I wrote back in March 2024, after Yuzu was shut down following a legal threat from Nintendo:

Ryujinx has never been as remotely popular as Yuzu, so its threat level is probably somewhat lower, but if Yuzu can be attacked, the same arguments can likely still apply to Ryujinx if Nintendo really cares. It could be that it’s still a matter of time.

Killshot

Well the time has come, in early October 2024. And Ryujinx has now shut down, without too much fanfare. The official github repository was taken out, there was a post on their official X account, and apparently the Patreon funds have been diverted to another entity, so they encourage everyone to stop contributing money to the project. The post simply mentions the following:

“gdkchan was 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.”

Ryujinx’s website is still up at the time of writing.

gdkchan’s profile on github remains active, as well as some of its earlier emulators (such as the GBA one), but any mention of Ryujinx is gone as the repo was deleted:

It’s a fairly sad end for Ryujinx, but entirely expected. If anything, I am surprised it took so long for Nintendo to take action.

Now What?

You will probably still be able to find some sources for Ryujinx here and there, as the source code was shared and public. But will there be anyone to pick up the development in any meaningful way and merge the numerous PRs that were awaiting reviews? If we take a look at what happened for Yuzu, it looks like you can’t really hope for much. One of the remaining forks, Suyu, had its last release 6 months ago, and since then the development seems to have mostly halted.

Or has it?

In a thread on a Suyu’s subreddit, it looks like a few people are sufficiently angry about the situation with Ryujinx that they may kickstart again the development of the emulator.

And on Suyu’s git repo, there was a little activity in the past day, mostly related to the metal-dev branch (so, probably MacOS related?):

It might be nothing. But I expect that the community may react now that there’s no more active Switch emulator anywhere. Will the efforts take off? Hard to say - it will need a critical mass of hobbyists who are not interested in receiving any compensation for it. In any case, I would not expect anyone to work full time on it.

Chilling Effect?

As the Switch 2 is probably just around the corner, it looks like Nintendo is doing everything to slow down or incapacitate any effort to develop an emulator for its next machine, ahead of time. For emulator developers out there, the risk of doing things on large platforms is BIG. Github is clearly a no-no from the get go, and Patreon is yet another easy venue to get attacked. If anything, this is a clear message that such projects need to go in the dark and on decentralized platforms, with fewer weak links. Sounds very challenging, and at odds with the large amount of money that everyone was making from these popular endeavors…

In the meantime, it will be very interesting to keep an eye on the second, underground life of Ryujinx and Yuzu (with Suyu and maybe other forks) after the main developers are gone. The iron is too hot right now and easy to strike. But a few years down the road, with the Switch becoming a last gen console, the situation may cool down a bit and be quite different.

Finally, don’t miss our interview with gdkchan back in the days about the origins of Ryujinx. Very cool story.