In what could possibly be the worst way to start October for emulation enthusiasts, as of just a few minutes ago the Ryujinx repository appears to be down, with the usual "404" message being given when trying to enter any of their related GitHub pages. Not even the main Ryujinx developer account seems to be active.

Currently there hasn't been any official reports as to why this occurred. None of the official social media accounts for the emulator have given any response, nor has any of the developers talked about why the repository is down, but we'll be sure to keep you updated whenever any new developments towards this situation are known.

UPDATE #1: Given the nature of the page being down with a 404 message, it's possible that this could be related to the removal of the Ryujinx account, and not a DMCA. If the repository suffered from a DMCA claim, then the DMCA notice would appear when entering the repository. However, that is not the case, and the DMCA listings from GitHub doesn't have any recent entries for Ryujinx.

UPDATE #2: The Ryujinx Discord server has paused invites for the moment, and additionally, one of the Discord mods posted the following message:
"To clarify, it's not a DMCA, it's not an issue with GitHub. Please wait for further information and refrain from spreading misinfo thanks."

UPDATE #3: According to an official statement on Ryujinx's Discord server, developer gdkchan was contacted by Nintendo and they were offered an agreement to stop working on the emulator project, and while the agreement wasn't confirmed yet, the organization has been entirely removed.

UPDATE #4: According to other devs, the developer was not only contacted, but actually tracked down by Nintendo to his location, and pressured to developer to cease and abandon development altogether for the emulator.

This marks now the 2nd and only main remaining Switch emulator that Nintendo has taken down as of today, and without any proper and clear protection when it comes to emulation and preservation down the road, it's likely that Nintendo will continue on its efforts to bring down emulation as a whole.

Ryujinx GitHub Repository

 

[Tomtani1]

Hey Nintendo. Try to shutdown my V1 unpatched Switch.

 

[Lumpofcoal]

My guy, I linked you to it. It's a public post by a known dev, not hearsay lol. I just explained in my previous post that they're "former" because the project was deleted. They were "current" before yesterday.

I'd love to hear why you think a screenshot (which can be faked) of a message in a private discord with closed invites, whose identity you *also* can't verify -- that you can't validate from the outside -- is somehow valid and acceptable evidence to you, and a public post by a known current (until project deletion) dev is somehow not. Your standards are inconsistent, and I believe it's because you have a motive, because seriously being this dense strains belief.

No, I'm not. You are simultaneously trying to play respectability politics because I'm being rude to you because you're gish galloping, and saying you have a right to an opinion in a public forum despite the fact that you seem incapable of parsing information that doesn't support your already held viewpoint, and consider me to be "butting in" for trying to give you information you seem to be in very dear need of. That all conflicts, and I'm pointing that out, which you're getting quite precious about.

I'm not getting personal, I don't know you. I'm insulting your arguments because you're being willfully obtuse. And that's not fallacious.

Because it's not immediately obvious that he is. And even if he were, who is able to verify what he said?

Simple, I rely on what has been officially quoted by the press at large and the discord one has even been pinned on ryujinx's twitter. Hence, an "official" statement to an extent. The one most people are actually basing it off of. The one that's actually in the OP?

Let me make this clear. I'm not saying that it's impossible for the dev to have been visited by them or to be intimidated (by legal threat, etc) because of it. Heck, even I harbour some doubts as to my current position that they were paid to go away.

I simply disagreed with that being what happened due to particular factors (eg lack of DMCA) that I mentioned earlier on. It does not mean that I won't change my mind, it just means that I'm waiting for stronger (IMO, emphasis) evidence to support the other theories. For example, if their twitter puts up another pinned post corroborating what you or others mentioned,I would be more than glad to accept it.

 

[linuxares]

Torzu isn't updated right? Plus man it is feels so shady

 

[luisedgarf]

If you spent like, two minutes of basic effort looking at any of his accounts you would see that he was an active developer, he said "former" because the project was clearly dead by the point he posted this reply. Nintendo is notorious for sending PIs to do surveillance and knock-and-talks as intimidation and scare tactics, as it clearly heightens fear of what might happen if you continue when someone starts showing up where you live and harassing you in person.

I can’t speak for Brazil or their laws, but if that happened here in Mexico, my country, it would have blown up into a huge diplomatic scandal that Nintendo probably never saw coming.

No foreign company or person can just show up and threaten a Mexican citizen without a court order or approval from local authorities. That would be a fast track to a diplomatic mess. Any Mexican judge would throw out Nintendo's case, arguing that a foreign company had no right to pressure a Mexican citizen like that, especially without a solid legal reason.

 

[Nincompoopdo]

Hey Nintendo. Try to shutdown my V1 unpatched Switch.

Don't temp them or Atmosphere will be next.

 

[Rya687]

I know people say this a lot but I don't think it's the threat of legal that made the dev cave in. IMO, it doesn't make much sense for a few reasons.

The first and perhaps most important reason being that they have never been able to dmca ryujinx even once in its 6 years long existence. 6 years is a very long time if we take into account that it's 6 years of constant scrutiny (including code) and prodding for possible legal weaknesses by a VERY LITIGIOUS team that knows the dmca at the back of their hands. If they can't even legally take down the project on github which is very pliant towards such requests, on what basis are they going to go after the invidividuals working on it? Even for Brazil's court, one would need to raise a claim that has some legal basis or it will be thrown out. I mean, folks keep boasting that no one in Brazil can sued for openly pirating, why would this be any different? And why wait till now? The moment Yuzu tripped, ninty went straight for the jugular, they didn't wait that long.

On a similar basis, if there is something that they can actually pursue the dev with, then they should have no issue shutting the project down using the same reason as well. Logically, it would be far more legally effective to have the project being declared "illegal" by the court like what happened with Yuzu, than have the dev voluntarily back out. Because in the latter, anyone is legally free to continue with ryujinx, even if by another name. That's the important distinction between ryujinx's situation and yuzu's. While ninty obtained a court judgement declaring Yuzu as having violated DMCA, there's nothing to that effect for ryujinx. In fact, ninty is surprisingly quiet about this, not even announcing the existence of such an agreement. In contrast with their past patent lawsuits/agreements, including the one with palworld.

Besides, I'm pretty sure that this isn't the first time that ninty has communicated with the dev. They probably identified him long ago and sent multiple legal letters his way. Probably from the first few days of launch even. Yet the dev was never even once fazed by it.

As such, I'm leaning more towards monetary incentive as the reason. And a very large one at that.

I thought the Yuzu case was settled out of court. Nintendo certainly accused it of being illegal for various reasons, but if there was no guilty verdict, then it's not officially considered so. It does sound like the Yuzu team made a number of serious mistakes that would've probably caused them to lose the case if it had continued, but to my knowledge, that hasn't been explicitly determined by the court. So Nintendo shouldn't have the right to just shut down any forks on the grounds that they've been proven to be illegal.

Although it is probably safer to fork Ryujinx from this point onward, since its team doesn't seem to have taken as many risks. The only argument I'm aware of Nintendo made against Yuzu that still applies to Ryujinx is that both emulators offer to decrypt Switch ROMs if the keys are provided, which could arguably classify them as DRM circumvention software. I don't know if you could get around that by stripping a Ryujinx fork of its decryption ability and expecting people to either decrypt the ROMs themselves or download pre-decrypted ROMs.

 

[Lumpofcoal]

I thought the Yuzu case was settled out of court. Nintendo certainly accused it of being illegal for various reasons, but if there was no guilty verdict, then it's not officially considered so. It does sound like the Yuzu team made a number of serious mistakes that would've probably caused them to lose the case if it had continued, but to my knowledge, that hasn't been explicitly determined by the court. So Nintendo shouldn't have the right to just shut down any forks on the ground that they've been proven to be illegal.

Although it is probably safer to fork Ryujinx from this point onward, since its team doesn't seem to have taken as many risks. The only argument I'm aware of Nintendo made against Yuzu that still applies to Ryujinx is that both emulators offer to decrypt Switch ROMs if the keys are provided, which could arguably classify them as DRM circumvention software. I don't know if you could get around that by stripping a Ryujinx fork of its decryption ability and expecting people to either decrypt the ROMs themselves or download pre-decrypted ROMs.

Yes and no. An actual out of court would be ryujinx where there isn't any admission of guilt/liability. In yuzu's case, the "settlement" part was basically them admitting to the judge that they violated dmca in exchange for a certain sum (presumably lower than what ninty was asking initially or what they court would have ordered if left to it) of damages to ninty, rather than leaving it up to the court if they had gone through trial. Ultimately, ninty did not drop the suit and there was a judgment against Yuzu. In other words, they "consented to judgment".

You can read more at the following:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.rid.56980/gov.uscourts.rid.56980.11.0.pdf

If were to give an analogy, it would the equivalent of a plea bargain in a criminal trial. Skipping trial and going straight to admitting guilt in exchange for a lower sentence.

 

[linuxares]

Yes and no. An actual out of court would be ryujinx where there isn't any admission of guilt/liability. In yuzu's case, the "settlement" part was basically them admitting to the judge that they violated dmca in exchange for a certain sum (presumably lower than what ninty was asking initially or what they court would have ordered if left to it) of damages to ninty, rather than leaving it up to the court if they had gone through trial. Ultimately, ninty did not drop the suit and there was a judgment against Yuzu. In other words, they "consented to judgment".

You can read more at the following:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.rid.56980/gov.uscourts.rid.56980.11.0.pdf

If were to give an analogy, it would the equivalent of a plea bargain in a criminal trial. Skipping trial and going straight to admitting guilt in exchange for a lower sentence.

Now that's kind of a blackmail. Say this or not else basically.

 

[smf]

That's very bizarre if they haven't promote with money nor showcase the pirated games.

Switch emulators are illegal and as they are current generation, then Nintendo are in their rights to stop them.

Maybe they hired him.

 

[Ondrashek06]

Switch emulators are illegal and as they are current generation, then Nintendo are in their rights to stop them.

Maybe they hired him.

Emulation is legal, as proven multiple times in the past in court.
Yuzu did a lot of shady shit to deserve the lawsuit, and with Ryujinx, Nintendo most likely paid the dev as they knew that they wouldn't have much of a case in court.

You couldn't even say that the emulators were used to bypass security mechanisms as you were required to obtain the required decryption keys + the firmware to be able to use them.

 

[Rya687]

Emulation is legal, as proven multiple times in the past in court.
Yuzu did a lot of shady shit to deserve the lawsuit, and with Ryujinx, Nintendo most likely paid the dev as they knew that they wouldn't have much of a case in court.

You couldn't even say that the emulators were used to bypass security mechanisms as you were required to obtain the required decryption keys + the firmware to be able to use them.

Actually, that's not a valid argument, to my knowledge. The lawsuit against Yuzu argued that the mere fact that Yuzu has the ability to decrypt ROMs when it's provided with the right keys already makes it DRM circumvention software.

The Dolphin team also stated in the past that they see no reason why it would make their software any more legally secure if they didn't include the Wii disc decryption key in the code and instead expected users to provide it. Because as far as their understanding of the law is concerned, Nintendo could still argue that the mere ability to decrypt Wii discs is illegal.

 

[Missing Number]

in an ideal world, pirates aren't pruned, but plucked.

when SEGA had some real experts build Sonic Mania i had hoped everyone else would do the same.

yet you get people shuttin' down AM2R... while we ended up with Dread from the team they picked, i'd have seen AM2R's dev either on that team or leading it

if they shut down for a paycheck, im okay with it. if they shut down out of fear.... not so much

 

[Lumpofcoal]

I don't think this has been brought up but as a PSA to existing patreon members of ryujinx and those who might be thinking of supporting the team on patreon due to recent events.

https://x.com/RyujinxEmu/status/1841525580023431268

As one final message, we ask all Patreon subscribers to cancel their subscriptions and everyone else not to donate, since we do not have access to the Patreon account anymore and the money is not going to any of us. Thank you.

I'm assuming ninty now has control over it so you don't wanna be inadvertently funding ninty execs year end bonuses, I jest.

On a note, this brings up an interesting facet of the "agreement". If ninty has commandeered the patreon account (and the remaining funds in it) as part of the deal, surely the devs (through the main dev) would have to be compensated for it? Or at the very least refund it?

 

[ShadowOne333]

Torzu isn't updated right? Plus man it is feels so shady

Last official update was in August I think, or at least that's the date of the releases.

I can’t speak for Brazil or their laws, but if that happened here in Mexico, my country, it would have blown up into a huge diplomatic scandal that Nintendo probably never saw coming.

No foreign company or person can just show up and threaten a Mexican citizen without a court order or approval from local authorities. That would be a fast track to a diplomatic mess. Any Mexican judge would throw out Nintendo's case, arguing that a foreign company had no right to pressure a Mexican citizen like that, especially without a solid legal reason.

Indeed, it would be huge if it was here, more so with how the government is taking action with corporations.
Additionally, if they are dumb enough to do that in Mexico, then they run the risk of just not knowing where they're walking into, and you know what I mean as a fellow mexican.

 

[Darth Meteos]

https://github.com/ryujinx-mirror/ryujinx
We have a mirror and they've updated it to remove references to the old project. They have no intention to make major changes.

 

[linuxares]

Emulation is legal, as proven multiple times in the past in court.

Thats a stretch with multiple times. A few times yes.
The issue is that Nintendo don't claim the emulation is illegal, but the bypass of the counter-meassures of the DRM is bypassed. Most emulators in the past never needed any roms to be "cracked" to work, since the game were not encrypted at all.

Today if we talk about the Switch, it uses keys to "crack" the encryption. This is a violation against the DMCA.
DMCA is also a US law, not an international law, but plenty of places example the EU have sort of the same laws applied here.


EDIT: Also if we take Dolphin as an example. Yes, this software contains a decryption key. Which very much in Nintendo's right to bring it down. Why they haven't? Because it doesn't inflict anything in their profits on a current gen system.

 

[BlusterBong]

Torzu isn't updated right? Plus man it is feels so shady

pretty much all of the main repo's significant amount of monthly commits (over 10 commits a month) stopped after May of this year and all of the other forks have the same history, so it's safe to say that it's dead, unlike Suyu, which is a barely shambling zombie.

 

[linuxares]

pretty much all of the main repo's significant amount of monthly commits (over 10 commits a month) stopped after May of this year and all of the other forks have the same history, so it's safe to say that it's dead, unlike Suyu, which is a barely shambling zombie.

Yeah Suyu seem to be on a "maybe a live, maybe not" while Sudachi seem to get some what updated.

 

[ShadowOne333]

Thats a stretch with multiple times. A few times yes.
The issue is that Nintendo don't claim the emulation is illegal, but the bypass of the counter-meassures of the DRM is bypassed. Most emulators in the past never needed any roms to be "cracked" to work, since the game were not encrypted at all.

Today if we talk about the Switch, it uses keys to "crack" the encryption. This is a violation against the DMCA.
DMCA is also a US law, not an international law, but plenty of places example the EU have sort of the same laws applied here.


EDIT: Also if we take Dolphin as an example. Yes, this software contains a decryption key. Which very much in Nintendo's right to bring it down. Why they haven't? Because it doesn't inflict anything in their profits on a current gen system.

That's the thing though.
How can you emulate *anything* if you are required to basically jailbreak the system to get the appropriate requirements for the system first?
Either that or you go the totally decrypted way of handling it, which I'm not sure how feasible that would be with current consoles being emulated.

Not only is this imposing things to the consumer, but you're actually dictating the consumer what and how to use the product.
Imagine if movies and music did this, you cannot watch X movie or play Y music in any video player or music player because the original file came encrypted.

Absolute dogshit treatment of the consumer rights imo. Videogames need to fall in line with the other copyrighted media, at least in that standard, and if gaming companies are so worried about emulators and piracy, then they should offer the standalone ROMs for their backlog at a fair price for the user to do whatever they want with it, without tying them to any specific hardware. Much more so when you factor in that Nintendo ISN'T SELLING any older console's game at all, they're RENTING it, not selling it.

Unless Nintendo changes that stance and offers their backlog in a special retro-like store ala Steam where they offer their older games in ROM/ISO format for the user to do whatever they want with it, they won't get any penny out of me anymore, I had that stance since years ago and I will stand by that for more years to come.

 

[baddass1979]

schmintendo are gunning for anyone and everyone before the switch 2 comes out