Nintendo has blocked the Steam release of Wii emulator Dolphin
Dolphin’s Steam page has been deleted and the release is “indefinitely postponed”
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On Friday (May 26) the creators of the Dolphin emulator, which allows users to play GameCube and Wii games,announced that the planned Steam releasefor the emulator is now indefinitely postponed.
In the statement, it’s claimed that Nintendo filed a DMCA takedown notice withSteamowner Valve against Dolphin’s page on the PC gaming storefront, and that page has now been removed.
The statement says: “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.”
Emulation sits in a legally grey area that is far outside of my media law education, but in this case emulation enthusiasts claim that it’s the inclusion of the Wii Common Code in Dolphin’s source code that could be the reason behind the takedown.
Tweets from user @LuigiBlood (viaVGC) quote the DMCA itself which mentions the inclusion of “cryptographic keys without Nintendo’s authorization.” This is pointed to as the reason behind the takedown.
Quoting the DMCA: “the Dolphin emulator operates by incorporating these cryptographic keys without Nintendo’s authorization and decrypting the ROMs at or immediately before runtime.”…this is objectively true. I just checked, the Wii Common Key is in the emulator source code.May 27, 2023
So, what’s next? The Dolphin team now has two weeks to file a counter-notice with Valve if they believe the emulator doesn’t violate the DMCA. Then, Nintendo gets two weeks to decide if they want to sue or not, and if it declines to do so, Dolphin could be re-added to Steam.
I can’t claim any expertise in how this could play out legally, but it could have a wide-ranging impact for other emulation and game preservation efforts. Other emulators still exist on the Steam storefront, including RetroArch.
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TRG has reached out to Valve for comment, and will update this story if they reply.
Jake Tucker is the editor in chief of TechRadar Gaming and has worked at sites like NME, MCV, Trusted Reviews and many more. He collects vinyl, likes first-person shooters and turn-based tactics titles, but hates writing bios. Jake currently lives in London, and is bouncing around the city trying to eat at all of the nice restaurants.
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