After all the ruckus recently about the Dolphin Emulator for Wii and GameCube coming to Steam, and then being blocked - the team has now given up with the Steam release.
They remained pretty silent on it since the initial announcement, which caused a lot of speculation and confusion but now they're explaining their side and how they feel about it going forward after seeking legal advice. The good news, is that nothing is going to happen to Dolphin and development sounds like it's just continuing as normal. It's just not able to have a release on Steam since Nintendo asked Valve not to allow it on the store.
So, after a long stay of silence, we have a difficult announcement to make. We are abandoning our efforts to release Dolphin on Steam. Valve ultimately runs the store and can set any condition they wish for software to appear on it. But given Nintendo's long-held stance on emulation, we find Valve's requirement for us to get approval from Nintendo for a Steam release to be impossible. Unfortunately, that's that. But there are some more serious matters to discuss, some that are much bigger than Dolphin's Steam Release.
Dolphin Team
The big issue surrounds the inclusion of the Wii Common Key, which is required for the emulator to be able to run Wii games, which they said has been in their code for around 15 years without an issue.
The Dolphin team claim a lot of "armchair lawyers" talked about how foolish they have been for including it but they said "now that we have done our homework and talked to a lawyer, we are no longer concerned". They have no plans to remove it, as after getting legal advice they believe there's no issue since Dolphin itself is "not primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection".
After news about it spread around they claim they had "many requests, and even some demands, to remove all Wii keys from our codebase" but they don't think it matters and they think if they removed it and then relied on 3rd party applications it would "make the situation worse for everyone". Their message to the "armchair lawyers":
And to all the armchair lawyers out there, the letter to Valve did not make any claims that we were violating a US copyright by including the Wii Common Key, as a short string of entirely random letters and numbers generated by a machine is not copyrightable under current US copyright law. If that ever changes, the world will be far too busy to think about emulation.
Dolphin Team
Not only will development carry on as normal, so you'll just need to grab Dolphin as you always have done from elsewhere, but some elements from the Steam release will still be continued like the big screen interface that can be used directly with a gamepad.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: BelaptirTo me the break point was a horrible experience with the customer service and a pair of joycons (it took them 6 months to correctly repair them, veeeeery long story). After that, I decided that Nintendo was too much crap for me to accept.Joy-Cons were one factor for me, as well. The innards are, unsurprisingly considering their fundamentally-broken design, designed to be easy to repair. But I got to a point where, along with the other factors that caused me to leave them behind, I found myself questioning why a consumer should have to constantly repair lightly-used gear that fails early into its warranty; Since Nintendo already had excellent and durable controls on previous portables, including one with analogue inputs, their excuses about this particular hardware needing to be improved over time simply don't wash. Repairs in the UK weren't free (I believe that's changed since then), so that was the best option before deciding that the company just wasn't worth bothering with anymore.
Though they've always been a harsh company for sure, they did at one point have a more pro-consumer streak to them (primarily driven by the late Satoru Iwata during his tenure, it seems, as the man famously genuinely loved his job and what the company had to offer), and it's been a shame to see that end.
Mohandevir Jul 20, 2023
It reminds me of ubuntu-restricted-extras, back then...
Seriously, Dolphin doesn't need a Steam release. It's quite easy to find with google when you search for emulation and/or Steam Deck and these scripts are taking care of everything. The result feels fully integrated to BPM.
Last edited by Mohandevir on 20 July 2023 at 1:06 pm UTC
CyborgZeta Jul 20, 2023
Quoting: ssj17vegetaGenuine question here : what's the benefit of having an emulator on Steam, apart from the automatic updates ?Cloud saves. Say you own a Steam Deck in addition to your PC: you could be playing a game on Dolphin at home, leave for an extended period of time whilst having your Steam Deck with you, and be able to pick up where you left off.
Emulation is also legally shakier than most people realize and I'd recommend anyone curious as to the why and how of this whole fracas watch this video from an actual lawyer. There's good historical context there that gets omitted or distorted in most discussions about emulation.
Quoting: ssj17vegetaGenuine question here : what's the benefit of having an emulator on Steam, apart from the automatic updates ?As someone else said: Cloudsaves. Especially with the Steam Deck an absolute game changer compared to manually setting up semi-working auto-sync systems like syncthing or mega. Fortunately, all the big emulators are absolutely fantastic in terms of controller support, so Steam Input isn't that big of a deal compared to games not being on Steam. Steam Deck has better compatibility with games from the Steam Store compared to the desktop mode generic linux app store. While dolphin has a good forum and you can find a lot of stuff on reddit, having an official Steam discussion board is always a big win for finding help with issues of software, exchanging opinions, etc.
And yes, visibility and user base is a big perk of Steam that could potentially heavily increase the Dolphin users and emulator users in general.
But the cloud saves are the biggest perks of having any game/emulator on a gaming platform such as Steam.
Mohandevir Jul 20, 2023
Quoting: PenixQuoting: ssj17vegetaGenuine question here : what's the benefit of having an emulator on Steam, apart from the automatic updates ?As someone else said: Cloudsaves. Especially with the Steam Deck an absolute game changer compared to manually setting up semi-working auto-sync systems like syncthing or mega. Fortunately, all the big emulators are absolutely fantastic in terms of controller support, so Steam Input isn't that big of a deal compared to games not being on Steam. Steam Deck has better compatibility with games from the Steam Store compared to the desktop mode generic linux app store. While dolphin has a good forum and you can find a lot of stuff on reddit, having an official Steam discussion board is always a big win for finding help with issues of software, exchanging opinions, etc.
And yes, visibility and user base is a big perk of Steam that could potentially heavily increase the Dolphin users and emulator users in general.
But the cloud saves are the biggest perks of having any game/emulator on a gaming platform such as Steam.
Are you close to the project? Because you seem to know much...
Just an idea and I don't know for sure about it's feasability (more like brainstorming for a solution), but couldn't it be an app that manages all emulators and cloud saves at a "higher level"? Some kind of a custom EmulationStation for Steam BPM/Steam Deck that lets you manage, integrate and save your emulators/roms/saves (all or in part) to the cloud?
Edit: Personnally, I'd be willing to pay for that because having to copy my emulators setups from one rig to another is a pita... Emulators configurations (custom controller configurations) and save games backed up on the cloud, not just for Dolphin, would be a boon!
Last edited by Mohandevir on 20 July 2023 at 3:26 pm UTC
Quoting: GuestIt's ok, the disgruntlement towards Nintendo will keep risingYes, I'm sure there are many who are, if not actually disgruntled yet, certainly far from being gruntled.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 20 July 2023 at 4:15 pm UTC
Quoting: BTREI'll forever be bemused by the special hatred Nintendo seems to attract from corners of the internet; they simply act like any other corporation; corporations are not your friend and are businesses first—including Valve who notified Nintendo about Dolphin on Steam and set the ball rolling.The impression I get is that people don't see Nintendo like a normal soulless corporation; rather, they feel it has a soul and that soul is hostile. There's a widespread perception that Nintendo make special efforts to be anti-consumer even when it certainly looks as if those efforts are actually harming their business, or at least require failing to take steps that would help their business. So there's a feeling that while for most companies it's nothing personal, just business, Nintendo has an active bias towards actually hating their customers. It's like those stores that are so paranoid about shoplifters that they will have people following you around the whole time you're there and so you get the hell out without buying anything and tell your friends what jerks they are.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 20 July 2023 at 4:14 pm UTC
Mountain Man Jul 20, 2023
I don't accept that. Sure, they may have the legal right to do the things they do, but I also have the right to hate and dis-promote them.
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