In the first half of 2024, there was a soap opera surrounding emulation. Yuzu was sued by Nintendo and ceased to exist along with Citra. Although initially surprising, the situation became clear when we learned that its developers were charging for a preview version—profiting from it—and that they also had a chat room or network where they shared pirated games. What happened with Ryujinx is a bit more surprising , but the outcome will likely be the same.
One of the reasons Yuzu was shut down was that it included Nintendo Switch firmware, something neither Suyu, one of its forks , nor Ryujinx does. Therefore, it's somewhat surprising that, after being contacted by Nintendo, they reached an agreement and will cease all activity. Currently, the emulator can no longer be downloaded from its official website, and they have closed their GitHub repository , but it remains available on Flathub.
Ryujinx will not receive any more updates either
— Ryujinx (@RyujinxEmu) October 1, 2024
This short story began with Nintendo contacting the creator of Ryujinx. As explained on X—formerly Twitter—the owner of Mario contacted gdkchan and offered him a deal to stop working on the project, dissolve the organization, and seize all related assets under his control. All is not yet lost, however, as although the organization has been dissolved, at the time of writing, the creator of Ryujinx has not yet responded.
Emulating a console that is still on sale seems to be the problem
Nintendo isn't happy about its games being played through any unofficial means, but it doesn't get so aggressive when the emulated console is one that's no longer sold . This is definitely something to discuss.
The staunchest defenders of emulation are usually against piracy. The most common argument in this defense is the preservation of art: if copies of video games are not made, there will come a time when machines and cartridges/CDs will stop working, and the work will be lost. This, possible in titles like Mario Bros., is more difficult when the console being emulated and its titles are still on sale.
We're not going to get into a debate about all this, so we'll leave it at that. Ryujinx has passed on to a better life, and we'll have to wait for the next chapters of this story. New forks will probably appear , but looking back, I'm not sure if it's worth it.
Image of Mario: Nintendo (don't sue us too...).