After suing popular emulator Yuzu and forcing it to shut down in recent months, Nintendo now appears to have taken down Ryujinx, Yuzu’s biggest competitor. Ryujinx’s download page has been emptied, its GitHub account has been closed, and messages have been posted on the project’s Discord server that the development team has been forced to stop the project.
Nintendo is hunting down emulators one by one!
On the Ryujinx project’s Discord server, one of the moderators, ripinperiperi, revealed that lead developer gdkchan was offered a deal by Nintendo. This deal involves gdkchan completely shutting down the project and eliminating all assets related to Ryujinx. The developer announced the removal of the organization and digital assets belonging to the project before accepting the deal.
Nintendo has long exerted an effective crackdown on the emulator world. Although emulators are technically legal, the company has taken legal measures against them, particularly to prevent the distribution of pirated games.
Nintendo, which previously took down Yuzu, is trying to prevent Switch games from being played on alternative platforms with the end of Ryujinx. The company is using pressure on both Discord servers and GitHub to shut down these projects.
Ryujinx was an emulator thought to be on more solid ground than Yuzu. Developer gdkchan is based in Brazil, so it was assumed that the legal proceedings would not affect him. However, Nintendo’s decision to terminate the project without even filing a direct lawsuit caused outrage in the emulator community.
After Ryujinx’s closure, all eyes are now on how such projects will evolve.
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