Ryujinx: Nintendo Shuts Down Switch Emulator, What Alternatives Are Available ?

After shutting down Yuzu a few months ago, Nintendo is now shutting down another popular Nintendo Switch game emulator, Ryujinx.

Ryujinx, one of the most popular Nintendo Switch game emulators on PC, is shutting down. The announcement was shared by a Ryujinx user with a post on the emulator's official Discord server. According to this user, the creator of the famous emulator has recently received several warnings and proposals from Nintendo that urge him to close his emulation software.

“Yesterday, gdkchan (editor's note: creator of Ryujinx) was contacted by Nintendo and offered a deal to stop working on the project, delete the organization and all related assets he controls. (…) Pending confirmation that he would accept this deal, the organization has been deleted, so I think it's safe to say what the outcome is.”

This announcement came as a shock to many PC gamers. Yuzu and Ryujinx have long been considered the best emulators to enjoy Nintendo Switch games on PC.

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Nintendo has a strong reputation for being a very protective manufacturer of its licenses and consoles. The brand does not really like derivative uses of its famous Mario and company. Ryujinx is not the first Nintendo Switch game emulator to be closed by the Japanese company. At the beginning of 2024, it was Yuzu, another Nintendo title emulation software that had stopped its activities after receiving indications from the famous Japanese game manufacturer.

The Ryujinx site (like Yuzu's) is still available. However, the latter no longer offers options for downloading the emulator.

What alternatives are available to Ryujinx and Yuzu ?

Before going into the details of the Nintendo Switch emulators still available, it should be remembered that emulation is not legal if you do not have the game in physical format and you do not extract its ROM file to make a simple personal backup. Sharing ROMs on the internet is therefore strongly prohibited.

However, if you are looking for other alternatives to Ryujinx and Yuzu to run your files from Nintendo Switch cartridges, there are several solutions still available on the web. Some are based on Yuzu. This is the case for the emulators Sudachi, Suyu and Torzu. We also find Egg NS or Cemu which is quite famous.