Nintendo Slays Switch Emulator Ryujinx

Ah f**k, as long as there’s no copyrighted files provided then it should be fine. Emulation is decades old at this point, there’s no stopping it.

Good. Switch emulation is downright piracy and a complete disrespect to Nintendo.

Let’s go Nintendo! Some people may not appreciate that I am against this kind of emulation, but I really do think that Nintendo is winning against these emulators for a reason! (hint: it shouldn’t be allowed)

This is strange to me. Nintendo has no grounds to stand on here legally- at least if this is an American operated venture. Unless the team is profiting off of the production of the emulator, including the BIOs with the emulator, or promoting actual piracy, it doesn't really make sense as to why this emulator is getting shut down.

Sony tried to take down an Emulator years ago and never actually managed to do so. They threatened the creator with a lawsuit and ended up losing, with the courts dictating that the issue is with the BIOs being included.

Shame, was a big fan of their work and was nice to see games at 4K60, not being bound by the limitations of my OLED Switch.

This is a warning that really USA or the EU are terrible for community projects as they always shill the multinational corporations. Best is to develop from places like Russia, where they would laugh at Nintendo if they tried anything.

@PikminMarioKirby Emulation has nothing wrong with it. The issue arises from piracy. Emulation in and of itself isn't wrong, so long as you are dumping your own copies of your games. It keeps game preservation alive, and without emulation there would be a ton of games that people would never be able to experience again given that corporations have no interest in re-printing them. Look at the PS1 for example. Sony hasn't re-released many of those games, and so it fell onto people to actively archive them.

Unfortunate that these things go this way because there are some good legitimate uses for people who want more out of their copy of a game than Nintendo can currently give them.

That said, from a piracy standpoint I can't really argue with shutting down modern emulators and roms even if I think the chasing down of emulation on historical systems is just Nintendo being douche bags.

People copy their games and try to play them for free. I suppose it's a kind of flattery lol.

Still, folk are going to cry that they can't have free games anymore.

I see Snake from Animal Crossing on the article photo, he's awesome!

@VoidofLight the problem is if a massive corporation brings the lawyers to your door, there is a good chance you can't afford to fight them and would lose purely due to financial muscle.

And especially where you have no profit motive when the letter drops you probably just pack it in. Nintendo are quite happy to see you in prison after all.

I knew it was only a matter of time, it was good while it last but like I said before if they would had waited longer for Nintendo to discontinue the Switch, this emulator would had get a better chance at surviving. Also they need to do a better job at not getting too much attention cause once Nintendo is on to you it's likely not going to be rosey.

@batmanbud2 That is factually wrong. You’ve stated something literally without a shadow of a doubt false. Emulation is not piracy. Emulation can be used for piracy in the exact same way that you can pirate games on a legitimate Switch. That’s like saying playing DVDs on your PC is piracy.

I have to wonder - is Nintendo going after these emulators because they want to tout improved performance for Switch games on the Switch successor as a selling point? Because at this stage, I don't think it's going to be another instance of them packing in old hardware and locking backwards compatibility to a separate mode of sorts (which was the case for Wii, Wii U, GBA, and 3DS, iirc). It seems like it's going to be entirely native. So I can see them not wanting any unofficial ways to play Switch games with greater performance than what the console itself can manage.

Lmao. I don’t like emulation but I won’t pretend I didn’t use it and other forms of piracy when i was a teen and didn’t understand the impact. So all I can say is if you are gonna do it, do it after the system is dead (usually two gens removed as then games will usually no longer be for sale). At least then the theft has less of an impact. Obviously morally speaking those people don’t care. But hey they keep the Nintendo litigation team in a job. So good for them? 😂

Always ends the same way but these sillyheads never learn. Who emulates a current gen console anyway, just buy the real thing. Have fun with the emulation a couple gens later when all the bells and whistles are there and everything runs smooth.

I consider this unfortunate. I used this emulator not to play games for free but to play mods for games I already bought, because I didn't want to hack my Switch.

@RupeeClock certain consumers. The majority of Switch owners didn't seem to care about these issues. They had over 106 million active users last year on their platform, I'm sure the number was barely 1/64th of this total that cared about these issues (let alone the number of units sold). For example, all of my friends who own a Switch didn't care about getting better performance (or buying a complicated PC handheld) over just hoping in and playing the game.

I get it. You have a vision of how these games should perform. That's fine. However, the majority were happy playing on the Switch itself over a handheld PC. Not every gamer wants to play around and tinker with settings of a game before playing it.

It's a Hydra situation.
One down Thousand arise.

The original comment said Nintendo sent an agreement to the creator. So, did they offer the creator of this emulator money for all the related assets? Judging from the comment, it doesn't sound like there were any threats; possibly financial motivation to abandon the project and give everything to Nintendo.

Agreement and lawsuit are not the same thing.

@progx Yeahhhh, no chance Nintendo sent them money. This is the sort of ‘agreement’ that’s reached when there are 15 Mafiosos with Tommy guns pointed at your kneecaps.

Some of these past comments aged like milk (again) from the last emulation closure article…

Anyway I’m all for less parasites because let’s be real vast majority was never for the “game preservation” meme and just want free video gaming on brand new Nintendo games lol. The “Emulation ISN’T piracy” crowd need to understand that.

Good. Imagine actually purchasing a Switch game with your own money while other entitled thieves play that same game for free and not feeling at least some degree of contempt or resentment towards the thieves, or those than facilitate them.

@Medic_alert Even then, this lawsuit has already been fought by Sony, and Emulators were declared legal in the US. I don't get what grounds Nintendo has to stand on, unless the devs were doing something like Yuzu's devs- where Yuzu promoted piracy.

@RupeeClock possibly. Not sure if they got caught with anything illegal where the agreement was they wouldn't go to trial.

Not everyone who engages in emulation just wants to play games for free.

@Arawn93 I never used emulation for free new Nintendo games. Always bought the games when they came out and opted to wait until they came out to get ahold of them. I only ever used emulation for preservation of games that weren't able to be played anymore.

@nessisonett not sure... Nintendo wouldn't go after them unless they knew they were going to win. Also, it's much quieter than how Yuzu went down. I don't blame Nintendo for going after an emulator of a product they're actively marketing and selling, but I'd like to know what got the creator of Ryujinx to decide to shut it down. Probably we'll never know.

@SuperBro64 Yeah, it's only 99.5% of them.

@VoidofLight Cool. Can you speak for the ones that did? Tears literally got pirated day -1 and probably cost Nintendo millions of lost revenue when they hit the LAST one lol. Just chalk it up as “people ruining it for the rest of us.”

@batmanbud2 amen to that.

They're taking down all these projects, right, but I'm sure some users have just re-uploaded them to other websites and stuck them in some torrents or something. With some of those users continuing development out of spite. Things just aren't wiped off the internet, that's not how it works. It doesn't bother me, personally, I just find it amusing at times.

@nessisonett pirating games on consoles, regardless if it on a legitimate consoles is still piracy. Still illegal 🤷

As long as the Switch is the current console, I couldn't care less what happens to these Swtich emulators. It's their own fault for promoting piracy of Switch games. We all know that's not all emulation is for, but that's all it's good for when the console is still active.

@GrailUK

and I dupe my own bought games from my own modded Switch so I can play those games in better shape. Is your tiny brain so closed that it's as simple as emulation = pirates?

Nintendo lawyers have put together an argument over the last few years that centres on encryption codes and DMCA's provisions against bypassing DRM.

The argument as far as I'm aware hasn't come before a court yet and so nintendo potentially could be successful if a case ever goes before a judge. All the emulators nintendo have gone after have chosen to settle outside of court rather than having to argue in court.

Supposedly they were distributing pirated copies of Echoes of Wisdom. AKA the exact same BS Yuzu was up to with TOTK.

Though not surprising giving there's an endless amount of people lionising emulators and making wonky arguments to try and spin piracy as morally good. Instead of dark grey.

There is absolutely no doubt that gaming is dying, but there's one company out there working their backsides off, unlike the competitors, and still releasing good games that actually sell.

That would be Nintendo-if people really want to save gaming, then they'll need to support them by buying their games, since it's the only company that knows what it's doing.

My story with emulation is that I downloaded BotW, tried it an an emulator, got blown away. I very quickly bought a Switch and have been spending steadily ever since. Also, my kids grew up on Nintendo games. So, maybe it isn't so black and white, and good vs evil?

@TrueBlueYoshi THAT’S WHAT I’M SAYING!!! Piracy on any platform is piracy…. and playing legitimate copies of games on any platform is not piracy.

the files are out there. the emulator still exists.
Nintendo can't put that genie back in the bottle.

stuff like this is heavily impacting my decision to buy a Switch 2.

@Denoloco seems to be for a lot of people in this comment section. emulation isn't even a threat to nintendo. if anything, the lack of emulators would reduce their sales.
@Dr_Lugae that explains it, nintendo wouldn't be able to legally go after them without them doing something stupid like that.

honestly, nintento could stop most of this by making their own emulator online thats downloadable for free but needing to be signed into a nintendo account to add games or using an official adapter to use physical carts. would let people who want to run stuff on better hardware be able to do so while also allowing people with more limited budgets that can't afford a 200$+ console be able to buy games.

@progx Probably as always the patreon along with supporting leaked new games pre-release like Zelda Echoes of Wisdom

https://www.patreon.com/Ryujinx

I think the modern emulators are just too corrupt and blatant in their support of piracy.

When they take money and "somehow" have their emulator support games pre-release (obtaining leaked games), then its unambiguously pushing piracy.

I mean, they did have a patreon.
If you gonna do this, make sure no money at all is involved.

There's a reason why old emulators managed to survive and it was mainly because they didn't take money.

@MegaVel91 Moral issue? You think Nintendo is doing this over morals? lol. No. Hell I’m not even taking the morale route with this. You don’t need to.

It’s just common sense to not cheer for thieves especially when it’s thievery over video games of all things. This isn’t a “Little Timmy stealing bread for his younger sister” scenario.

Congratulations for being a Joey Little along with the other users here going “I only preserve!” Or “emulating got me to buy Nintendo games! Honest!” You are all the drop in the bathtub full of piracy. That doesn’t change anything in the end from a Nintendo perspective.

Nintendo doing this based on the most non biased way possible: They see X game being downloaded Y amount of times (sometimes for even profit lol) before the game even dropped. That is all the justification they need and unfortunately collateral damage (the “good apples”) happens due to it.

People like you still fail to comprehend this and love throwing out every flimsy justification out of your butt to try to paint Nintendo as the bad guy when you are blaming the wrong people for all of this. Then later have the surprise Pikachu face when Nintendo actually does something about it time and time again with multiple first party games getting stolen at this point.

If people TRULY were just emulating because “I just want to preserve” or “I just want the game in better specs after I bought it” then the numbers would tell a different story.

@Dr_Lugae You mean just like the people who keep saying "That dark gray is black!" because even bothering with the nuances of why people do any kind of piracy beyond the assumption of wanting stuff for free would hurt their ego?

That said, the problem here is the distribution bit is a supposed thing and not a certainty, and if they were indeed doing that, then I agree, they deserve this.

The red and blue copyright demon has once again taken the scorched earth approach...
When all is said and done, he will make sure there is NOTHING STANDING.

Gotta love people throwing out the "Emulation is legal actually" argument. The so-called proof behind this is a now twenty four year old decision in Sony vs Connectix. Twenty four years is practically an eternity in the tech world. There is no act of Congress supporting it, no legislation at all actually, just precedent from a case from the year 2000. And despite what many try to claim, it is definitely a grey area. If Nintendo pushed the issue and actually took one of these emulators to court, there is a very legitimate chance they would win. The main reason they haven't is because the risk-reward doesn't really make sense. These emulators aren't really costing Nintendo that many sales, and the potential cost of losing a lawsuit like that would be disastrous for them. There's a great you tube video that kind of delves into this, which he refers to this. It's long, and not entirely about what I've said, but is fascinating nonetheless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wROQUZDCIMI

@Dr_Lugae when there’s money involved, it’s chum for the legal sharks. I agree.

@LadyCharlie that’s your choice. I’ll choose to buy a Switch 2 to support Nintendo’s workers.

Like many others have said, emulation itself is legal, if you use homebrew apps to rip your own purchased cartridges. Courts have already ruled this. It's the best way to enjoy Pokemon Scarlet Violet as you can play 60 fps and 4K resolution. Nintendo's own hardware holds some of these games back but emulation lets you enjoy them with more tech powering them.

@nessisonett nope. That's not what you're really saying. And you can only play legitimate games on other platforms if it's a MULTIPLATFORM game, meaning if it's a console version of the game. So I'll repeat again: Playing games, legitimate or not, on other consoles is still piracy IF it violates copyright law. And if you still can't accept that, I can't explain it to you any clearer. Sorry buddy. 🤷

@VoidofLight welcome to real life mate. You may enjoy it as long as you do not piss off Nintendo.

@Denoloco yes, i know mine is

@EriXz Laws are apart of real life. Legally Nintendo isn’t allowed to take down emulators unless they promote piracy, make money off the emulator, or include the system bios.

@TrueBlueYoshi I could, right now, put a PS2 disc in my PC and boot the game via an emulator. Is that piracy? The game isn’t multiplatform?

It’s an emulator for a current market console, so I see no problem in Nintendo taking it down.

@nessisonett like I said 21 minutes ago, it is piracy if it violates copyright law. And you mentioned "emulator". If the emulator is illegal and/or the game is legitimate or not, it's piracy. Case close. Now I'm going to bed. Good night.

I don't like that they are going after emulators, but I can see why they would want to.

I would guess that all this recent legal stuff coming from Nintendo might be to put them in 'better stead' for the launch of their new console. They are about to announce the switch 2, and probably don't like the idea of people emulating (and of course pirating) games from another generation. So this is probably to protect switch 2 from being so heavily pirated, by sowing fear in those who might try to make it possible.

Though I imagine switch emulation will return one day. I wouldn't be surprised to see Nintendo using it themselves on a future console.

Because the Nintendo Switch is still in continuation, any "emulation" of it would be considered piracy. Just wait until the Switch's life time is over, then you can do what you want.

Emulation is for preservation of games and consoles that came out decades ago, not for something that is still available.
It doesn't matter if the console's hardware is easy to hack, it's still piracy. Nintendo is well within it's rights to shut Ryujinx down. Case closed.

As always with stories like this my view is this:

Use emulators to get new games for free then you are a dirty scumbag thief.

Use emulators to play games you bought legitimately just in a better way for you then fine.

Use emulators to play clasics games not otherwise availabe on modern platforms then also fine.

It doesn't matter their still going to be releasing updates, and the switches life is done anyway.

@SurprisedRobinChu Playing the devil's advocate, ripping games regardless is still piracy by legal definition because you're illegally copying and redistributing the software without the rightsholders permission.

Difference is it becomes a lot less of a moral issue when, as you said, the said software is not widely available, or otherwise inaccessible and the rightsholder provides no legal means of access.

Ah a wonderful conversation. Just emulate old games and such, that’s fine. Don’t emulate any games that are on current gen consoles.

And definitely don’t pirate them.

@Dr_Lugae oh boy were they making money off of this emulator?

@GrailUK all while continuing to ignore the existence of... but hey, on second thought, perhaps that's been the very gambit to keep the spotlight away from the source type in question?😆

@VoidofLight afaik, this happened to Yuzu

@batmanbud2 no you are obviously misinformed.

It's still available to download at different sites. FYI

"I'll never support Nintendo again!" says people who are upset they've lost access to pirated Switch games.

@HeeHo and ones they never paid for

@anoyonmus Yuzu got in trouble with Nintendo for selling patches for Tears of the Kingdom before the game came out. They were selling something for an IP they didn't own.

kill one, ten new pop up. This is a never ending battle. Whoever still got the emulator it'll probably work fine until the end of the Switchs life-cycle. A lot of people still even use Yuzu.
I wonder how fast they'll crack the next system. Pirates never give up xD
Not endorsing any of this. Just being realistic.

@McBurn kill one, ten more takes its place...

HAIL HYDRA.

@McBurn meanwhile keeping Nintendo's legal team gainfully employed which allows them to flex harder on things like YouTube & fan games in the meantime. All the while Nintendo grows increasingly wealthy as their brand equity rivals Disney and a majority of their customers couldn't care less about any of this. Fun for all!

In regards to emulation, I'm not the least bit concerned about how people access games that aren't being sold anymore on platforms that are no longer being supported (such as platforms like the Wii U, 3DS and basically everything prior)

...but the Switch is still more than available currently and games for it are mostly still widely available between physical releases and digital releases on the eShop. There's just no good reason for software like Yuzu and Ryujinx to be publicly available until that changes.

@mikegamer lol, I'm not simping. I just like videogames and don't care what corporations do most of the time, but I know evil when I see it.

This is evil.

I genuinely hope nintendo bought the emulator for future use.

@VoidofLight yet, they did

@EriXz Then it's more than likely they paid off the people who made it. Either buying the rights or paying them to step away from the project. Either way they have no legal grounds to just copyright strike Emulators.

I support Nintendo by shutting down these kind of emulators. Many are commenting " But emulating is not illegal" Lets be honest 99% of people using the current console emulators use it to play games they dont own. It's as it is, its fully Nintendo's property and people are in no position to be mad at a company that create their own work to commercialize it, it's that simple. At the end of the day, emulators are used to play pirated games.

Emulation isn't piracy my a$$, most are using it to pirate the current games because they hate Nintendo (the company) or the Switch is "weak" according to them & are trying to stick it to them by pirating without remorse then they cry foul once Nintendo strikes.

Can't believe we get an emulator being taken down, the BS tracks plus more being added to F-Zero 99 & news that the remaining GBA F-Zero games are coming to NSO soon, that's nice to see.

If there's one thing that Nintendo does right is representing their games' footage accurately, frame rate drops and all. Having videos of an emulator outperforming the real hardware is just not a good look. I don't think it's "hardware envy", or a similar petty argument, but partly about managing customer's expectation for current-gen games.

Same reason for them going after AI-generated images. They want their IP represented accurately.

I'm sure we'll see a new Switch emulator in the future. Dolphin has been around for 2 decades already, after all.

Most likely caused by next Nintendo system being completely backward compatible Switch 2, as in a regular console lifecycle usable emulators would start popping up just in time as the system is getting retired. However, if same platform continues to live on and be commercially viable, big N needs to control the piracy more so than usual.
My personal opinion, I have nothing against emulation, used it myself for legacy systems as it's almost impossible to get to working hardware for a reasonable budget. As long as you own the games, it's not piracy or illegal (no law preventing you running cartridges on whatever you want).

End of an era.

Most unofficial emulator development and maintainance is done by a tiny handful of software/firmware engineers, so those individuals being sued or paid to go away is going to be a huge hit to both Switch 1 and Switch 2 emulation.

I think I'll just wait until a Switch 2 emulator releases to go back to playing Nintendo games

@Andy_Witmyer sure thing wikipedia

Yuzu was using Nintendo assets that were leaked, so fair enough that being shut down. As far as we know this one was all legal though, but it’s essentially bullying by Nintendo assets they know individuals like this won’t have the money to fight them in a court of law.

Also all a bit ironic when it’s been shown in the past Nintendo steal hobbyist coder’s code for emulating on their own systems, again as they know individuals can’t afford to go to the courts for a case they’d absolutely win.

@ArcticSin just as I thought: you're a graphics snob and a PC shill. If you can't handle anything less than 4K 60fps, you're an actual baby. Gameplay. Over. Graphics. Every. Time.

@batmanbud2 Nintendo games don't have gameplay good enough to be worth overlooking their abysmal hardware for. I'd settle for 1080p 60fps but Nintendo doesn't want to do that either it seems. I was going to wait and see how an actual Switch 2 fairs but I'm totally against Nintendo's anti-preservation tactics.

Maybe instead of waiting for an emulator I'll just wait until the day Nintendo caves in and puts their games on PC, I have enough of a Steam backlog to last me the rest of my life.

Bummer but then again a currently sold console being emulated for currently sold games is also quite too close in that grey area.

I'd rather emulate games that are no longer available legally.

@G_and_Thomas why does it even matter? If I want to buy a cartridge dumper and physical games to play on an emulator where a console never comes into play, that's not something Nintendo should be allowed to legislate away.

@ArcticSin then why are you here? Just stick to Steam for the rest of your life and leave us Nintendo fans alone.

I'll have you know, though, that PC is not the end all be all for gaming, and it never will be.

@batmanbud2 Because I've had every Nintendo console since the GBA and N64 and I'd rather not leave the games. I think Nintendo games are great but not special or better than any other.

My time with PC gaming has also left me wanting more from hardware and game optimization. I'm not asking for like 8K 120fps from the Switch 2 but like seriously Nintendo throw some of us that understand hardware a bone for once. I want to love Nintendo games again but I can't stomach playing games at 720p 30fps anymore. It's not 2006 anymore. Hence why I gravitate emulation. And I'm one of the few that doesn't pirate and actually wants to either rip games or use a cartridge dumper.

Emulating games from old systems is one thing. Emulating games from current gen hardware is another thing entirely. For everyone who says "Emulators themselves are not illegal". Yes this is true. So IF you're someone who buys Nintendo Switch games, but wants to play them on your PC with higher resolutions and framerates, technically you're not doing anything illegal. However, let's be honest here. What percentage of people who are playing emulated Switch games on their PC's also paid for the actual games? I would hazard a guess 95% of people doing this are simply pirating the games, thus stealing. And for those saying "Well it's Nintendo's fault for releasing underpowered hardware". If you think Nintendo will EVER release a console with equivalent power to your PC that you're emulating the games on, you're delusional. Or for those saying "Oh you're glazing or defending the billion dollar corporation". Nintendo's net worth has ZERO to do with it. If you're emulating Switch games without buying the games, you are STEALING! It's not rocket science. How dare Nintendo go after people stealing from them or facilitating / supporting / enabling them to do so?

@Denoloco THIEF!!!