Ryujinx Being Taken Down Could Spell Trouble For the Future of Emulation

Emulation can preserve long lost media and consoles of the past, but not every video game corporation is happy about it. Recently, Nintendo took down popular Switch emulator Ryujinx, and this could be disastrous for the future of emulation.

Emulation is any piece of software that is designed to simulate a video game console as identically as possible. Creating an emulator is not illegal, as long as the software is written with entirely original code and nothing has been stolen from companies. As said by McNeelyLaw, there have been numerous legal battles between companies and developers for years now, some of which, like Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. v. Connectix Corp back in 2000 helped established this legality, even though it’s challenged to this day.

According to PC Gamer, Ryujinx emulator was taken down on October 1 by Nintendo. The exact details of what happened aren’t known to the public, as it’s most likely under NDA, but apparently GDKchan, the creator of Ryujinx, was approached by people at Nintendo and told to cease all development on the project. According to a Ryujinx developer, the project had numerous things in the pipeline, such as Android and iOS ports of the app.

So, what does this mean for the future of emulation? Honestly, bad things. Nintendo seems to be a lot more aggressive at pursuing legal action on projects like this than ever before. Yuzu, another Switch emulator, was also pursued and taken down by Nintendo earlier in 2024 as well. As reported by PC Gamer, Nintendo is also currently embroiled in a lawsuit with the game Palworld, alleging that they infringed on patent rights. A patent lawyer in the article said that Nintendo used to be a lot more chill with fan projects in the past:

They have shown in the last couple of years a really fiery desire to enforce in a way they didn’t used to. Back in the day, they turned a blind eye to fan games, things like that. I’m sure you’ve seen their enforcement and their threat letters are coming in much faster than they used to. I know people who actually interviewed for enforcement positions at Nintendo, and they were hiring a lot couple years ago, which probably suggests that they staffed up for this.

A videogame patent lawyer breaks down Nintendo’s risky Palworld lawsuit: ‘It definitely feels like a punishment’ | PC Gamer

I absolutely think this is tied in with the Ryujinx situation. We’re dealing with an entirely different, far more aggressive Nintendo today than ever before. Switch 2 emulation might not even happen now, as I can’t imagine future devs having the courage to end up like Ryujinx did. Who knows if they’ll go after older emulators like Dolphin next. Hopefully not.

I think emulation can be a force for good, as long as it respects copyright and patent law, of course, which makes it a shame that Nintendo is acting so aggressively towards devs showing love and respect for their products.