Dolphin Emulator on Steam

3 years ago by Stefen Auris to c/tech

I'm sure you've already heard that Nintendo has blocked Dolphin Emulator on Steam, allegedly because of the DMCA, but as it turns out, this is not the whole story. According to The Verge, which was provided by the Dolphin development team, Valve helped Nintendo draw attention to the Wii and GameCube emulator on Steam and unilaterally blocked it without even giving Dolphin developers a chance to defend themselves.

The plot continues to thicken over this. I don't believe emulation should be considered illegal. The only illegal part is how you get the ROMs. Another friend mentioned to me the part that burns him is that Nintendo has been sitting on GameCube and hasn't done anything with it since the Wii Virtual Console!

crashdoom 2 points 3 years ago

I can unfortunately understand why Valve would tip off Nintendo, to avoid being directly liable because it’s not the standard DMCA provision.

But, at this point, emulation, where you legally have the game and console, shouldn’t be illegal and they shouldn’t be preventing it.

As for the decryption keys, rock and hard place. Either that needs to not be illegal, or it’s impossible to emulate a game legally. Since emulation isn’t illegal, the former shouldn’t be either.

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noplexa 1 point 3 years ago

DRM was a mistake, without it there would be no reason for a decryption key. The obvious solution is to make the user supply keys or BIOS from their own console, I think that's what yuzu does, for example.

Then of course, you run into the issue of having to install homebrew on the console to get those files...

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awooo 1 point 3 years ago

At this point, I'm happy to admit I ethically sourced a recent Nintendo game meant for a certain portable console, just out of pure spite love, even though I'm not really that into it!

They're doing great things to promote their brand for sure!

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GandhiTheDerg 1 point 3 years ago

Nintendo should just stop enforcing such insane regulations for games they don't produce any copies of anymore. Nobody is loosing a profit from emulating the 12 year old year game, except for the random amazon seller. same goes from the decryption keys. It's just deliberate trolling at this point

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stefenauris 1 point 3 years ago

if I recall correctly, some of this translates from Japanese intellectual property law, which states that if companies don't enforce their IP they lose their right to it. It explains why Nintendo is so often heavy handed with their legal enforcement. However it's obvious there is still a market for these old games and I don't understand why they dont fulfill this need.

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