Ryujinx emulator taken down after devs reach agreement with Nintendo

images.png

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.

1727808272357.png

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.

:arrow: Ryujinx GitHub Repository
 

subcon959

@!#?@!
Member
Joined
Dec 24, 2008
Messages
6,000
Trophies
4
XP
10,716
Country
United Kingdom
The fact that Nintendo was able to make so much profit, despite there being emulators for their current console that simply works better than their out-of-the-box outdated hardware, and said emulators being talked publicity about all over the internet, it should tell that emulators or piracy or whatever simply don't affect Nintendo in the slightest.
Their games keep leaking ahead of time, weeks or even months, yet they still end up top sellers and usually blow away the competition. They could very well ignore everything related to emulators or piracy, yet remain successful and on top of the competition.
It doesn't matter how much money they made. All they see is that they could've made even more money if it wasn't for those pesky kids.
 

Mr_Marr

Active Member
Newcomer
Joined
Oct 5, 2024
Messages
34
Trophies
0
Age
33
XP
46
Country
United Kingdom
If anything, things like this just make me want to buy anything nintendo less and less. The worst thing is that, in a few years nintendo will drop the switch, move to the next console and sell us the same games over and over.
 

LightBeam

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Oct 1, 2018
Messages
1,139
Trophies
0
XP
2,809
Country
France
I legit do not care mate, i speculated it could possibly be about EoW at the end of the day i could be wrong and so could you, i am completely neutral on this as said in my first post i am aware of nintendo's shitty choices but on the other hand i cannot ignore what fans have done as well, however my point still stands when i said: i don't care if you emulate newer gen console's but i expect people to be aware of the potential consequences of spreading it all over socials Eow, Totk or not. so i'm not sure why you're reaching higher than 4'5 middle schooler trying to dunk a basketball, saying we're trying to find a culprit because there is no "we" here like i said, i am disappointed on both sides of the coin.
Have a good day I'm going to go play some FF6
I don't understand that reaction lol, there's nothing going on I just reacted to how you said that fans are at fault or are to blame, why would you even open your post with « I legit do not care » ? What's the point of having a discussion then ?

You can be disappointed « by both sides » if you want, personally I'm not. I don't think it's a smart move from Nintendo, and I'm not disappointed by anyone else but Nintendo because the scene has produced great stuff, and it doesn't seem to have hurt Nintendo's business, I don't see any reason why I should be neutral on that situation. Their reaction is logical, and honestly we saw it coming, in fact, them not coming for Ryujinx would have been surprising.

If I'm saying that it feels like some people are trying to find a culprit (I haven't said you specifically, so there's no need to take it personally, that's not my fault if you do), it's because I don't understand why are we even talking about leaks to begin with. Without leaks, there's no doubt in my mind that this would have happened regardless, it's only happening because there's a very popular hacking scene, they hate that and don't want it on the next console.
Maybe it's just Nintendo being overprotective of their IPs, like they always are, we know they hate their fans that's a given, and want to fight piracy with the old barbaric way. That's not going to work, that's counterproductive. People who want to play Switch games never stopped using Yuzu despite Nintendo's actions, and people will still work on the next console to hack and emulate it.

That's why I also hate when people say « oh but why don't you hide your fan games ?? Why don't you modify the assets to make it original ?? It's bound to happen please stop being stoopid !! » Completely missing the point. It's just a labor of love, if people want to make a Zelda game, of course they want to share and talk about it, that's very natural, even if you know Nintendo will take some action if they know about it. I feel like that's pretty much the same thing here.

But the question is : Does Nintendo absolutely need to take such (dumb) actions ?




To answer to one of the points you've made previously, I don't think that people are trying to leak games « to bite back », I don't think they care at all honestly. It's kind of like when you can see on the Internet some people trying to argue that « piracy is actually good » ... I mean yeah there's an argument to have, but some people will try very hard to convince themselves that they're doing it for the morality of it. I have yet to see anyone actually pirating « because it's better for the developer !! »

So maybe that some of them will say that « they're leaking/installing leaked games to send a finger to Nintendo » but the dichotomy between what they say and what they truly think is there ... People just don't care at all, people were just waiting for EoW and they just wanted to play it early, simple as that.

What I hate tho, are repackers who just repacked Ryujinx with the latest Switch release to make it look like it was a PC release. I've seen people using these, and they wouldn't even know what's an emulator. I agree when you say that people shouldn't publicly boast about it. I usually don't like to gatekeep, but there needs to be some limit ... I'm still amazed that people could play Switch games on PC without knowing what they were doing, that's crazy.
Post automatically merged:

All they see is that they could've made even more money if it wasn't for those pesky kids.
I'm still not too convinced by that. But it's probably easier to bully developers than actually sell a good service. I know for a fact I would probably have bought Animal Crossing and Splatoon 3 while keeping an online sub if the service was good, but it's not. So piracy presents itself as an alternative. Granted that's only my own personal and anecdotal opinion, but there's data to show that a good service does transfer piracy to sales.
I do think that the fact that the console can be modded relatively easily could have had a positive impact on the console's sales.
 
Last edited by LightBeam,

DiscostewSM

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Feb 10, 2009
Messages
5,865
Trophies
3
Location
Sacramento, California
Website
lazerlight.x10.mx
XP
6,420
Country
United States
It's a sad affair that the reason for this emulator's demise as-is is because of a small group of the scene that wants attention by showing off an unreleased game running on the emulator weeks before that game's release. I believe that was the same reason Nintendo went after Yuzu initially, because of TotK being ran on it, but that also got noted for even more under the hood after investigations. Say what you want about Nintendo, but there are "fans" that are partially to blame for some of these takedowns, ruining it for everyone else.
 

CielLinea

New Member
Newbie
Joined
Sep 29, 2007
Messages
1
Trophies
1
XP
14
Country
Aren't emulators legal? How do they keep intimidating people into these takedowns? Why can't they just slam the door in Nintendo's face?
 

Crystal_tofu

Ms.Heropants
Member
Joined
Apr 25, 2024
Messages
259
Trophies
0
Location
Cyber World
XP
512
Country
United States
It's a sad affair that the reason for this emulator's demise as-is is because of a small group of the scene that wants attention by showing off an unreleased game running on the emulator weeks before that game's release. I believe that was the same reason Nintendo went after Yuzu initially, because of TotK being ran on it, but that also got noted for even more under the hood after investigations. Say what you want about Nintendo, but there are "fans" that are partially to blame for some of these takedowns, ruining it for everyone else.
yeah, and my friend pointed out to me something i completely forgot about yesterday and that was when metroid dread got leaked before release, and at that point the last game in the franchise was either federation force or samus returns which either way it was a long time since a main line game was released that wasn't a remake, so it was pretty sad to see.
 

BruceYeh

Member
Newcomer
Joined
Aug 6, 2022
Messages
7
Trophies
0
Location
Taipei
XP
48
Country
Taiwan
I don't know why gdkchan didn't say anything about this incident. If Ryujinx was really legal, gdkchan could have told us what happened between him and Nintendo. I think he could have clarified the facts (and dispelled the rumors).

If the emulator was legal, then he did nothing wrong, so there is no risk in telling us. :sleep:
 
Last edited by BruceYeh,

NinStar

Ny'hrarr ♂
Member
Joined
Apr 3, 2017
Messages
697
Trophies
2
Age
24
Location
Rio de Janeiro
Website
ninstar.carrd.co
XP
2,518
Country
Brazil
It's a sad affair that the reason for this emulator's demise as-is is because of a small group of the scene that wants attention by showing off an unreleased game running on the emulator weeks before that game's release. I believe that was the same reason Nintendo went after Yuzu initially, because of TotK being ran on it, but that also got noted for even more under the hood after investigations. Say what you want about Nintendo, but there are "fans" that are partially to blame for some of these takedowns, ruining it for everyone else.
This is a stupid reasoning to me, if everything followed this logic they should also go after the people doing the exact same thing with modded consoles.

Not only that, but in my opinion allowing this to be used as an argument only undermine what open source licenses stands for, if they want to go after someone, go after the people leaking the content and sharing it, this shouldn't be a responsibility of the developer, the emulator is just doing what is designed to do.
 

Lostbhoy

HEY YOU GUYS!
Member
Joined
Aug 23, 2009
Messages
2,815
Trophies
3
Age
44
Location
Scotland
XP
6,043
Country
United Kingdom
I love all the 'reasoning' and 'debates' on wether it was a dmca, a buyout, a blowjob....

Who cares really? Does it matter? Yeah it sucks for people who play wanna use it but at the end of the day, it was never yours.

Whatever happened is between the dev and the ninjas. End of. No reasons have to be given to anyone about anything. People have to understand that. It matters not what you think, what you think you know or how you believe it should be handled. Are you the dev? No.

It's over people! Unless you are willing to be the underground resistance I've seen mentioned here, then now is the time to put up or shut up!

It really is as simple as this!
 

granville

GBAtemp Goat
Member
Joined
Aug 24, 2007
Messages
5,178
Trophies
1
Age
35
Location
Orlando, Florida
XP
3,474
Country
United States
I love all the 'reasoning' and 'debates' on wether it was a dmca, a buyout, a blowjob....

Who cares really? Does it matter?
Well it would change how people view the lead developer(s) of the emulator. The difference between someone being greedy and whoring themselves out to a really bad dictatorial corporation, versus having your life threatened by said company and not getting anything out of it.

According to several other Ryujinx developers, the latter is what happened. Nintendo allegedly sent goons to this guy's home and threatened him in some "unpleasant" way, and he got no money out of it. Assuming they're telling the truth anyway.

If threats were indeed what happened, it could also become a slippery slope where Nintendo targets other emulators and threatens their developers. Or scares people into leaving the emulation community entirely. If it was just a bribery deal where someone sold out, then there would be less concern that this might escalate to other projects.
 

tivo76

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Nov 29, 2016
Messages
179
Trophies
0
Age
39
XP
357
Country
Canada
Do you guys think Snes emulators might be next to get shutdown soon, and GBA and game color emulators as well
 

LexDG

Well-Known Member
Newcomer
Joined
Mar 2, 2023
Messages
78
Trophies
0
Age
41
XP
387
Country
United States
This is a stupid reasoning to me, if everything followed this logic they should also go after the people doing the exact same thing with modded consoles.

Not only that, but in my opinion allowing this to be used as an argument only undermine what open source licenses stands for, if they want to go after someone, go after the people leaking the content and sharing it, this shouldn't be a responsibility of the developer, the emulator is just doing what is designed to do.
They always target modded systems with bans and patch their software in an attempt to disable them.

The fact is, the last generation to NOT play their (then) current gen games on an emulator when they were in high school are the ones buying now. I suspect the vast majority of people into emulation right now are 42 or younger. Those in elementary school in 99 are early to mid 30’s now. They aren’t fueling the economy. It’s the people who got an n64 or Ps1 in college who have the buying power now. So as the emulation generation ages into the economy's driver seat, we’ll actually start to see the impact. But nintendo sees the writing on the industry's slowly shrinking walls.
 

OperationNT

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
May 1, 2016
Messages
355
Trophies
0
Age
39
XP
2,295
Country
France
According to several other Ryujinx developers, the latter is what happened. Nintendo allegedly sent goons to this guy's home and threatened him in some "unpleasant" way, and he got no money out of it. Assuming they're telling the truth anyway.

It wouldn't be the first time:
https://x.com/forestillusion/status/1341230631913541633

In a country like Brazil where there is high crimes rate, you probably risk your life with this kind of threat...
 

Project68K

Well-Known Member
Newcomer
Joined
Nov 12, 2020
Messages
86
Trophies
0
Age
24
XP
802
Country
United States
Honestly, this situation, and the Retro Game Corps situation that happened shortly before are way more nuanced thb, and there truly is no good or bad side in this.
 
Joined
Mar 30, 2011
Messages
1,346
Trophies
2
Age
32
Location
Arcadia
XP
4,080
Country
Italy
You don't make money by letting people steal from you, does everyone forget they're a business, not your friend?
You last statement activated my gag reflex, ugh. Anyway, I suppose it should be clear enough that I don't consider Nintendo, nor any other corporation, my "friend".

The thing is, it doesn't matter for a corporation this big if people "steal" from them. Because they're simply too big too fail. If we don't also count the countless underhanded tactics they use to keep their money, like not paying taxes or their devs and whatnot.
The amount of people that pirate their games with no intention of buying them later is probably a drop in the ocean compared to the amount of people that do buy their games. Those people shouldn't be considered at all, when it comes to "sales", since if they couldn't pirate the game, they simply wouldn't buy it otherwise.
And despite all the fumbles Nintendo had over their years, regarding their consoles, how easy it is to emulate/mod them, or not selling much because they mess things up themselves (Wii U, for example), here they still are, making bank and whatnot. Oh well.
 

The Real Jdbye

*is birb*
Member
Joined
Mar 17, 2010
Messages
23,738
Trophies
5
Location
Space
XP
14,642
Country
Norway
You last statement activated my gag reflex, ugh. Anyway, I suppose it should be clear enough that I don't consider Nintendo, nor any other corporation, my "friend".

The thing is, it doesn't matter for a corporation this big if people "steal" from them. Because they're simply too big too fail. If we don't also count the countless underhanded tactics they use to keep their money, like not paying taxes or their devs and whatnot.
The amount of people that pirate their games with no intention of buying them later is probably a drop in the ocean compared to the amount of people that do buy their games. Those people shouldn't be considered at all, when it comes to "sales", since if they couldn't pirate the game, they simply wouldn't buy it otherwise.
And despite all the fumbles Nintendo had over their years, regarding their consoles, how easy it is to emulate/mod them, or not selling much because they mess things up themselves (Wii U, for example), here they still are, making bank and whatnot. Oh well.
It might matter by a couple % at most. That might sound like nothing to us, but to the shareholders who are always looking for profits to increase, and aren't satisfied if a company stays at the same (already very profitable) revenue, it's everything.
Sadly the shareholders pretty much control publicly traded companies. I blame the enshittification of the modern world mostly on shareholders.
 
Last edited by The Real Jdbye,
  • Like
Reactions: DarkCoffe64

Site & Scene News

Popular threads in this forum

General chit-chat
Help Users
  • No one is chatting at the moment.
    K3Nv2 @ K3Nv2: https://youtu.be/-IM26Cz-1eM?si=Nm5uVx1SP99pXl_1