Nintendo Has Taken Over the Ryujinx Switch Emulator and Cease Immediately

Last month, the Ryujinx website was forced to be offline, and this month Nintendo is evidently the owner of the Ryujinx website domain. 

This happened when one of the emulator developers sent a message to the Ryujinx discord stating that one lead developer had been “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,” (GamesRadar reported). After the claim, downloads and GitHub repositories were removed, and the website stopped working online. 

According to the WHOIS database, the Ryujinx website domain has a registrant contact with Nintendo of America Inc. on November 7. However, it is not clear that Nintendo took ownership but there’s every chance to take it. Possibly, Nintendo takes control to prevent emulators from being used in the same domain. As well as the display of power. 

While taking control over the Ryujinx website domain is not a big thing, Nintendo has done it before at once. In March of this year, Nintendo also shut down the major Switch emulator Yuzu. Yuzu agreed to the settlement after legal pressure and paid Nintendo $2.4 million. Unfortunately, the Yuzu team had no choice but to shut everything down immediately. 

On the one hand, the Ryujinx lead developer agreed an agreement with Nintendo to close the emulator privately. Now the Nintendo big two emulators have no future. Perhaps the company will access the more established emulator for further development. It is likely exciting to see how Nintendo’s strategic plans will evolve in the upcoming years.