Update 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.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Mountain Man May 29, 2023
Quoting: JordanPlayz158Oh, come off it. We're not fighting some moral crusade here. We're talking about video games. Let's try and keep things in perspective.Quoting: Mountain ManAh, so to you it is irrelevant if it is morally correct or not (or the actual purpose of the law), but whether it is legal or not. I hope you will reflect on how you gauge what is wrong if the law ever tries to outlaw something like End-to-End Encryption (they have a few times and thankfully failed)Quoting: JordanPlayz158Whether or not you agree with the law as it stands is irrelevant.Quoting: Mountain ManYes, let's pretend that the overwhelming majority of people using emulators aren't also playing pirated software.Let's say that is the case, is that wrong? If so why is it wrong? Pirating games that are no longer officially produced or sold on consoles that are no longer officially produced or sold, is that wrong? The only argument that makes sense for copyright law that I've seen is to protect sales, but what sales are there left to protect?
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Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: EikeNo, I don't really think it's that huge. "Most people doing X are Y" is enough that for any given person doing X, you would assume they're a Y. So as an insult or an instigation of a moral panic, it's pretty much equivalent.Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: EikeQuoting: benstor214“People who emulate games are all committing piracy.”
I can't remember somebody saying this. Could you cite it please?
Quoting: Mountain ManRight, "game preservation", by which most people mean "free games".
"Most" and "all" is a huge difference, and you know that.
Most people are female, so I assume you're female?
<spock>Highly illogical.</spock>
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: GuestIn addition to this, Nintendo's taken down the Wii Shop, and Wii U and 3DS eShops, which has resulted in many games from all of these systems being completely unobtainable.And the DSi shop, too.
4 Likes, Who?
Quoting: EikeI would say the usage for "most" does not include "just over 50%". You gotta be getting into the three quarters range to be "most".Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: EikeNo, I don't really think it's that huge. "Most people doing X are Y" is enough that for any given person doing X, you would assume they're a Y. So as an insult or an instigation of a moral panic, it's pretty much equivalent.Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: EikeQuoting: benstor214“People who emulate games are all committing piracy.”
I can't remember somebody saying this. Could you cite it please?
Quoting: Mountain ManRight, "game preservation", by which most people mean "free games".
"Most" and "all" is a huge difference, and you know that.
Most people are female, so I assume you're female?
<spock>Highly illogical.</spock>
3 Likes, Who?
benstor214 May 29, 2023
Quoting: EikeYou are right. Consumers don’t need rights anyway.Quoting: benstor214Quoting: EikeThat’s the nice thing: you don’t need to! You just have to murky the waters and blur the line between emulation, game preservation and piracy. You only need to place one group near to the other and subsequently insinuate that there is no difference between both groups at all. Sooner than not game preservationists are deemed criminal and Nintendo’s upper management opens a bottle of champagne to celebrate the successes of the hard-working minions in forums and comment sections.Quoting: benstor214“People who emulate games are all committing piracy.”
I can't remember somebody saying this. Could you cite it please?
I prefer people citing what has actually been said and react to that instead of making up quotes. It always makes it look like they wouldn't trust their arguments enough.
Most of them even smell badly in my experience.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: Mountain ManSo when it comes to enforcing copyright it's serious business and the law is absolute, but when it comes to keeping art alive and accessible it's "just video games" and so not eligible even for consideration. What a convenient double standard.Quoting: JordanPlayz158Oh, come off it. We're not fighting some moral crusade here. We're talking about video games. Let's try and keep things in perspective.Quoting: Mountain ManAh, so to you it is irrelevant if it is morally correct or not (or the actual purpose of the law), but whether it is legal or not. I hope you will reflect on how you gauge what is wrong if the law ever tries to outlaw something like End-to-End Encryption (they have a few times and thankfully failed)Quoting: JordanPlayz158Whether or not you agree with the law as it stands is irrelevant.Quoting: Mountain ManYes, let's pretend that the overwhelming majority of people using emulators aren't also playing pirated software.Let's say that is the case, is that wrong? If so why is it wrong? Pirating games that are no longer officially produced or sold on consoles that are no longer officially produced or sold, is that wrong? The only argument that makes sense for copyright law that I've seen is to protect sales, but what sales are there left to protect?
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Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: scaineI would have figured that the main difference of having it available on Steam with no muss and no fuss would be precisely that a whole lot of people who are not "comfortable with tinkering with emulation" would be comfortable just downloading something from Steam.Quoting: EikeQuoting: ripper81358I use Dolphin myself. Having it available on steam is not critical to me. I have Dolphin installed as a flatpak on my end. So any steamdeck user can easily install it that way too.
That's just not how most people will use such a device IMHO.
Usually, I'd agree, but I think any crowd comfortable with tinkering with emulation will be absolutely fine booting into desktop mode to install a flatpak. I'm not much a tinkerer, but Liam's article on adding Decky Loader support is so easy to follow and complete that it's absolutely trivial. I doubt many emulation fans will even care that Dolphin is off Steam.
Sure, but that's not the experience. You download Dolphin... now what? Now you need to rip games off your cartridges, or more likely, source them from dubious sources. My point being that if you're committed to emulation, running a flatpak on your SteamDeck is no big deal.
However, I wasn't aware that this somehow magically enabled cloud-saves, as Arale-senpai pointed out, so that's definitely a loss.
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Quoting: Purple Library GuyJust acquiring the emulator isn't the fiddly bit, though. Sourcing roms, mapping inputs to a controller that may not match the original hardware, and configuring graphics settings are. Simply putting an emulator on Steam really doesn't make it "no muss and no fuss" to actually use.Quoting: scaineI would have figured that the main difference of having it available on Steam with no muss and no fuss would be precisely that a whole lot of people who are not "comfortable with tinkering with emulation" would be comfortable just downloading something from Steam.Quoting: EikeQuoting: ripper81358I use Dolphin myself. Having it available on steam is not critical to me. I have Dolphin installed as a flatpak on my end. So any steamdeck user can easily install it that way too.
That's just not how most people will use such a device IMHO.
Usually, I'd agree, but I think any crowd comfortable with tinkering with emulation will be absolutely fine booting into desktop mode to install a flatpak. I'm not much a tinkerer, but Liam's article on adding Decky Loader support is so easy to follow and complete that it's absolutely trivial. I doubt many emulation fans will even care that Dolphin is off Steam.
1 Likes, Who?
Mountain Man May 29, 2023
Quoting: Smoke39Quoting: Mountain ManSo when it comes to enforcing copyright it's serious business and the law is absolute, but when it comes to keeping art alive and accessible it's "just video games" and so not eligible even for consideration. What a convenient double standard.Quoting: JordanPlayz158Oh, come off it. We're not fighting some moral crusade here. We're talking about video games. Let's try and keep things in perspective.Quoting: Mountain ManAh, so to you it is irrelevant if it is morally correct or not (or the actual purpose of the law), but whether it is legal or not. I hope you will reflect on how you gauge what is wrong if the law ever tries to outlaw something like End-to-End Encryption (they have a few times and thankfully failed)Quoting: JordanPlayz158Whether or not you agree with the law as it stands is irrelevant.Quoting: Mountain ManYes, let's pretend that the overwhelming majority of people using emulators aren't also playing pirated software.Let's say that is the case, is that wrong? If so why is it wrong? Pirating games that are no longer officially produced or sold on consoles that are no longer officially produced or sold, is that wrong? The only argument that makes sense for copyright law that I've seen is to protect sales, but what sales are there left to protect?
What the hell are you talking about? There's no double standard here. Only thing I've said is that whether or not you agree with it, downloading pirated games is illegal. That's not debatable. And Nintendo is doing nothing immoral or unethical by taking steps to maintain commercial control of their products. Yes, that includes choosing to make some of their games inaccessible for whatever reason. You do not have a moral right to their games, so there is no justification for breaking the law to download them. It's as simple as that.
Of course the most common counterargument to this unassailable line of reasoning is, "But- but game preservation!" which, let's be honest, is nothing more than a hollow rationalisation for breaking the law. For one thing, Nintendo is already preserving the games themselves in their own company archives, so there's nothing more that needs to be done. For another, yes, they're just games as opposed to something necessary for your survival. If Nintendo HQ burned down to the ground tomorrow and took their entire archive with it, humanity, as a whole, would be no worse off. To put it another way, when you're 90, is it really going to matter to you whether or not you can still play Super Mario Bros.? As I said, it helps to keep these things in perspective.
Last edited by Mountain Man on 30 May 2023 at 11:22 am UTC
1 Likes, Who?
slaapliedje May 29, 2023
Quoting: benstor214Buahahaha. Oh wait, he's talking about ME!Quoting: EikeYou are right. Consumers don’t need rights anyway.Quoting: benstor214Quoting: EikeThat’s the nice thing: you don’t need to! You just have to murky the waters and blur the line between emulation, game preservation and piracy. You only need to place one group near to the other and subsequently insinuate that there is no difference between both groups at all. Sooner than not game preservationists are deemed criminal and Nintendo’s upper management opens a bottle of champagne to celebrate the successes of the hard-working minions in forums and comment sections.Quoting: benstor214“People who emulate games are all committing piracy.”
I can't remember somebody saying this. Could you cite it please?
I prefer people citing what has actually been said and react to that instead of making up quotes. It always makes it look like they wouldn't trust their arguments enough.
Most of them even smell badly in my experience.
0 Likes
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