It was seven months ago that the popular Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu was taken down by Nintendo following a lawsuit. Today, the other remaining juggernaut in the Switch emulation space has gone dark. The lead developer behind the Ryujinx open-source emulator project, gdkchan, has seemingly pulled the plug, removing both its github page and download links from the official website.
While an official statement has not arrived from gdkchan, development collaborator "rip in peri peri" shared an update on the project"s Discord server. It says that the lead developer "was contacted by Nintendo and offered an agreement to stop working on the project, remove the organization and all related assets he"s in control of."
Currently, it"s unclear what sort of agreement was extended towards the developer.
"While awaiting confirmation on whether he would take this agreement, the organization has been removed, so I think it"s safe to say what the outcome is," the message continues. Ryujinx
social media has reposted the message for the community to read, find it embedded below:
— Ryujinx (@RyujinxEmu) October 1, 2024
Written in C#, Ryujinx was touted as an emulator that provided "excellent accuracy and performance, a user-friendly interface, and consistent builds." While it was primarily being developed for Windows, Linux, and macOS machines, work on iOS and Android versions were also ongoing.
“Thank you to everyone who has continued code, documentation or issue reports to the project,” rip in peri peri wrote on Discord. “Thank you all for following us throughout the development. I was able to learn a lot of really neat things about games that I love, enjoy them with renewed qualities and in unique circumstances, and I’m sure you all have experience that are similarly special.”
Nintendo"s crackdown on emulation seems to be ramping up as a whole. Even YouTube videos of its retro games being emulated are being taken down via copyright strikes as of late.