Following a series of prerelease leaks for The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom coming from emulator users, Nintendo has reportedly contacted the lead developer of Switch emulator Ryujinx and had the project shut down.
As of this writing, the Ryujinx website main page remainds unaltered, but the download page has had links and resources removed.
While no official announcement has been made on behalf of the Ryujinx team, messages in the emulator’s Discord server have acted as the source of this news- with X user OatmealDome sharing a screenshot from the now-locked server below:
While the message claims that lead developer gdkchan made an agreement with Nintendo to shut down the project and delete all assets, the finer details of said agreement or a confirmation of the project’s discontinuation remain to be seen.
This, of course, comes off the heels of the 2.4 million dollar settlement in March between Nintendo and another Switch emulator, Yuzu, after The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom fell victim to prerelease leaks as well last year.
If true, the end of Ryujinx, combined with the Yuzu settlement, would mark the defeat of two of the most well-known and widely-used Nintendo Switch emulators. And with its lawsuit against Palworld pending, Nintendo’s legal ninjas and copyright experts have already laid eyes on their next target.
I want to say I’m surprised, but I’m not. It was only a matter of time for Ryujinx to be taken down, however, Nintendo has only achieved a temporary victory as eventually there will be another emulator to pick up where Yuzu and Ryujinx left off. Nintendo and other game companies can try to suppress emulation all they want, but they will never stop it.
Or maybe the logical viewpoint would be to see that Nintendo keeps shutting down Switch emulators so maybe if you start to develop and distribute one, then you should already know what’s going to happen.
They should probably wait until Switch is a legacy platform
This will keep happening to current-gen emulators. And frankly not surprised at all since it’s still an actively sold console and not a “retro” console. Hard to fault Nintendo (legally at least).
SWITCH 2 RETROCOMPATIBLE CONFIRMED BOYZ
We only need someone to push an update for Prime 4 and this shut down won’t even matter, you will always be able to find it somewhere like a torrent site and run everything important up to Echoes of Wisdom near flawlessly. My 10 year old card gets it to 1440p 120 fps without breaking a sweat. Too little too late by Nintendo. Maybe don’t release new hardware with insanely outdated specs that a toaster could emulate and you won’t have anything to worry about.
After all of them laying low they finally got sniffed out. Shame considering I actually like using the emulator.
I’m surprised they didn’t leak any games for the upcoming Switch 2.
ok boomer
Uh, is it me or this article was written by a child…?
It’s you.
ok boomer