GameCube and Wii emulator Dolphin won’t come to Steam after all - It turns out that if you fuck around long enough, you'll find out.

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Plans for a Steam release of the Dolphin emulator, software that lets users play Nintendo GameCube and Wii games on a PC, have been scrapped, its creators say. Developers backed off a plan announced in March to bring Dolphin to Steam after discussions between Nintendo and Valve put the emulator’s creators in an “impossible” situation: getting approval from Nintendo to release their emulator through Steam.


On Thursday, the creators behind the Dolphin Emulator Project confirmed that their software has been effectively blocked by Valve, and that the Steam store listing for Dolphin has been removed. According to a post from the team behind Dolphin, Valve’s legal department reached out to Nintendo of America after the planned Steam release was announced. Nintendo is said to have requested that Valve block the emulator’s Steam release, citing — but not legally invoking — the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Nintendo’s lawyers argued in a letter to Valve that Dolphin operates by incorporating Nintendo’s “proprietary cryptographic keys” by decrypting the ROMs of GameCube and Wii software, thereby violating the DMCA. Nintendo is referring to the Wii Common Key, a decryption key built into Wii hardware that was extracted more than a decade ago by a separate group — known as Team Twiizers — and incorporated into Dolphin’s code.

The team behind Dolphin argued in their blog post about the emulator’s Steam release that “only an incredibly tiny portion of our code is actually related to circumvention,” and that using the Wii Common Key does not apply to GameCube games. That seems to matter little to Nintendo, which generally frowns on third-party emulation of its consoles and games.
“Valve [...] told us that we had to come to an agreement with Nintendo in order to release on Steam,” the Dolphin team wrote. “Considering the strong legal wording at the start of the document and the citation of DMCA law, we took the letter very seriously.”

Dolphin’s creators say they’re abandoning their efforts to release Dolphin on Steam, but that some of the features developed for that version of the emulator will still be released. Dolphin is already available to download via the project’s website, and is compatible with Android, Linux, Mac, and Windows PCs.

“Valve ultimately runs the store and can set any condition they wish for software to appear on it,” the project’s creators said. “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.”

 

[Absolutego]

Why was this ever a goal on the Dolphin team's part?
In what universe would a major publisher let you release emulation software for a competitor without being sued up the ass?

 

[Computer Guardian]

Why was this ever a goal on the Dolphin team's part?
In what universe would a major publisher let you release emulation software for a competitor without being sued up the ass?

Don't forget that RetroArch (which has a core for Dolphin) is already on Steam, and anyone who would use Dolphin on the Steam Deck will just use EmuDeck (Which also has Dolphin able to be built into it), so it's basically the team being too retarded to see the warning signs, especally when they're using code that wasn't theirs, which already was a red flag, a common theme with every Nintendo legal battle ever.

 

[Vyse Inglebard]

In what universe would a major publisher let you release emulation software for a competitor without being sued up the ass?

the early 80s: http://www.colecovision.dk/atari.htm

 

[Markass the Worst]

Why was this ever a goal on the Dolphin team's part?
In what universe would a major publisher let you release emulation software for a competitor without being sued up the ass?

They also moaned about Byuu's supposed death and sucked his dick to fearmonger about the evil hateful doxxxing and murdering Kiwifarms. I'd say they're not exactly the brightest tool in the shed.

The Dolphin Emulator team also joined in:

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

Don't forget that RetroArch (which has a core for Dolphin) is already on Steam, and anyone who would use Dolphin on the Steam Deck will just use EmuDeck (Which also has Dolphin able to be built into it), so it's basically the team being too retarded to see the warning signs, especally when they're using code that wasn't theirs, which already was a red flag, a common theme with every Nintendo legal battle ever.

RetroArch are filthy shysters. If they're allowed to exist on Steam, then Dolphin absolutely should be allowed to.

I wouldn't be surprised if the scum of RetroArch were behind getting Nintendo to harass Valve about this.

 

[Megaton Punch]

Don't forget that RetroArch (which has a core for Dolphin) is already on Steam, and anyone who would use Dolphin on the Steam Deck will just use EmuDeck (Which also has Dolphin able to be built into it), so it's basically the team being too retarded to see the warning signs, especally when they're using code that wasn't theirs, which already was a red flag, a common theme with every Nintendo legal battle ever.

Also, anyone capable of acquiring a GameCube ISO without also contracting digital gonorrhea is perfectly capable of installing Dolphin in desktop mode and adding it to steam as a non-steam game. All having it on steam does is make it accessible to hyper-casual normies who wouldn't be able to use it anyway.

Trying to put it on steam just doesn't make any sense no matter how you look at it.

RetroArch are filthy shysters. If they're allowed to exist on Steam, then Dolphin absolutely should be allowed to.

RetroArch is on steam, but it's a special version you can't download cores with. It's a workaround that lets them keep it on there without it being against the TOS because without the cores it doesn't actually emulate any consoles.

Of course, you could just download the cores elsewhere and drop them into the steam version and it'll load them just fine. But they don't endorse that. Because it would be immoral, you see.

 

[I Love Beef]

Why was this ever a goal on the Dolphin team's part?
In what universe would a major publisher let you release emulation software for a competitor without being sued up the ass?

For another angle to add: Why on earth is a fucking emulator made public on a video game/computer game distributing platform? Don't they fucking know emulators are meant to be played on the down low? Which also ties into "Do you want to get fucking sued?"

People who sell emulators without respecting the sanctity of not getting the corps involved deserve bullets. To the head. In Minecraft.

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

All I can say is what did they expect to happen? It seems foolish for an emulator to go mainstream. Emulation is at it's best when it's obscure, underground, and out of sight where only the intelligent can find it.

They also moaned about Byuu's supposed death and sucked his dick to fearmonger about the evil hateful doxxxing and murdering Kiwifarms. I'd say they're not exactly the brightest tool in the shed.

Damn it feels like everyone who crosses hairs with KiwiFarms gets cursed.

 

[GradeAGobbleDeeGook]

They also moaned about Byuu's supposed death and sucked his dick to fearmonger about the evil hateful doxxxing and murdering Kiwifarms. I'd say they're not exactly the brightest tool in the shed.

my memory does always serve me but i would imagine this would be true, especially considering its an emulation crew
if that is true, the fuck them, glad theyre getting Nintendo'd, as much as it sucks, Nintendo has had lots of practice on good people

 

[Cuckoman]

... when they're using code that wasn't theirs, ...

Technically there were not using any code. Code is copyrightable.
They were using a large number. Which is technically not copyrightable just like the number 1337 is not copyrightable just like your phone number is not copyrightable.

Still, does Dolphin team want to spend milions of dollars in court to prove that they did nothing wrong? considering the coinflip that many such cases end up being?

But the bigger question, which likely explains the situation.
Why would steam care about what some faggot emulation freeloaders that are probably not going to spend any money in their store thinks?
They probably were basically begging nintendo for a reason to kick these faggot emulation-fags off the platform.

they probably also didn't want to spend money on tech-support people to explain to people that "that rom you downloaded from the warez site not working is not really our problem. stop taking up our resources for your warez shit".

 

[Oilspill Battery]

Stop simping for a company that clearly fucking hates you. I've stopped feeling sorry for nintendrones that keep getting sued and screwed over by nintendo over and over again.

I felt sorry the first time, the second time, the third time, the fourth time, fifth time and the sixth time, etc, but at this point anyone that still tries to do this shit and gets fucked over is clearly asking for it.

Nintendo has spent the past decades making abundantly fucking clear beyond a shadow of a doubt what their policy on this shit to the point where I don't blame it anymore because even the rocks are aware by now, but retards still go "ITS OK MUH NOSTALGIA WILL SHIELD ME FROM A LAWSUIT THIS TIME SURELY".

 

[Flamin Park]

Stop simping for a company that clearly fucking hates you. I've stopped feeling sorry for nintendrones that keep getting sued and screwed over by nintendo over and over again.

I felt sorry the first time, the second time, the third time, the fourth time, fifth time and the sixth time, etc, but at this point anyone that still tries to do this shit and gets fucked over is clearly asking for it.

Nintendo has spent the past decades making abundantly fucking clear beyond a shadow of a doubt what their policy on this shit to the point where I don't blame it anymore because even the rocks are aware by now, but retards still go "ITS OK MUH NOSTALGIA WILL SHIELD ME FROM A LAWSUIT THIS TIME SURELY".

Based and utterly correct

The only thing I have to add is stop equating Nintendo artists and coders with Nintendo management

The slanty eyed pseudo Jews running Nintendo couldn't make a game in an rpgmaker and only want their share price to go up

If you want to support the vision of Nintendo products then pirate everything, release it in formats even normies can understand and use and do it widely

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

I like Nintendo but this is gay.

They also moaned about Byuu's supposed death and sucked his dick to fearmonger about the evil hateful doxxxing and murdering Kiwifarms. I'd say they're not exactly the brightest tool in the shed.

I retract my statement, fuck these faggots.

 

[Vyse Inglebard]

Nintendo has spent the past decades making abundantly fucking clear beyond a shadow of a doubt what their policy on this shit to the point where I don't blame it anymore because even the rocks are aware by now, but retards still go "ITS OK MUH NOSTALGIA WILL SHIELD ME FROM A LAWSUIT THIS TIME SURELY".

 

[MosBodacious]

Why would anyone go to steam to download Dolphin in the first place? This never made any sense.

EDIT: Also, fuck Nintendo. Dogshit company.

 

[Oilspill Battery]

Technically there were not using any code. Code is copyrightable.
They were using a large number. Which is technically not copyrightable just like the number 1337 is not copyrightable just like your phone number is not copyrightable.

What does this mean?

 

[Nitro!]

The Dolphin team were huffing their own farts with this. They've got everything a professional open-source development team has and more: competent engineers, good testers, a professional website, an extensive wiki with community support, and so on.

What they seem to have forgotten between the well-written update posts is they are one step up from running a torrent site. No one owns these discs, dumbass, what makes you think you can roll into Steam next to all the paid content and be OK?

 

[TitchBitties]

I'm sitting here trying to figure out ANY benefit to Dolphin being on Steam and I got nothing. Seems to me like they were gonna split the versions as well making them both worse in the long run when the devs can't juggle 2 different builds. Keep in mind as well that Dolphin already recieved a DMCA directly from Nintendo back in May, this is just kicking the hornet's nest now.

 

[Cuckoman]

What does this mean?

They did not copy any program code. They distributed the encryption key.
An encryption key is basically just a very large number that is then used in a mathematical algorithm to decrypt data..

Just like using your telephone number to call someone, an encryption key is used to decrypt data.