Support us on Patreon
PayPalUpdate 29/05: According to Pierre Bourdon on Mastodon, who was Dolphin's treasurer for the foundation backing the project (Bourdon is stepping down), Valve actually initiated the conversation to check in with Nintendo on this. So this is not a DMCA takedown request but Nintendo said it would violate the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions, so Valve took it down. So there's technically nothing for Dolphin to counter here.
Kotaku also got a statement from Nintendo on this:
“Nintendo is committed to protecting the hard work and creativity of video game engineers and developers,” a spokesperson for Nintendo told Kotaku in an email. “This emulator illegally circumvents Nintendo’s protection measures and runs illegal copies of games. Using illegal emulators or illegal copies of games harms development and ultimately stifles innovation. Nintendo respects the intellectual property rights of other companies, and in turn expects others to do the same.”
The article title was updated to better reflect the situation.
Original article below for context:
Back in March the plan was announced for the Wii and GameCube emulator Dolphin to release on Steam, along with some useful Steam features but now that seems unlikely to happen.
The Dolphin team has now announced that their Steam page was taken down, as Nintendo sent a cease and desist notice to Valve about it. Here's the statement they released:
It is with much disappointment that we have to announce that the Dolphin on Steam release has been indefinitely postponed. We were notified by Valve that Nintendo has issued a cease and desist citing the DMCA against Dolphin's Steam page, and have removed Dolphin from Steam until the matter is settled. We are currently investigating our options and will have a more in-depth response in the near future.
We appreciate your patience in the meantime.
Such a shame.
Why now though? Dolphin has been around since 2003 for GameCube, adding basic Wii support in 2007, so Dolphin was there during the time the Wii was still being fully supported. Nintendo also only went after the Steam page, not the project as a whole as it can still be found on GitHub and official site. According to a comment from the Citra developer on Reddit, it's due to Dolphin including decryption keys with the project.
Really, it's not going to do Nintendo much good, it's put Dolphin all over the news and even more people will now know about it and end up using it.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
In the end, it's a quarrel over some DMCA provisions, and you can argue either way whether this is legal or not in the US. In most of the world there is no DMCA, and what they're doing is legal anyway.
think about it for am moment:
Sony lost an similiar case meaning emulation is legal, so legally speaking they are probably in their rights to allow such software to be published in their platform, its not an ilegal tool.
but even then , we dont know what sort of arguments their lawyers can find, what kind of interpretation they can do and we cant guarantee that valve will win world wide, maybe nintendo can win even being wrong and valve can be force to pay... bilions?
even if valve win, they wont be making money from selling this software and its not like people cant find how to install on steamOS by thenselves, its not a big loss.
and least but not least: japan loves nintendo, unlike here were a lot of people are starting to hate nintendo or already do, in japan the love for nintendo may be ubiquitous or almost that.
if the news spread in japan that valve and nintendo are not just rivals but "mortal enemies" that valve was involved in an piracy schandanl of nintendo products...
their reputation there might be tarned especially with people who dont know then yet.
"Poisoning the well " as they say.
its a lose lose situation, either valve lose and have to remove the emulator/pay nintendo.
or they lose their reputation in an important region.
now that we are speaking about that... maybe they can improve it elsewhere by fighting an fight that many people arround the world want someone to fight, but no one is doing...
but im not sure if that would increase the sales.
Quoting: SeegrasBasically, Dolphin shared a 16byte secret key, which Nintendo dislikes. Nothing that DeCSS hasn't done also.
In the end, it's a quarrel over some DMCA provisions, and you can argue either way whether this is legal or not in the US. In most of the world there is no DMCA, and what they're doing is legal anyway.
Emulation isn't copyright infringement in the US. Including specific names, numbers, or incantations in your software that are the same as those in other software to allow interoperability isn't copyright infringement in the US. The particular quirk of the DMCA is that it prohibits "circumventing a technical measure" to bypass DRM even if the use isn't copyright infringement (and no matter how trivial the "technical measure" is); the Library of Congress has to regularly issue short-term (two or three years, IIRC) exemptions for particular applications.
Mountain Man May 27, 2023
Quoting: elmapuland least but not least: japan loves nintendo, unlike here were a lot of people are starting to hate nintendo or already do, in japan the love for nintendo may be ubiquitous or almost that.Unusually, as far as I'm aware, even users in Japan have complained about the build-quality problems of the Switch and its infamous controllers that break just from looking at them funny.
Quoting: PenglingUnusually, as far as I'm aware, even users in Japan have complained about the build-quality problems of the Switch and its infamous controllers that break just from looking at them funny.I've read so much about troubles with quality of the Joy-Cons, but to be fair poor build quality seems to be everywhere. Logitech has had trouble with the quality of the micro switches for the buttons for a long time and they've stopped using optical mouse wheels and have switched to cheap encoders (OT: encoders are always a huge pain – the biggest German electronics compendium has a very long article for workarounds).
Quoting: Mountain ManNintendo is just protecting themselves. I've never had a problem with that. They're still a great company.
No they are not. They are a soulless corporation who'd rather see games disappear forever than preserved, ultimately. They advocate for the worst kinds of DRM AND knowingly sell defective hardware to people (joycon analog drift ring a bell?) without fixing it for half a decade and counting.
Quoting: Penglingmaybe nintendo used quantum controllers, they break by just looking at thenQuoting: elmapuland least but not least: japan loves nintendo, unlike here were a lot of people are starting to hate nintendo or already do, in japan the love for nintendo may be ubiquitous or almost that.Unusually, as far as I'm aware, even users in Japan have complained about the build-quality problems of the Switch and its infamous controllers that break just from looking at them funny.
Mountain Man May 27, 2023
Quoting: DesumJoystick drift is actually common across the industry. I know a number of Sony's more expensive controllers have suffered from it, but for whatever reason, they don't get hammered for it like Nintendo. And to be fair, Nintendo continues to offer a free Joy Con repair service, at least here in the US, so while they may not have offered the groveling apology that some people seem to want, they have implemented what I think is a reasonable remedy.Quoting: Mountain ManNintendo is just protecting themselves. I've never had a problem with that. They're still a great company.No they are not. They are a soulless corporation who'd rather see games disappear forever than preserved, ultimately. They advocate for the worst kinds of DRM AND knowingly sell defective hardware to people (joycon analog drift ring a bell?) without fixing it for half a decade and counting.
As far as game availability, they are really no better or worse than the majority of other publishers and developers in the industry. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
See more from me