Nintendo has set up shop at the former home of Switch emulator Ryujinx and claimed its domain name as its own.

Nintendo has been on a litigation roll this year. And by roll, I'm referring to the Katamari way of rolling, where the thing eventually absorbs entire aeroplanes, grows large enough to block out the sun, and hurtles towards your home in a screaming amalgamation of metal and cement. Where was I? Oh, right.

The list continues. I've listed everything that happened in 2024.

Ryujinx, the Switch emulator, was the latest to be told by its creators that they had to either squat or sleep with fishes. They quickly complied. To add insult to injury though, it appears that Nintendo has now set up shop under Ryujinx’s domain name (thanks to Gamesradar).

According to the subreddit of the emulator, whois.com identifies Nintendo of America Inc. the registrant for ryujinx.org. The site was updated on November 7, but it's possible that the company bought it earlier.

Ryujinx is officially owned by Nintendo. From r/Ryujinx

It's highly likely that the company (despite occasionally grabbing emulators to play stuff in the official Nintendo Museum) is doing this merely to further silence any possible shenanigans from Ryujinx advocates, scattered as they are to the four winds on Github. The cost of a random website like the emulator's old site is a mere drop in the ocean compared to Nintendo's annual budget. So, it's a no-brainer.

It's a bit morbid--like using your newly-slain enemies bones to build a house that no one can enter. This is the latest step to signal the dark age of video game preservation that's fast approaching, if not already here. Last year, around 87% games were not playable without piracy, luck, or physically going into an archive. The study stated:

Imagine that the only way you could watch Titanic would be to find an old VHS tape and maintain your vintage equipment to still watch it. What if no library could do better? Not even the Library of Congress could keep and digitize that VHS of Titanic. But you would have to travel to the Library of Congress to watch it.

Alas, considering the present wild west of what a company is and isn't required to do in order to support their game, it's likely we'll be seeing these efforts rise and fall in a perpetual game of whack-a-mole, with Nintendo parading around the still-financially-indebted Gary Bowser as a warning to all not to push their luck.