Near, creator of several groundbreaking video game emulators and most recently known by the username Byuu, a translation of the JRPG Bahamut Lagoon, has died by suicide.

Near posted a thread on Twitter explaining how he was affected by a harassment campaign organized on the Kiwi Farms forum. Later, IT consultant and Linux hacker Hector Martin posted a message about Near from a mutual friend (CW: including explicit details about how Near committed suicide), and in a subsequent tweet he stated that he had confirmed Near's death to the police. The linked document also focuses on the Kiwi Farm forum and the doxing and harassment of Nia and her friends.

Near's bsnes was the first 100% compatible Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) emulator, and higan has 26 different devices including NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Sega Master System, Genesis/Megadrive, PC Engine If you've ever played an indie game influenced by EarthBound, aka Mother 2, there's a good chance that the game's designers used higan to open a copy of EarthBound for reference.

Some of the emulators created to keep Stephen Hawking's voice synthesizer running in the famous physicist's later years were even borrowed from higan's open source code.

In the field of fan translation, Nia contributed programming to the localization of games such as "Mother 3," "Dragon Quest 5," and "Langrisser," which was released in 2021, 23 years after the localization of "Bahamut Lagoon" began.

If you or someone you know is suicidal, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (USA), Crisis Services Canada (California), Samaritans (UK), or Lifeline (Australia). If you are outside of these areas, check this list for hotlines in your country.