Eden Beats Citron & Ryujinx: 3,200+ Games [2026]

Nintendo Switch emulation looks nothing like it did two years ago. Yuzu is gone. The original Ryujinx is gone. Suyu went dark on September 13, 2026, archived with a one-line note: “no longer maintained.” In between, Nintendo filed a coordinated DMCA sweep on February 12, 2026 that named thirteen separate projects in a single GitHub notice, and a broader August 2026 takedown wave reportedly pulled more than 400 repositories off the platform in one day, according to reporting from SoVis Games.

Out of that wreckage, two projects kept shipping builds: Eden and Citron. A scattering of Ryujinx-lineage forks (Ryubing, GreemDev’s fork, and the preservation-minded ryujinx-mirror) are still floating around in various states of maintenance mode, archival, or quiet disappearance. If you owned a Switch library and relied on Yuzu or Ryujinx before 2024, you are now choosing between successors with different fork histories, different legal exposure, and different levels of active development. This comparison walks through Eden vs Citron vs the Ryujinx forks as they actually stand in October 2026 — not as they were marketed two years ago.

Search interest backs up why this matters right now. “Eden emulator” pulls roughly 33,100 monthly US searches with low competition, “ryujinx emulator” sits at 14,800, and “citron emulator” adds another 9,900, per DataForSEO keyword data pulled in October 2026. That is a lot of people trying to figure out which project survived, which one is still being developed, and which one is worth the download.

Part of that demand has nothing to do with piracy at all. Nintendo’s own Switch 2 launched with backward compatibility for the original Switch’s library, but plenty of players still want their existing collection running on a desktop, a laptop, or a Linux handheld rather than buying a second piece of hardware just to replay games they already own. Others are trying to preserve access to eShop titles that were delisted before they could repurchase them, or simply want to run Switch software on hardware Nintendo never officially supported. Whatever the motivation, the practical question is the same: which of the surviving projects is worth installing in October 2026, and which ones are dead ends dressed up as live downloads on search engines and forum threads that haven’t been updated in a year.

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Why Nintendo Switch Emulation Changed Overnight

The modern chapter starts in March 2024, when Nintendo settled its lawsuit against Tropic Haze LLC, the entity behind Yuzu, reportedly for $2.4 million. Yuzu shut down immediately. Six months later, in October 2024, Ryujinx’s lead developer gdkchan was contacted directly by Nintendo. A Ryujinx developer and moderator known as “rip in peri peri” described what happened in a statement to the project’s Discord: “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,” reported by Polygon. The same moderator added, “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,” according to coverage from The Standard.

That left a vacuum, and forks filled it almost immediately: Suyu picked up Yuzu’s codebase, while GreemDev and later Ryubing picked up Ryujinx’s. Eden emerged as a Yuzu-derived project with its own development team, and Citron built out a parallel codebase of its own. For about a year, the ecosystem looked stable enough.

Then came the official GitHub DMCA notice filed on February 12, 2026, archived at github.com/github/dmca, which named thirteen projects at once: Citron, Eden, Kenji-NX, MeloNX, Pine, Pomelo, Ryubing, Ryujinx, Skyline, Sudachi, Sumi, Suyu, and Yuzu. Nintendo’s language targeted any repository that “offers, links to, or otherwise provides access to” Switch emulation software, a broad net that went well beyond the emulator codebases themselves. By October 2026, most of that list had gone quiet — Kenji-NX, MeloNX, Pine, Pomelo, Skyline, Sudachi, and Sumi show no reliably maintained, officially downloadable builds. Suyu’s own GitHub organization carries the archived label as of September 13, 2026. Only Eden and Citron kept shipping regular updates through the back half of the year, a point echoed in reporting from KitGuru.

What Is Eden? Origins, Fork Lineage, and Current Status

Eden is a Yuzu-derived Nintendo Switch emulator built by a team that picked up pieces of the old Yuzu codebase after the 2024 shutdown and kept iterating independently of Suyu. The project runs its own git infrastructure at git.eden-emu.dev alongside a GitHub mirror at github.com/eden-emulator, and its release pipeline has stayed active through CI, master, and nightly channels well into October 2026, with build activity logged as recently as October 8-10.

Eden’s own project documentation describes support for firmware 19.x, a Vulkan rendering path, and a claimed compatibility list north of 3,200 titles — a figure the project reports itself rather than one independently audited by a third-party compatibility tracker, so treat it as a developer claim rather than a lab-verified benchmark. Builds target Windows, Linux, macOS, and Android, and Eden runs on Steam Deck through its Linux build, which has made it the default pick for handheld emulation setups this year.

Eden was one of the thirteen projects named in the February 2026 DMCA notice. Rather than folding, the team publicly pledged to keep development going through mirrors, and reporting from Prism News described the project pushing out a v0.2.0 build in the aftermath of the takedown notices rather than halting work. That response — keep building, keep mirroring, keep shipping — is the main reason Eden now sits at the top of Switch-emulator search volume, well ahead of every other option in this comparison.

What Is Citron? Origins and Development Status

Citron is the other project that kept moving after the February 2026 notice. Unlike Eden, Citron does not lean as heavily on public marketing around its survival — the project’s own site reportedly went offline around the time of the DMCA notice, even as its underlying development work continued elsewhere. That distinction matters for anyone searching for it today: the lack of a single, consistently available official homepage has made Citron slightly harder to track down than Eden, which may explain why its search volume (9,900 monthly, trending down roughly 18% year over year per DataForSEO) sits well below Eden’s.

Citron is a separate codebase from Eden rather than a shared fork, which means the two projects can diverge in compatibility, performance characteristics, and feature pacing even though both ultimately trace back to the same post-Yuzu lineage of community emulation work. Citron supports the core platforms you would expect from a 2026-era Switch emulator — Windows and Linux desktop builds, with Android support tracked separately by the community. Because Citron’s communication channels are less centralized than Eden’s, version numbers and release dates circulate more through community mirrors, Discord servers, and aggregator sites than through a single authoritative changelog, so anyone installing it should prioritize sourcing the build from the most recently active official or community-verified channel rather than trusting the first search result.

Ryujinx Forks in 2026: Ryubing, GreemDev, and the Mirror Projects

The Ryujinx side of the family tree is more fragmented. After the original project was shut down in October 2024, a quality-of-life continuation emerged from GreemDev, whose GitHub organization at github.com/GreemDev describes its work as maintaining “a fork of the discontinued Switch emulator, Ryujinx.” That effort was later rebranded or folded into Ryubing, hosted at github.com/Ryubing, which positions itself as the active continuation while pointing more preservation-minded users toward a separate, largely static mirror called ryujinx-mirror.

Ryubing’s own documentation states plainly that development shifted into maintenance mode following the DMCA pressure that hit the Ryujinx name through 2025 and into the February 2026 wave. That is a meaningfully different posture than Eden or Citron, both of which describe themselves as under active feature development. A maintenance-mode project will still patch crashes and compatibility regressions, but it is not the place to look for new input backends, new audio stacks, or aggressive new performance work. One Ryujinx-lineage canary build, dated September 8, 2026, reported a roughly 20% Vulkan pipeline-cache improvement along with eight-player local wireless (LDN) stability fixes and firmware 19.x installation support directly from a ZIP file — useful, incremental engineering, but the cadence and ambition look different from Eden’s release pipeline.

If you are coming from the original Ryujinx and specifically want continuity of UI, controller profiles, and save-file structure, a Ryujinx fork is the path of least friction. If you want the project most likely to still be shipping meaningful updates a year from now, the evidence currently favors Eden or Citron.

Eden vs Citron vs Ryujinx Forks: Full Specs Comparison

Here is how the surviving and defunct projects stack up on the details that actually affect a buying — or rather, downloading — decision. Version numbers for actively contested projects move fast and get mirrored across multiple channels, so treat anything below as a snapshot of October 2026 rather than a permanent spec sheet.

Project	Lineage	Oct. 2026 status	Platforms	Rendering backend	Firmware support	License	DMCA exposure
Eden	Yuzu-derived, independent team	Actively developed, nightly builds	Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, Steam Deck	Vulkan	Up to 19.x	Open source (GPL-family)	Named in Feb. 2026 notice; continues via mirrors
Citron	Independent post-Yuzu codebase	Active development, less centralized comms	Windows, Linux, community Android builds	Vulkan	Up to 19.x (community-reported)	Open source	Named in Feb. 2026 notice; site disrupted, dev continued
Ryubing (Ryujinx fork)	GreemDev continuation of Ryujinx	Maintenance mode	Windows, Linux, macOS	Vulkan / OpenGL-style desktop, Metal on macOS	Up to 19.x	Open source (MIT-family)	Affected by 2025-2026 takedown pressure
ryujinx-mirror	Preservation fork of Ryujinx	Static / archived	Windows, Linux, macOS	Vulkan / OpenGL-style desktop	Frozen at fork point	Open source	Reported archived June 2025
Original Ryujinx	n/a	Discontinued Oct. 1, 2024	n/a	n/a	n/a	Open source (defunct)	Developer contacted directly by Nintendo
Yuzu	n/a	Discontinued March 2024	n/a	n/a	n/a	Open source (defunct)	$2.4M Nintendo settlement
Suyu	Yuzu-derived	Archived Sept. 13, 2026	Windows, Linux (historic)	Vulkan (historic)	Frozen at archival	Open source (archived)	Final 0.0.4 build shipped before archival
Sudachi	Post-Yuzu fork	No reliably maintained build	n/a	n/a	n/a	Open source (inactive)	Named in Feb. 2026 notice
Skyline	Independent, Android-focused	No longer active	n/a	n/a	n/a	Open source (inactive)	Named in Feb. 2026 notice
MeloNX	Independent, iOS/Android-focused	Official site down; status unclear	n/a	n/a	n/a	Open source (status unclear)	Named in Feb. 2026 notice

The pattern is stark: of the thirteen projects named in the February 2026 notice, exactly two — Eden and Citron — are still shipping builds regularly by October. Everything else is either frozen, archived, or has gone quiet enough that nobody can point to an authoritative current release. That consolidation is the single most important fact for anyone deciding where to put their time this year.

Performance and Compatibility: What Reviewers and the Community Report

Nobody has published a controlled, apples-to-apples benchmark running the same game build, the same shader cache state, and the same driver version across Eden, Citron, and a current Ryujinx fork side by side — the kind of standardized compatibility-percentage chart that used to circulate for Yuzu versus Ryujinx. That gap in the public record is itself worth noting: the post-DMCA environment has made reviewers and compatibility-tracking sites more cautious about publishing detailed comparative benchmarks for projects still facing active legal pressure.

What does exist is project-reported and community-reported data. Eden’s own documentation claims compatibility with more than 3,200 titles, a number the team self-publishes rather than one validated against an independent test database. On the Ryujinx-fork side, the September 2026 canary build’s release notes claimed a roughly 20% improvement to Vulkan pipeline-cache handling, directly addressing the stutter that has historically plagued first-time shader compilation in Switch emulation — a real, officially documented engineering change rather than a marketing number. Suyu’s final 0.0.4 release, covered by TechPowerUp, added a static AArch64-to-x86-64 recompilation system that the outlet described as delivering a “massive performance increase” for supported 64-bit ARM titles, shipped right before the project went into archival.

In practice, compatibility differences between Eden and Citron tend to show up on a per-title basis rather than as a blanket “one is faster” conclusion — a game that stutters on one project’s shader compiler may run cleanly on the other’s, and vice versa, because the two codebases evolved independently after the Yuzu split. The sensible approach if you have the storage space: keep both installed, since neither charges you anything to do so, and test your specific library against each before committing shader caches and save data to one project long-term.

All-in-one handheld frontends add another layer worth understanding. EmuDeck, which bundles launcher configurations for dozens of emulator cores on Steam Deck-style hardware, has had to repeatedly update its default Switch-core recommendations as Yuzu and Ryujinx disappeared and Eden and Citron matured into viable replacements, according to the project’s own GitHub release history at emudeck.com. Handheld-focused Linux distributions built for emulation, including Bazzite and Batocera, face the same churn: a frontend is only as good as the cores it packages, and the Switch slot in that lineup has changed more times in the past two years than every other console core combined. If you’re assembling a multi-system setup rather than a Switch-only install, expect to revisit your frontend’s Switch configuration more often than you’d like.

Migration Guide: Moving From Yuzu or Ryujinx to Eden or Citron

If you still have an old Yuzu or Ryujinx install sitting on a drive, here is how to carry your library, saves, and settings forward without starting from zero.

Locate your existing keys folder (prod.keys and title.keys) from your old Yuzu or Ryujinx install directory — these are tied to your own console’s firmware dump and are not redistributed by any of these projects.
Back up your nand or user-profile save folder before touching anything; both Eden and Citron use a similar directory layout but not an identical one, so copy rather than move the originals.
Install Eden or Citron fresh rather than overwriting an old Yuzu/Ryujinx folder, since shared config files between unrelated codebases can cause crashes on first launch.
Point the new emulator’s keys and firmware paths at your backed-up files through its setup wizard — both projects support importing firmware 19.x packages directly from a ZIP file rather than requiring manual extraction.
Copy save files into the matching title ID folder under the new emulator’s user data directory; title IDs are consistent across projects since they come from the game itself, not the emulator.
Reconfigure controller bindings manually — profile files are generally not cross-compatible between Yuzu-lineage, Citron, and Ryujinx-lineage projects.
Rebuild your shader cache by playing through an early section of each game once; first-session stutter is expected and normal on a fresh install.
If you plan to run both Eden and Citron side by side for compatibility testing, install them into fully separate folders with separate user-data directories to avoid one project’s updater touching the other’s files.

None of this requires downloading copyrighted game files from anywhere — legitimate use assumes you are dumping keys and firmware from a console you personally own, and supplying your own legally purchased game files. That boundary is also where most of Nintendo’s legal arguments against these projects have focused, on distribution and circumvention rather than on the concept of emulation itself.

Pricing and Total Cost of Ownership

Every project in this comparison is free and open source, so there is no license fee to compare. The real cost differences show up in hardware requirements, setup time, and the indirect costs of keeping a legally gray hobby running smoothly.

Cost factor	Eden	Citron	Ryujinx fork (Ryubing)
App license cost	Free	Free	Free
Minimum usable PC tier	Mid-range CPU/GPU from the last 5 years	Mid-range CPU/GPU from the last 5 years	Mid-range CPU/GPU from the last 5 years
Steam Deck / handheld support	Yes, Linux build runs natively	Community Linux builds available	Yes, via Linux build
Android phone support	Official build available	Community-maintained builds	Not officially supported
Console dump required	Yes (your own Switch’s keys/firmware)	Yes (your own Switch’s keys/firmware)	Yes (your own Switch’s keys/firmware)
Typical game library storage	8-16 GB per title (varies widely)	8-16 GB per title (varies widely)	8-16 GB per title (varies widely)
Optional support/donation cost	Varies by contributor channel	Varies by contributor channel	Varies by contributor channel
Setup time investment	Low — centralized docs and active Discord	Moderate — docs spread across mirrors	Low — mature, well-documented UI

The biggest hidden cost is actually time: Eden’s more centralized documentation and still-active community support channels mean less time spent hunting for a working build, while Citron’s fragmented official presence can mean more time spent cross-checking which mirror is current before you trust it with your save files.

Platform Support: Windows, Linux, macOS, and Android

Platform coverage is one of the clearer differentiators in this comparison. Eden ships builds across Windows, Linux, macOS, and Android, and its Linux build is what powers most of the current Steam Deck and handheld-PC emulation setups built around it this year. Citron covers Windows and Linux officially, with Android support maintained more by community packagers than by a single official release channel — a meaningful difference if you specifically want Switch games running on a phone rather than a desktop or handheld PC.

Ryujinx-lineage forks split the difference: Ryubing supports Windows, Linux, and macOS with a dedicated Metal backend on Apple Silicon, but there is no official Android build in that lineage. If you’re building a handheld setup around something like a Steam Deck, ROG Ally X, or Legion Go, Eden’s native Linux support and active update cadence make it the more future-proof choice among the three; Citron works too, but expect more manual configuration.

For players who want Switch emulation specifically on Android hardware rather than a Windows handheld, Eden’s official mobile build currently has the strongest claim to being “supported” rather than “community-patched together,” which matters if you hit a bug and need somewhere official to report it.

Legal Status and DMCA Risk in Late 2026

Emulation itself has repeatedly been treated as legal software in US courts — the long-running precedent from cases involving console emulators in the late 1990s and early 2000s still underpins that principle. What Nintendo has targeted in 2024-2026 is narrower: specific projects accused of including or facilitating access to circumvention tools, encryption keys, or copyrighted firmware, and the repositories that host or link to them. The February 12, 2026 GitHub notice, filed under standard DMCA takedown procedure and publicly archived by GitHub itself, named all thirteen projects in this comparison’s family tree in one filing.

A DMCA takedown notice is a legal demand, not a court ruling — it compels a platform like GitHub to remove or disable access to flagged content, but it does not by itself establish that an entire project is unlawful. Still, the practical effect on most of the thirteen named projects has been the same: without an active, well-resourced team willing to fight the notice or relocate infrastructure, repositories go quiet. Eden and Citron are the exceptions, both continuing development through mirrors and alternative hosting rather than folding immediately, a pattern documented in coverage from Held Games on the broader 2026 takedown wave.

For an individual user, the clearest way to stay inside the lines that courts have historically respected is to only use keys and firmware dumped from a console you personally own, and to only load game files you have personally purchased. None of that changes the fact that the projects themselves remain in a legally contested position with Nintendo, and that position can change again with little notice — as it already has three times in the past two years.

Real-World Use Cases: Which Emulator Fits Your Setup

The right pick depends heavily on what hardware you already own and what you’re trying to get out of it. Here are the scenarios that come up most often among players sorting through this decision in late 2026.

The Steam Deck owner building a portable library. Someone running a Linux-based handheld wants the lowest-maintenance option available, since reflashing or troubleshooting on a small screen is miserable. Eden’s native Linux build and its ongoing nightly releases make it the easier of the two active survivors to keep updated on a device like those covered in our ROG Ally X20 vs Legion Go 2 vs AYN Thor comparison, where storage and battery life already force compromises elsewhere.

The Android phone or tablet gamer. For someone who wants Switch titles running on a phone rather than a dedicated handheld or desktop, Eden currently has the stronger claim to an official, centrally released mobile build. Citron’s Android builds exist through community packaging, but there’s no single authoritative release channel to check for updates, which makes Eden the lower-friction choice specifically for mobile.

The longtime Ryujinx user who values continuity over new features. If years of muscle memory are built around the original Ryujinx interface, controller mapping conventions, and save-file structure, a Ryujinx fork like Ryubing is the path of least resistance. The tradeoff is slower feature development, since the project describes itself as being in maintenance mode rather than active expansion.

The owner of an older or budget PC. Both Eden and Citron run on Vulkan-capable mid-range hardware from the past several years rather than demanding a flagship GPU. Performance on genuinely old or low-power systems will still depend more on the game being emulated than on which project you pick, since newer, more demanding Switch titles stress every emulator similarly.

The Mac user on Apple Silicon. Ryujinx-lineage forks currently offer the most mature macOS experience of the three families here, thanks to a dedicated Metal rendering backend that neither Eden nor Citron has matched as directly as of October 2026.

The completionist testing a large personal library. Running Eden and Citron side by side, in fully separate folders with independent user-data directories, lets a player cross-check which project handles a specific troublesome title better. Because the two codebases evolved independently, compatibility gaps show up per-game rather than as a consistent pattern favoring one project across the board.

The content creator or streamer. Capture workflows are unforgiving of stutter, and first-time shader compilation is the single most common on-stream failure point in Switch emulation. The practical move is testing both Eden and Citron on the actual recording rig before committing to one for an ongoing series, rather than assuming either project’s general reputation will hold for a specific capture setup.

Scenario	Best pick	Why
Steam Deck / Linux handheld	Eden	Native Linux build, active nightly releases
Android phone or tablet	Eden	Only officially released mobile build among the survivors
Continuity with original Ryujinx	Ryujinx fork (Ryubing)	Closest UI, bindings, and save structure match
Apple Silicon Mac	Ryujinx fork (Ryubing)	Dedicated Metal rendering backend
Cross-checking a problem title	Eden + Citron in parallel	Independent codebases surface different compatibility bugs
Budget or older desktop PC	Eden or Citron	Both run on Vulkan-capable mid-range hardware
Streaming or recording footage	Test both on your rig	Shader-compilation stutter varies by capture setup

Pros and Cons: Eden, Citron, and Ryujinx Forks

Eden pros: active nightly development, the broadest platform coverage including an official Android build, centralized documentation, and the largest community following of any post-Yuzu project. Cons: its high profile has also made it Nintendo’s most visible target, and its self-reported compatibility numbers are not independently audited.

Citron pros: independent codebase gives it a genuinely different compatibility profile from Eden, useful as a fallback when one project struggles with a specific title, and it kept development alive through the same DMCA pressure that killed most of its peers. Cons: fragmented official communication, a disrupted project website, and less centralized documentation make it harder to confirm you’re running a trustworthy, current build.

Ryujinx forks (Ryubing/GreemDev) pros: closest continuity with the original Ryujinx UI and workflow, mature macOS support via Metal, and a long track record of engineering quality from the original project. Cons: maintenance-mode development means slower feature additions, and the broader Ryujinx name carries more direct, documented legal history with Nintendo than either Eden or Citron.

What the Switch Emulation Shakeout Means for Other Platforms

The Switch emulation scene’s upheaval hasn’t spread evenly across the rest of emulation. PlayStation 3 emulator RPCS3 kept shipping routine updates straight through 2026, with a release dated September 30, 2026 on its official GitHub releases page, and Xbox 360 emulator Xenia’s community-maintained Canary branch remains active at github.com/xenia-canary. Neither has faced anything like the DMCA pressure aimed at Switch projects, largely because Sony and Microsoft have not pursued emulator developers with the same intensity Nintendo has applied since 2024.

That contrast matters for anyone building a broader retro or current-gen emulation setup: handheld frontends like EmuDeck, which packages multiple emulator cores including RPCS3 and Xenia alongside Switch options, have had to adapt their default configurations as Yuzu- and Ryujinx-based cores disappeared, swapping in Eden and Citron support as those projects matured. If your setup spans multiple consoles rather than just the Switch, expect the Switch component of any all-in-one emulation frontend to keep changing faster than the rest of your library for the foreseeable future.

Downloading Safely: Spotting Fake Builds and Malware Risk

The same fragmentation that makes Citron harder to track down officially has also made the whole Switch-emulator space a magnet for fake download pages. When a project’s official site goes dark or its GitHub organization gets archived, search results fill in the gap with clone sites, “installer” executables bundling adware, and YouTube video descriptions linking to files nobody maintains. That risk is not hypothetical in this specific ecosystem: multiple projects on the February 2026 DMCA list went quiet within weeks, and their old download pages are exactly the kind of abandoned real estate that gets repurposed for malicious installers.

A few habits cut that risk substantially. Always start from a project’s own git infrastructure or GitHub organization page rather than a search-engine result or a generic “download emulators” aggregator site. Check the commit history and release notes before trusting a build — an actively maintained project like Eden shows a visible, frequent stream of CI and nightly activity, while a dead project’s repository stops updating and often gets an explicit “archived” label, as Suyu’s did on September 13, 2026. Avoid any installer that asks for firmware keys or bundled game ROMs as part of the download; legitimate emulator projects never ship copyrighted Nintendo files, and any installer that does is both legally and technically suspect. For Citron specifically, cross-reference any mirror against the project’s most recently active community channel before trusting it with your save data, since its lack of one centralized official home is precisely what unofficial clones exploit.

The Verdict: Which Switch Emulator Should You Use in 2026

Based on development activity, platform coverage, and search demand, Eden is the stronger default pick for most people in October 2026. It has the most active release cadence, the widest platform support including Android, the largest community, and more than three times the monthly search volume of its nearest rival — a reasonable proxy for how many people have already landed on it as their go-to option. Citron earns a place as a genuine second option, particularly for cross-checking compatibility on titles that run poorly on Eden, precisely because its independent codebase means its bugs and strengths don’t overlap perfectly with Eden’s.

Ryujinx forks remain the right call specifically for continuity — if you have years of muscle memory with the original Ryujinx UI, or you’re on Apple Silicon and want the most mature Metal backend available, Ryubing or a similar fork gets the job done even in maintenance mode. What nobody should do is keep chasing the seven other names from the February 2026 DMCA list hoping for a revival; the evidence through October 2026 points to those projects staying dark.

The bigger lesson from the past two years is that Switch emulation has consolidated from a crowded field of a dozen-plus competing projects down to two actively developed survivors and a handful of maintenance-mode holdouts. That’s a smaller, more fragile ecosystem than the one Yuzu and the original Ryujinx once anchored, and anyone building a long-term setup around it should plan for more change, not less, over the next year.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Eden emulator legal to use?
Emulation software itself has generally been treated as legal in US courts. Eden was named in Nintendo’s February 2026 DMCA notice, which targets repositories providing access to circumvention tools and copyrighted firmware rather than the concept of emulation. Using your own console’s keys and your own legally purchased game files is the standard way users try to stay within established legal boundaries, though the underlying legal dispute between Nintendo and these projects remains unresolved.

What happened to Yuzu and the original Ryujinx?
Yuzu shut down in March 2024 after its developer, Tropic Haze LLC, settled with Nintendo for a reported $2.4 million. The original Ryujinx project shut down in October 2024 after Nintendo contacted lead developer gdkchan directly and the project’s GitHub organization was removed.

Is Citron still being developed in 2026?
Yes. Citron was named in the same February 2026 DMCA notice as Eden, and while its official website was disrupted around that time, development has continued, making it one of only two projects from the original thirteen-project list still shipping builds by October 2026.

What happened to Suyu?
Suyu, a Yuzu-derived project, released a final 0.0.4 build adding a static AArch64-to-x86-64 recompilation system for improved performance, then had its GitHub organization archived on September 13, 2026, with the code remaining open source but development ending.

Can I use Eden or Citron on a Steam Deck?
Yes. Eden has a native Linux build that runs on Steam Deck and similar Linux-based handhelds, and Citron has community-maintained Linux builds as well. Eden’s more centralized release process currently makes it the easier of the two to set up on handheld hardware.

Do I need to buy anything to use these emulators?
The emulators themselves are free and open source. You will need your own Nintendo Switch to legally dump your console’s encryption keys and firmware, plus legally purchased copies of any games you want to play, since none of these projects distribute copyrighted Nintendo files.

Which Ryujinx fork should I use instead of the original?
Ryubing, maintained by the GreemDev team, is the most actively referenced continuation of the original Ryujinx codebase as of October 2026, though it describes itself as being in maintenance mode rather than active feature development. A separate, more static preservation fork called ryujinx-mirror exists for users who prioritize keeping an unmodified historical build over new updates.

Will Eden or Citron get shut down like Yuzu did?
There’s no way to guarantee either project’s future. Both were already named in a DMCA notice in February 2026 and continued operating afterward through mirrors and distributed hosting, which suggests more resilience than projects like Suyu or Sudachi showed, but Nintendo’s legal pressure on Switch emulation has escalated three separate times since 2024, and there is no indication that pattern has ended.

Eden vs Citron vs Ryujinx: 13 Bans, 1 Survivor [2026]