Nintendo Kills Another Switch Emulator

Another Nintendo Switch emulator has been taken offline as Nintendo’s crackdown on the homebrew scene continues. Work on the open-source emulator Ryujinx will cease and downloads for it have been removed after its creator was approached by the Mario maker, approximately seven months after Switch emulator Yuzu also bit the dust.

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“Yesterday, [Ryujinx creator] gdkchan 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,” reads a message shared by one of its collaborators, under the handle rip in peri peri, on Discord. “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 Ryujinx website is still up but the option to download the Switch emulator no longer exists. The project allowed people to emulate Switch games on PC as well as PC gaming handhelds which have become increasingly popular in the last year. The team behind it was also working on an iOS port to potentially allow games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe to run on the newest iPhones, while video uploaded to YouTube shows test footage of the emulator running on Android for the Odin Pro 2 handheld manufactured by AYN.

The takedown comes several months after competing Switch emulator Yuzu was removed following a lawsuit settlement between its makers and Nintendo. Prior to 2024, Switch emulators seemed to be flying mostly under the radar of the company’s lawyers. It’s possible the success of the Steam Deck, Asus Rog Ally, and other handheld devices that are capable of emulating popular Switch games changed Nintendo’s calculus.

It’s now become common for its biggest releases to leak online weeks ahead of launch and be shown running at higher specifications through emulation on a PC. And while emulation enthusiasts promote users only running ROM files dumped from games they’ve legally purchased, many of the biggest Switch emulation communities often overlap with groups promoting Switch piracy.

“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 did not immediately respond to a request for comment.