In the ongoing battle against Nintendo Switch emulators, Nintendo has successfully shut down the Ryujinx project, including the removal of its repository by the main developer. According to a public statement by one of the active contributors to the project, Nintendo reached an agreement with the founder of Ryujinx to cease any further work on the emulator. The specific details of the agreement have not been disclosed, leaving it unclear whether the developer agreed due to threats of legal action, financial incentives, or other factors.
Developed since 2017, the Ryujinx project stood out from other Nintendo Switch emulators by being built from scratch in C#. Its primary objectives included high performance, emulation accuracy, and a user-friendly interface. The emulator supported emulation of the ARMV8 CPU and Maxwell GPU, game controllers, sound, and content loading through a graphical user interface. The code was made available under the MIT license. The emulator underwent testing on 4300 games, with 3550 playable, 550 encountering gameplay issues, and 200 failing to launch.
Notably, Nintendo has previously taken action to shut down or remove emulators such as Yuzu, Suyu, Skyline Switch, and Dolphin. Additionally, the company succeeded in blocking around 8,500 repositories containing forks of the Yuzu emulator. Nintendo’s crackdown on emulators stems from concerns over their potential use to circumvent technical protection measures, facilitate illegal game distribution, and breach user agreement terms. Even though users are primarily responsible for extracting decryption keys using third-party tools, Nintendo views any decryption on the emulator’s end as an unlawful bypass of protection measures.
Within Nintendo consoles, encryption of firmware and game files using cryptographic keys is implemented to prevent piracy and unauthorized copying. Nintendo holds copyrights for games on its consoles and regulates game distribution licenses for its devices. User agreements strictly limit game usage to authorized devices, prohibiting the use of unofficial hardware or software.