> UPDATE #3: According to an official statement on Ryujinx's Discord server, developer gdkchan was contacted by Nintendo and they were offered an agreement to stop working on the emulator project, and while the agreement wasn't confirmed yet, the organization has been entirely removed.
glaring omission of the statement "it's not an issue with Nintendo". they have a reputation for relentlessly pursuing the creators of homebrew/emu projects like this. sometimes even going as far as contracting operatives to stalk hobby devs living outside of Japan. look up "nintendo ninjas"...
RE: Update 3 (gdkchan being "encouraged" to step down)
I'm mostly just surprised it took Nintendo this long to make a move - the Switch is on its last legs, its successor is less than a year away and almost certainly won't be hacked for a good while. Acting in a way that's bound to piss everyone off but doing it so late that the upside to them is minimal (there won't be that many more new Switch games to pirate at this point) is a weird unforced error. Lawyers move in mysterious ways I guess.
In case anyone's curious about Nintendo's general MO (not sure how similar this case is) around 10 years ago they successfully prevented someone from publishing a method to run arbitrary code on the 3DS using an NDA and the threat of legal action. Here's some documents detailing their approach: https://archive.org/details/Knock_And_Talk_directcontact/Kno...
Given that Ryujinx is open source, I wonder what rights other OSS contributors have? Surely there's nothing stopping another fork from continued development provided nothing illegal is happening.
Wow. When yuzu was taken down I wrote a script to automatically download the 5 latest releases of a few other emulators I use, and that included Ryujinx (so I do have the binaries for those, which will go into safekeeping).
Now I wish I had set up a Gitea mirror as well, even though I would likely never build it myself.
It is designed to be very low impact (I had it on a daily cron).
Feel free to use it to ensure you can preserve the software you rely on. As far as I'm concerned, I'm _very_ sad that Nintendo has now made it impossible to enjoy my games on better hardware, and will probably focus on PC gaming henceforth (there are lots of nice indie games on Steam, like Dredge, which is my current favorite).
Next time it will undoubtedly be DMCA considering what happened to Yuzu. This is the perfect case for some sort of decentralized Git[1] or a Git repo via Tor.
Probably worth reminding that this is the project where the backing company is centered around crypto/blockchain, but they pinkie promise it will never affect this work!
HN has a lot of people suggesting regulations and laws as a solution to almost everything in existence. It doesn't surprise me that same thought pattern also shows itself in emulator takedown discussions like this one.
I would bet serious money that this is because of the upcoming Switch 2. If the rumors are true, it could very much be like how the Dolphin emulator is able to run both Gamecube and Wii games because the system architectures are so similar. Nintendo wants to avoid a day-zero emulator for Switch 2.
And even if it wasn't a day-zero (or even several month in) Switch 2 emulator it's seeming like one of the big selling points of the new system is going to be "play your old Switch games on the new system, now in higher resolution" but it's a lot of bad press if that's still "play them in worse quality than emulators were 3 years before this hardware came out".
For clarity, Ryujinx has no connection to the Yuzu Switch emulator which Nintendo unleashed their wrath on earlier this year. They were developed independently of each other, by different people, in parallel until Yuzus demise.
I always though switch emulation got too good too fast. Switch being such weak hardware you can emulate it on a potato. Nintendo must've been eyeing an angle to close Ryujinx for a while now.
It would be very interesting if the main dev actually got paid to delete everything. Although it looks like a "dick move" at first, if you know the source will live on and you get retirement money. I would be very pressed to accept if in that situation. Much more likely they just offered to not sue him to oblivion.
I honestly don't blame Nintendo for angling emulators with everything they have while the hardware is current. They have much shittier behaviour when interacting with the community, like suing tournaments that used mods and threatening others.
I'm wondering if the anticipated Switch 2 is going to be very similar to the current device in terms of architecture and OS, and the real concern of Nintendo isn't Switch 1 piracy right now, it's that the current Switch emulators could evolve into Switch 2 emulators in the early months/years of the new hardware lifecycle, emulators able to play ripped Switch 2 games well before anyone figures out how to mod the new hardware to enable piracy.
But they probably also want to re-sell us previous games, too, particularly if they can run 'remastered' versions of the Switch Zelda games at a better resolution/framerate on the new hardware - which you can already to via emulation...
> Yesterday, gdkchan was contacted by Nintendo and offered an agreement to stop working on the project, remove the organization and all related assets he's in control of. While awaiting confirmation on whether he would take this agreement, the organization has been removed, so I think it's safe to say what the outcome is. Rather than leave you with only panic and speculation, I decided to write this short message to give some closure.
Well that seals the deal, never buying a Nintendo product again. I’m sure I don’t matter to them but I’ll help friends and family get more into PC and retro gaming if they want to pick my brain.
This is absolutely terrible. It may be in the business interest of Nintendo but the absolute anti-consumer way this is carried out destroys all the good will that the customers still had towards them.
I was able to build the project with a single command, so there's hope that easy barrier for entry and a language more developers are familiar with will ensure the survival.
This just affirms the idea that Nintendo doesn't care about legality, they are extremely litigious and will attack anything and everything they perceive to be as harmful to them whether it is actually harmful or not.
So I understand wanting to build emulators so that people can continue to play their old games after the hardware fails. But in building an emulator for a current generation console, it seems likely that much of the audience is just interested in pirating the games.
The name Ryujinx is even a C# in-joke of sorts, early iterations of the emulator translated the Switches ARM code into .NET CIL bytecode and then used the standard .NET JIT, which is called RyuJIT, to translate that to native code. NX was the Switches codename, so RyuJIT + NX, minus the T, makes Ryujinx.
They eventually outgrew that approach and rolled their own JIT, but the name had stuck at that point.
I submitted a PR a couple months ago and was really pleasantly surprised at how accessible it was to contribute. No funny business, just `git clone` and open up Rider.
I was only touching the frontend client (i.e. game library screen etc, not the actual emulation), but it took less than two weeks to go from zero-to-PR-submitted on a fairly complex refactor.
[+] [-] notamy|1 year ago|reply
> UPDATE #3: According to an official statement on Ryujinx's Discord server, developer gdkchan was contacted by Nintendo and they were offered an agreement to stop working on the emulator project, and while the agreement wasn't confirmed yet, the organization has been entirely removed.
[+] [-] Liquix|1 year ago|reply
glaring omission of the statement "it's not an issue with Nintendo". they have a reputation for relentlessly pursuing the creators of homebrew/emu projects like this. sometimes even going as far as contracting operatives to stalk hobby devs living outside of Japan. look up "nintendo ninjas"...
[+] [-] jsheard|1 year ago|reply
I'm mostly just surprised it took Nintendo this long to make a move - the Switch is on its last legs, its successor is less than a year away and almost certainly won't be hacked for a good while. Acting in a way that's bound to piss everyone off but doing it so late that the upside to them is minimal (there won't be that many more new Switch games to pirate at this point) is a weird unforced error. Lawyers move in mysterious ways I guess.
[+] [-] duxup|1 year ago|reply
Granted that's understandable if they didn't choose the timeline.
[+] [-] ndiddy|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] alfalfasprout|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nurettin|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] koolala|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ls612|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rcarmo|1 year ago|reply
Now I wish I had set up a Gitea mirror as well, even though I would likely never build it myself.
Edit: here's the script - https://gist.github.com/rcarmo/89afd64747fc909e80b29abc902c8...
It is designed to be very low impact (I had it on a daily cron).
Feel free to use it to ensure you can preserve the software you rely on. As far as I'm concerned, I'm _very_ sad that Nintendo has now made it impossible to enjoy my games on better hardware, and will probably focus on PC gaming henceforth (there are lots of nice indie games on Steam, like Dredge, which is my current favorite).
[+] [-] Rexxar|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] masactivator|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rererereferred|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Macha|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mikae1|1 year ago|reply
Next time it will undoubtedly be DMCA considering what happened to Yuzu. This is the perfect case for some sort of decentralized Git[1] or a Git repo via Tor.
[1] https://radicle.xyz
[+] [-] mtndew4brkfst|1 year ago|reply
https://radicle.xyz/faq
Radworks, the organization that has been financing Radicle is organized around the RAD token which is a governance token on Ethereum.
It gives off the same odor as Tea did, for me personally.
[+] [-] adzm|1 year ago|reply
https://www.timeextension.com/news/2024/10/nintendo-is-now-g...
[+] [-] alext54321|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nephy|1 year ago|reply
It also cracks me up every time I see legalistic apologists on this website backing up giant corporations.
A) Who cares about the law? It’s rarely moral. B) Which laws should we follow? The internet exists in every country.
[+] [-] hypeatei|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kaishin|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] squeaky-clean|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] zamadatix|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Dban1|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jsheard|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] guax|1 year ago|reply
It would be very interesting if the main dev actually got paid to delete everything. Although it looks like a "dick move" at first, if you know the source will live on and you get retirement money. I would be very pressed to accept if in that situation. Much more likely they just offered to not sue him to oblivion.
I honestly don't blame Nintendo for angling emulators with everything they have while the hardware is current. They have much shittier behaviour when interacting with the community, like suing tournaments that used mods and threatening others.
[+] [-] bluescrn|1 year ago|reply
But they probably also want to re-sell us previous games, too, particularly if they can run 'remastered' versions of the Switch Zelda games at a better resolution/framerate on the new hardware - which you can already to via emulation...
[+] [-] 1propionyl|1 year ago|reply
Taken from Discord announcement.
[+] [-] dmonitor|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisArchitect|1 year ago|reply
Nintendo Is Now Going After YouTube Accounts Which Show Its Games Being Emulated https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41708771
[+] [-] EasyMark|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] giancarlostoro|1 year ago|reply
https://github.com/github/dmca
I wonder if they went after the maintainer directly.
[+] [-] CryZe|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] neonsunset|1 year ago|reply
It seems someone hosts a mirror: https://git.naxdy.org/Mirror/Ryujinx/
I was able to build the project with a single command, so there's hope that easy barrier for entry and a language more developers are familiar with will ensure the survival.
[+] [-] sweeter|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bittwiddle|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] cloogshicer|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ThrowawayTestr|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Janicc|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tester756|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jsheard|1 year ago|reply
They eventually outgrew that approach and rolled their own JIT, but the name had stuck at that point.
[+] [-] JamesSwift|1 year ago|reply
I was only touching the frontend client (i.e. game library screen etc, not the actual emulation), but it took less than two weeks to go from zero-to-PR-submitted on a fairly complex refactor.
[+] [-] kcb|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] asddubs|1 year ago|reply
https://github.com/yuzu-mirror/yuzu
[+] [-] ranger_danger|1 year ago|reply
https://github.com/ryujinx-mirror/ryujinx (36 minutes ago)
https://github.com/Synthlight/Ryujinx (13 hours ago)
https://git.tardis.systems/mirrors/Ryujinx (last week)
https://codeberg.org/alexdh/Ryujinx (8 months ago)
[+] [-] troad|1 year ago|reply
> https://github.com/Synthlight/Ryujinx (13 hours ago)
Also https://github.com/IsaacMarovitz/Ryujinx. These three are identical repos as of now.
ELI5 guide to diffing git repos:
$ git clone <repo1_url>
$ git remote add -f b <repo2_url>
$ git diff master remotes/b/master
No output indicates no diff. If you need to compare again at a later point, `git remote update` will update both repos.
[+] [-] haunter|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ndesaulniers|1 year ago|reply