By Sean Hollister , a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CN

Nintendo has reportedly shut down Ryujinx, the Switch emulator that was supposedly immune

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2024-10-02 04:00:01

By Sean Hollister , a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.

Nintendo may have just won its battle to put the most popular Nintendo Switch emulators out of business. In March, it sued Yuzu out of existence — and now it may have convinced Yuzu’s primary competitor, Ryujinx, to go away too.

Ryujinx’s download page is now empty. Its GitHub is gone. And the emulator’s X social media page and official Discord now contains a possible explanation: Nintendo got to its lead developer, and convinced them to shut down the project for good.

“Yesterday, 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,” writes developer and moderator ripinperiperi 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 rest of ripinperiperi’s message is a eulogy for the project, including a pair of videos showing the Ryujinx team’s progress on iOS and Android ports of the Nintendo Switch emulator, among other core changes — ones that will now presumably never ship.