The Nintendo Switch emulator Ryujinx is apparently halting development due to pressure from Nintendo

It looks like the popular Nintendo Switch emulator Ryujinx is no more.

One of its developers, Ripriperi, announced the news on its Discord server today, saying that lead developer Gdkchan “has been contacted by Nintendo and has offered an agreement to stop work on the project and the organization and all related assets through which he has control to remove.”

“While we wait for confirmation as to whether he would accept this agreement, the organization has been removed, so I think it is safe to say what the outcome will be,” continues Reifriperi. The message, which you can read below, was also posted on Ryujinx's X/Twitter account.

pic.twitter.com/2Ggt9SWoDI

– Ryujinx (@RyujinxEmu) October 1, 2024

It also comes just hours after some users raised concerns, noting that Ryujinx's Github page is currently resulting in a 404 message. Others pointed out that Ryujinx's download page also failed to load, leading to greater concern about the emulation project. Amid the speculation, one of the Discord mods assured fans that an announcement was imminent and urged them not to spread misinformation in the meantime.

As the website states, Ryujinx is an open source Nintendo Switch emulator written in C# for Windows, Linux and macOS. It started in 2017 as a single developer project and gathered a small team of developers on the side.

Today's news is just the latest in Nintendo's ongoing crackdown on emulators following the lawsuit against Tropic Haze, the developers of the popular Switch emulator Yuzu. Tropic Haze paid $2.4 million in damages in the settlement and Yuzu was shut down completely. Nintendo claimed in the lawsuit that “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom” was pirated a million times before its release and issued a takedown notice in May for more than 8,500 copies of the Yuzu code.

Alex Stedman is a senior news editor at IGN and leads entertainment coverage. When she's not writing or editing, she reads fantasy novels or plays Dungeons & Dragons.