After Nintendo shut down Yuzu emulator, is Ryujinx next? 

Only a week after Nintendo sued Yuzu in the US court of law, Tropic Haze LLC, developer of the popular Yuzu and Citra emulators, has announced that the emulators are being shut down for good. The Japanese gaming giant is noted for taking down anyone who dares to mess with its intellectual property.

Tropic Haze has agreed to pay Nintendo reparations for damages caused and surrender all properties related to Yuzu. But what does this mean for other emulators, such as Ryujinx? The Japanese game development giant may be getting ready for another lawsuit in its war to wipe out emulation for its IPs.

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Nintendo's shutdown of Yuzu and Citra may spell doom for emulators such as Ryujinx

Earlier today, March 5, 2024, Tropic Haze announced on X that they would be leaving the emulation scene for good and agreed to pay Nintendo a reparation of $2,400,000.

The official handle of the emulator has also issued a statement saying support for its Switch and 3DS emulators has been discontinued. It also clarified that the developer never intended to support piracy and that after learning of the illegal distribution of a Nintendo IP, it decided to shut down the emulator for good.

The IP in question is the beloved The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which was leaked a few days before the official release. Tropic Haze has also agreed to hand over the yuzu-emu.org domain and delete all copies of the emulator.

But this brings us to the elephant in the room: will the Japanese gaming giant go after other Switch emulators, such as Ryujinx, next? The company has a reputation for doing so, as last year, Nintendo sent a DMCA to Valve over the Dolphin emulator.

Yuzu is dead, is Ryujinx next? byu/SorunluBirey inemulation

A thread on Reddit has seen some speculation already on how the Ryujinx team can avoid its doom, with one user stating:

"If Ryujinx removes the ability to decrypt the files with the prod.keys, instead relegating that task to some other external program (unaffiliated) they should be fine for the near future. Depends how quickly Nintendo moves to take action against them."

While the shutdown of Yuzu and Citra has left fans distraught, Ryujinx has a chance to learn from Tropic Haze's mistakes, and perhaps avoid the banhammer from the Japanese gaming giant.

Emulation is in no way illegal, and had Tropic Haze decided to fight the case in court, perhaps it would have been able to prove Nintendo wrong. Whether the Ryujinx team will face the same fate or not is something that remains to be seen.