Nintendo is killing Switch Emulation via Murky Legal Theory

All legal discussion is relevant to the United States only. Please don’t use any of this as legal advice. If you find any errors with this article, please send an email to [email protected] . Credit to Arstechnica for the inspiration for the cover photo, Ryujinx for the logo itself, and the sources below.

On October 1st 2024, GDKChan was contacted by Nintendo and given an agreement to stop work on the Nintendo Switch emulator Ryujinx and remove the organization and all related assets, according to Ryujinx developer riperiperi. Ryujinx was still in heavy development (including work on iOS/Android ports, native applets, and a metal backend) when the project ceased development. However, it didn’t stay in the news for long, likely since Yuzu was taken down months earlier; I was shocked to see Nintendo essentially take Switch emulation offline, even with their previous actions, since I thought emulation protections would be stronger (as it turns out, this will be a complicated question to answer). Few good discussions are talking about the intersection of emulation and legality (Moon Channel and Hoeg Law’s videos are two exceptions to this) so hopefully this gives a better context for emulation. Let’s get into it!

Short Term Benefit: Users have a right to software interoperability. All modern computing platforms have creative and functional elements. For a given software program, a user should have the choice of platform (which recreates the functional elements) following fair use (whether it be on original hardware or an emulator).

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