Contents
Nintendo wants to avoid emulation of Wii and GameCube games being too simple on the Steam Deck.
Nintendo goes to war against emulation! The Japanese firm seems determined to reduce the party and make the handling as difficult as possible for players who would like to hack its games.
DMCA requests galore
Earlier this month, the Switch game The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom leaked on the internet about ten days before its official release. Some therefore took the opportunity to run it on an emulator and enjoy it in 4K on PC, in an even better version than the original.
This leak has apparently angered Nintendo, which has launched a series of DMCA requests against certain Switch emulators available on GitHub in particular. But, they are not the only ones to have received a complaint from Nintendo’s legal department.
The Slim Back Emulator
On the official website of the Dolphin emulator, allowing you to run Wii and GameCube games, we learn that the Steam page of the tool has been removed by Valve in response to a DMCA request from Nintendo. The project is thereforepostponed indefinitelyand the team behind the emulator investigates possible options.
It is of course possible to appeal, especially since emulation is not illegal in itself, under certain conditions. To stay in this gray area, however, emulators must avoid using elements under proprietary license and it would appear that Dolphin Emulator specifically integrates Nintendo’s cryptographic keys to interpret the games.
If this is really the case, it will be difficult to appeal this decision.
While Dolphin’s Steam page is no longer functional, the emulator can still be downloaded from the official website or its GitHub page. It would therefore seem that Nintendo wants above all to prevent the project from having a storefront on the largest platform for downloading PC games.
Moreover, the fact that the emulator is available on Steam greatly simplifies its installation on a platform equipped with SteamOS… like the Steam Deck for example. Of course, installation is still possible on this portable console, but then it becomes more complex and much less visible.
Valve gets a red shell
Steam says goodbye to Dolphin
Fans of the Japanese manufacturer who hoped to be able to replay GameCube and Wii games thanks to the availability of the Dolphin emulator on Steam are brooding. On May 27, the emulator developers announced that the release of Dolphin on Steam had been “postponed indefinitely“after Nintendo issued”a cease and desist order, citing the DMCA (for Digital Millennium Copyright Act) against Dolphin’s Steam page”. Gamesradar, citing an article by PC Gamer, clarifies that according to attorney Kellen Voyer of Voyer Law, an expert in intellectual property issues, this DMCA takedown notice means that if Dolphin were published on Steam, it would, according to Nintendo, violate the DMCA.
The former developer of the emulator, the French Pierre Bourdon (aka Delroth), specifies that Valve contacted Nintendo to find out if it was possible to allow the download of Dolphin on Steam. Nintendo obviously refused, believing that the software “ violated the DMCA” using“cryptographic keys without Nintendo’s permission”.
On the Internet, players show their anger. “Frankly, Nintendo and the others have to shake their to allow us physical backwards compatibility and/or to have ports of all the games released on their consoles on their latest without exception or they leave Dolphin and the others alone” we read here. “They are within their rights but they could then also offer emulators so that we can replay the games of our childhood.” we read there.
room for interpretation
As usual, the Japanese manufacturer attacks sites that distribute emulators/roms rather than the software itself. As Gamesradar clarifies, Nintendo never took action against Dolphin. In addition, and so far, Mario’s dad has not attacked the Switch emulator, which nevertheless allowed some to play Tears of the Kingdom before the game was officially released in stores. There’s a good reason for that. According to experts, the law surrounding copyright in this case can be interpreted in different ways. There are few hard and fast rules about what is allowed and what is not. “This case made me see how people misunderstand the ambiguity of US copyright laws” said Delroth.
From the words that are reported, the developer believes that there is a “gray area” in the law that nobody really knows what is legal or not in DMCA bypass for 7th generation consoles. This legal conundrum means that “no one can say for sure if Dolphin is in the right or if Nintendo is in the right” according to the developer. “One of the few things the DMCA specifies is that circumventing copyright protection is prohibited, which is why Nintendo’s letter to Valve specifically cites Dolphin’s use of cryptographic keys.” he adds.
Nintendo puts an end to the dream of millions of players, Steam makes a face…
In the world of gaming, it is sometimes difficult to get the old consoles with the games that rocked our childhood, and therefore there are what are called emulators. Megadrive, NES, Wii… tons of emulators allow us to replay our favorite titles, and lately, we should have see the Dolphin emulator appear on Steambut Nintendo put the kibosh.
Nintendo blocks the Steam version of Dolphin
For those who don’t know, Dolphin allows you to play Nintendo titles, and more particularly those that have appeared on the GameCube and Wii consoles.. However, today, the software or rather his Steam page is no longer available via the Valve platform, and it is indeed on the Dolphin site itself that the creators had to announce the bad news: the release on Steam has been delayed indefinitely following a blockage by Nintendo.
It is with great disappointment that we have to announce that the release of Dolphin on Steam has been indefinitely postponed. Valve notified us that Nintendo has issued a cease and desist order citing the DMCA against Dolphin’s Steam page, and has removed Dolphin from Steam until the matter is resolved. We are currently investigating our options and will have a more detailed response in the near future.
Dolphin (Source)
In general, emulators are not illegal, and players have every right to use them to play certain games. What is illegal, however, is the use of game ROM images which usually contain copyrighted material. But in the case of Dolphin, several users are not really surprised by Nintendo’s decision and they quickly designate the main person concerned as being himself responsible..
Dolphin, solely responsible for this ban?
Unlike other emulators, Dolphin uses a common Wii key, and according to developer and emulation expert Modern Vintage Game, the latter would therefore not be legally protected since this common key means that the software is actively circumventing anti-piracy measures.
Moreover, on Twitter, the user answering the name of LuigiBlood provided more details and therefore affirmed that this famous key is in the source code of the emulator, while Nintendo, in its withdrawal request, clearly stipulated that it was forbidden to use it without the authorization of the firm.
