that light, it’s perhaps no surprise Ryujinx’s creator opted to yank the emulator offline rather than face the infamously litigious Nintendo’s wrath.

In 2022, for instance, hacker Gary Bowser was sentenced to 40 months in prison – and was ordered to pay $4.5m – for the distribution and sale of piracy-enabling devices. In 2021, the owner of ROM site RomUniverse was hit with a $2.1m bill for copyright and trademark infringement, and an Arizona couple was ordered to pay Nintendo $12.2m in 2018 for running two sites which offered pirated ROMs. Also, it doesn’t much like Palworld right now either.