Barely a month after Nintendo Switch emulator Ryujinx vanished, it's emerged that Nintendo is now apparently the owner of its old website domain.
In early October, a message sent in the Ryujinx Discord server by one of the emulator's developers claimed that the lead developer had been "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." Soon after, downloads and GitHub repositories were removed, and although its website remained live at the time, nothing seems to load on it anymore – but that doesn't mean that some things haven't changed behind the scenes.
As spotted on the r/Ryujinx subreddit, it appears that Nintendo of America is now the official owner of the emulator's old domain. According to WHOIS database information, there was an update on November 7, although it's not clear if that's when Nintendo took ownership of it. Again, it doesn't appear that the Ryujinx website is actually functional anymore – there's nothing to see there – but perhaps Nintendo has taken this measure so that no one else can revive the emulator using the same domain later down the line.
Ryujinx domain officially owned by Nintendo from r/Ryujinx
Nintendo has been fighting hard against emulators this year, with major Switch emulator Yuzu also shut down following a settlement that saw the developers agree to pay Nintendo $2.4 million. The devs at Tropic Haze confirmed that support for both Yuzu and 3DS emulator Citra would cease immediately, and added that the team had "always been against piracy" and "were not intending to cause harm" with their projects.
Nintendo hits 8,535 clones of Switch emulator Yuzu with a DMCA all at once.
