Shortly after killing off the Yuzu emulator, Nintendo returns to the fray to continue proving that its law firm is invincible.
After establishing a dialogue with the developer of Ryujinx, which is, together with Yuzu, one of the main video game emulators of the Japanese firm, its creator, gdkchan has dismantled the GitHub page where the code was hosted and ceased all intention to continue with the project , which was still in a state of development. In fact, they had recently made progress in portability of the emulator for iOS and Android.
One of the contributors to the program, ‘ripinperiperi’, explained it this way on October 1: “Yesterday, Nintendo contacted gdkchan and offered him an agreement to stop working on the project, eliminate the organization and all assets related that it controls. While waiting for confirmation as to whether they would accept this deal, the organization was eliminated, so I think it’s safe to say what the outcome will be. Instead of leaving you alone to panic and speculate, I decided to write this short message to close the topic. These words are mine. I don’t want to speak for anyone else here, so remember that as you read.
Of course, the news once again sparks controversy on the networks. Nintendo shows that they have no intention of abandoning their legal fight against the emulation sector, despite it being a practice that, on a technical level, is legal. Emulation is useful for the preservation of video games, and this is legal, but the Japanese developer’s lawyers argue that emulation incites or directly serves pirates who steal the code of video games, and thereby dismantle all similar projects that they find in their path.
This news also comes a month after it became known that Nintendo sued the creators of Palworld, a video game reminiscent of the world of Pokémon.
Total war and intimidation
Nintendo does not hesitate to use all its capacity to not only take down all pirates who distribute software it owns, but also to stop any emulation project that could serve piracy, or video game that even remotely resembles one of their franchises. Nor can content creators on networks use Nintendo content lightly.
The Japanese company is unstoppable, and strengthens its reputation as “evil” for a certain group of video game fans worldwide.
Those in charge of Yuzu had to destroy the emulator last March, and were sentenced to pay 2.4 million dollars in damages. This news, which is now joined by the farewell to Ryujinx, turned the world of emulation upside down, which faces a titan that has the upper hand even if emulation is, strictly speaking, a legal practice.
Despite everything, Nintendo still has defenders among the public. Some argue, for example, that a Switch emulator makes no sense as long as the console is still active, so a job of preserving its games cannot be argued.
