Almost two months ago, the team behind the Dolphin Emulator announced that they had put their planned Steam release on hold indefinitely following a cease and desist order from Nintendo, but did not cancel their plans outright, instead promising to review their options and come back with a more detailed response in the future. In a new blog post today, the Dolphin team explained what happened in more detail and what this means for the future of Dolphin.

The blog post begins by giving a more detailed account of what happened back in May. Valve's legal department initiated contact with Nintendo to inform them of Dolphin's upcoming release on Steam; in response, Nintendo of America requested Valve block the release, citing the anti-circumvention provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Valve then told the Dolphin team they needed Nintendo's approval before they would allow the emulator to release on Steam. The Dolphin team believes, given Nintendo's long history of fighting emulation, that this will be impossible and have officially cancelled all plans to release Dolphin on Steam.

Much of the conversation surrounding Dolphin's removal from Steam revolved around the Wii Common Key. This is what the Wii uses to decrypt its games, and has been publicly available online (and in Dolphin's code) for more than 15 years. However, Nintendo cited the use of "proprietary cryptographic keys" in its letter to Valve, claiming that because the "Dolphin emulator operates by incorporating these cryptographic keys without Nintendo’s authorization" it constitutes a violation of the anti-circumvention provisions in the DMCA.

This section of the DMCA states that "no person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title" and also prohibits the trafficking of any technology that "is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." In this case, Nintendo believes that the encryption on Wii games counts as a technological measure to control access to a copyrighted work, and that Dolphin's primary purpose is to circumvent those measures through decryption.

However, the Dolphin team is confident that this will not affect Dolphin in any way going forward. They argue that Dolphin's primary purpose is to "recreate the GameCube and Wii hardware as software, and to provide the means for a user to interact with this emulated environment" and that only a very small portion of their code relates to circumvention. GameCube games have no encryption on them, and Dolphin is also used to develop game mods or homebrew games.

They also believe they are covered by the reverse-engineering exemptions laid out in the same anti-circumvention provisions. The reverse engineering exemption states that it is okay to circumvent these control measures to enable "interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs."

"Dolphin is an independently created computer program that is circumventing Wii disc encryption for interoperability with Wii software," reads Dolphin's blog post. "According to this exemption, this does not constitute infringement under 17 U.S.C. § 1201."

As such, the Dolphin team will not remove the Wii Common Key from future releases, and firmly believe Dolphin is not in any legal danger. They will continue to develop and improve Dolphin, and even plan to implement some features intended for the Steam version; namely, a Big Picture GUI mode that is fully usable with a controller.

 

[Deleted member 194275]

Nintndo alwyas ruining everything.

Thats why I don't get the whole "Reeee Nintendo bad!" They literally have not done anything against Dolphin more than ask Valve not to add it to Steam.

They could take Dolphin to court and possibly win it all. They could throw lawyers to lawyers to the Dolphin team couldn't compete with lawyers about it and get a default win.

Usually nintendo is to blame. Not this time. This time Steam reached out them and asked about this software.

"hey, want us to remove", nintendo just said yes, because why they would say something else.

Usually nintendo do not take action against emulators, the go after roms, warez, mods and fan projects most times.

 

[PacBunnyXV07]

No surprises here, but getting tired of this "you can't do jackshit with my things" on Nintendo's part. Is not like they have been giving an incredible service with the Switch. Don't get me wrong, I love the switch and the GB, GBA, NES, SNES, 64 emulators, I am an old school guy, but heck, I feel like ever since this new president took over, things feels totally stale and simplistic. If they were giving at least Gamecube games or something like that, or even a decent ammount of N64 games every month, then okay but truth is, they toss us scraps from their glory and don't let anyone else do anything about it. It sucks. But I am happy with my hacked switch. They have always been pretty strange and random, but I insist, since this president, things just staled pretty badly, at least in my opinion.

ok hypocrite

 

[nWo]

ok hypocrite

What the hell dude

 

[Purple_Shyguy]

DUH

 

[diggeloid]

That Nintendo hasn't gone after Dolphin in the past for this makes me think that they realize they would lose. I'm not a lawyer, but that reverse engineering exception seems like it applies. That makes this even more shitty (although expected) from them because they're claiming to Valve a thing that they know wouldn't hold up in court in order to block it from going on Steam, since they know neither the Dolphin team nor Valve are going to take legal action.

Luckily, it doesn't seem like it matters at all. Even if Dolphin was available on Steam, I think if you didn't already possess the computer skills to install it manually, you wouldn't be able to figure out how to use it.

 

[Ligeia]

How did they think for one second Nintendo would ever be okay with this ? I really don't understand.

 

[Missterobe]

Unfortunate but understandable and it's not a big deal since we can easily access it. Some of the steam client features like cloud saves would have been cool but oh well..

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Good bye cloud saves, good bye steam remote play co-op.

 

[a_username_that_isnt_cool]

Me who doesn't have a steam deck: So what?

 

[Xzi]

Blaming Nintendo is the current trend and all, but it's honestly Valve that started the talk with them about Dolphin on Steam. If Nintendo was left alone, Dolphin probably would have been on Steam just fine, like Retroarch currently is.

No chance Nintendo would've left them alone. Valve reached out ahead of time to protect the developers of Dolphin from what could've been much more damaging legal action.

So yeah, they still deserve more than their fair share of the blame, there's zero reason to be concerned about an emulator for a dead system they haven't seen profits from in nearly a decade. For whatever reason, Nintendo believes it's far easier to type "Dolphin" into Steam's search bar than into Google's.

 

[Jayro]

What a bunch of soft losers. I bet the devs are also "yes men" to their dominant wives at home. Wonder if they'll ever grow a backbone, because this sucks.

 

[relauby]

If it's because of the common key, wouldn't it be better to not include it and ask the user to load it, exactly the way CEMU does it?

They say near the end of the blog post that they don't think not including the common key would actually change anything. Even if they made the user provide the key, Dolphin would still provide the infrastructure to use the key to decrypt the ROMs. So, the way they see it, Nintendo could make just as strong a claim that they're enabling circumvention.

I have no idea if that really holds up, but I respect that they're sticking to their guns and continuing to include it, especially seeing as they're basically the only emulator (as far as I know) to include something like that.

What a bunch of soft losers. I bet the devs are also "yes men" to their dominant wives at home. Wonder if they'll ever grow a backbone, because this sucks.

What are they supposed to do? Putting all legality issues aside, if Valve doesn't want something on their storefront, they're under no obligation to put it up there.

 

[K3Nv2]

Thats why I don't get the whole "Reeee Nintendo bad!" They literally have not done anything against Dolphin more than ask Valve not to add it to Steam.

They could take Dolphin to court and possibly win it all. They could throw lawyers to lawyers to the Dolphin team couldn't compete with lawyers about it and get a default win.

Regardless with Steam you can still add .exe and launch it from big picture mode if you really want to. As well as SteamDeck they have their own custom AppImage. If running from Linux I'm sure it's the same process. No love lost no love gained. Theirs work arounds for everything. As Valve is a billion dollar company I fully see the legal side of it.

 

[SMNFXCN]

instead of complaining, EmuDeck is right there, it's even there in the discover store. and Dolphin is still getting the Big Picture mode. which most emulators should have since the rise of handheld PCs

 

[NyaakoXD]

No chance Nintendo would've left them alone. Valve reached out ahead of time to protect the developers of Dolphin from what could've been much more damaging legal action.

I sincerely doubt it was to protect the Dolphin devs. lol

So yeah, they still deserve more than their fair share of the blame, there's zero reason to be concerned about an emulator for a dead system they haven't seen profits from in nearly a decade. For whatever reason, Nintendo believes it's far easier to type "Dolphin" into Steam's search bar than into Google's.

Not saying Nintendo shouldn't be blamed, but that Valve definitely played a much bigger role in not letting Dolphin be on Steam. So, imo, the focus should sort of be more on Valve than Nintendo since they "poked the beehive" so to speak.

Again, there's also Retroarch and it hasn't suffered any similar issues and they still have Snes9x and Mupen64 cores available to download on Steam. To which it's very likely Valve didn't contact Nintendo about those around the time they were made available.

But that's just my guess on that front.

 

[Xzi]

I sincerely doubt it was to protect the Dolphin devs. lol

It absolutely was, Valve had no skin in the game themselves, no legal liability in this situation. Nintendo would've served the Dolphin devs directly with a lawsuit if they had been allowed on Steam.

Again, there's also Retroarch and it hasn't suffered any similar issues and they still have Snes9x and Mupen64 cores available to download on Steam. To which it's very likely Valve didn't contact Nintendo about those around the time they were made available.

Dolphin has some Nintendo code built-in, the others you listed do not. Ultimately though I think Nintendo's goal is simply to avoid giving emulators more exposure on the most popular gaming storefronts.

 

[NyaakoXD]

It absolutely was, Valve had no skin in the game themselves, no legal liability in this situation. Nintendo would've served the Dolphin devs directly with a lawsuit if they had been allowed on Steam.

Nah, I still doubt they did it for the Dolphin devs. Why would they actually care for them? Especially considering how many weird decisions Valve/Steam has made. Which is why I find it hard to believe Valve did it with good intentions for Dolphin and not for themselves.

Dolphin has some Nintendo code built-in, the others you listed do not.

Except the code, aka: the "Common key" doesn't actually matter. If Nintendo started copyrighting a bunch of numbers and letters, there would be a much bigger issue at large that extends more than gaming/emulation itself.

The extraction of the Wii Common Key did not elicit any kind of legal response from anyone. It was freely shared everywhere, and eventually made its way into Dolphin's codebase more than 15 years ago (committed by a Team Twiizers member no less).

These keys have been publicly available for years and no one has really cared. US law regarding this has not changed, yet a lot of armchair lawyers have come out talking about how foolish we were to ship the Wii Common Key.

Ultimately though I think Nintendo's goal is simply to avoid giving emulators more exposure on the most popular gaming storefronts.

Well, I guess Retroarch Nintendo emulator cores are up next, by that logic. After all, they have NSO for SNES, N64, and GBA games. Should go after those cores on Steam to stop more exposure.

 

[Xzi]

Nah, I still doubt they did it for the Dolphin devs. Why would they actually care for them?

It was mutually beneficial for Valve to play arbiter here, as they have a preexisting relationship with Nintendo and much more open lines of communication. One would have to assume any communication sent directly from Nintendo to Dolphin could only be a bad thing.

Additionally, Valve doesn't want to list an app on Steam just to have to pull its listing a couple weeks later. That's not good for their image, either.

Except the code, aka: the "Common key" doesn't actually matter. If Nintendo started copyrighting a bunch of numbers and letters, there would be a much bigger issue at large that extends more than gaming/emulation itself.

Oh I've definitely argued the same, Nintendo abuses the copyright system to an extent that shouldn't be possible, but it's also partly by design, unfortunately.

Well, I guess Retroarch Nintendo emulator cores are up next, by that logic. After all, they have NSO for SNES, N64, and GBA games. Should go after those cores on Steam to stop more exposure.

They would if they could.

 

[NyaakoXD]

It was mutually beneficial for Valve to play arbiter here, as they have a preexisting relationship with Nintendo and much more open lines of communication. One would have to assume any communication sent directly from Nintendo to Dolphin could only be a bad thing.

Nah, it just seems like Valve didn't want to be in trouble rather than be an arbiter. They would be the ones hosting the emulator, after all, if they approve it.

Oh I've definitely argued the same, Nintendo abuses the copyright system to an extent that shouldn't be possible, but it's also partly by design, unfortunately.

I mean, I get that, but it's just hypocritical of Valve at the end of the day and tell Dolphin devs to get permission from Nintendo while Retroarch has Nintendo emulator cores on Steam and most definitely never got permission. Dolphin devs don't seem worried about any sort of lawsuit or copyright. If Nintendo abused the system, they would have gone after the other emulators by now making all the excuses they want, but they can't because emulation and such is in such a grey area that no one wants to get into the legality of it all.

They would if they could.

They likely can whenever they want, but likely don't really care unless it gets into their attention, like Steam telling them. Honestly, again, I feel that it's more likely because Steam is trying to have a decent relationship with Nintendo and releasing the Portal games on Switch is them trying to get on Ninty's good side.

Either way, at the end of the day, who actually really knows what's going on behind the scenes. It could be different people being involved for different things at different times and it just so happens Dolphin got bad timing and unlucky while Retroarch got away with it on Steam since 2019.

 

[JadeKitsune]

Thats a weird way to say that Nintendo is wrong for protecting their property.

Oh, the property that they literally do not currently sell or otherwise make available in any form anywhere? That property? The property they're sitting on and hoarding like a bunch of dragons?

Either way, I'm not arsed about Dolphin not coming to Steam, but pretending Nintendo is the good guy here is pure idiocy. They're not "protecting property" when there's literally no other reasonable way to obtain 95+% of these titles today other than paying jacked-up secondhand prices.