Dolphin Emulator Steam Release ‘Indefinitely Postponed’ After Cease and Desist From Nintendo

Wii and GameCube emulator Dolphin have “indefinitely postponed” their Steam release after the team received a cease and desist order from Nintendo.

The Dolphin Emulator project team has shared this update in the following format: blog, It said it was notified by Valve that Nintendo had issued a “stop order citing the DMCA against Dolphin’s Steam page.”

“It is with great regret that we have to announce that the release of Dolphin on Steam has been postponed indefinitely,” the Dolphin Emulator Project wrote. “We have been notified by Valve that Nintendo has issued a DMCA suspension order against Dolphin’s Steam page and has removed Dolphin from Steam until the issue is resolved. We are currently investigating options. and we will have a more detailed response.” We kindly ask for your patience in the near future. “

according to reports PC gamer, The team launched Dolphin’s Steam page on March 28th and received a legal notice from Nintendo addressed to Valve’s legal department on May 26th.

“The Dolphin Emulator violates Nintendo’s intellectual property rights, including, without limitation, rights under the Circumvention and Anti-Trafficking Provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), 17 USC § 1201, and you We hereby inform you of your obligation to remove the offer of the Dolphin Emulator from the Steam store,” the document states.

For a little more background, Dolphin’s former treasurer Pierre Bourdon said: Mastodon To explain our interpretation of the situation in more detail and explain why this is not a typical DMCA takedown notice.

“The DMCA is a broad law that includes a process for copyright owners to ask publishers to remove their data,” Bourdon said. “This is defined in Section 512(c) of the Copyright Act and involves several requirements from the claimant side (here Nintendo) and the publisher side (here Valve) liability. , which also includes the rights of the accused entity (here, the Stichting Dolphin Emulator) to counter the claim, allowing the publisher to restore the content until the complainant files a lawsuit.”

According to Bourdon, none of this process was followed, and this is a “standard legal removal/ [cease and desist] Rather than issuing a notice that Dolphin infringed copyright, it was rather that they violated the DMCA anti-circumvention provision.

If this is actually true, this means that Dolphin itself is technically not party to this issue and that Valve simply has the right to remove this at Nintendo’s request. This also means that there is no counterclaim procedure.

So while this could mean that Dolphin isn’t very likely to make it to Steam, it also shows that Dolphin itself “has no particular risks or responsibilities.”

However, legal issues could always go either way, especially since the emulator distributes the Wii AES-128 common key “used to encrypt Wii game discs”, making it difficult for Nintendo to use Dolphin. may sue.

Unfortunately, there are many unknowns on this subject. But one thing is clear: Dolphin’s future on Steam is highly questionable. At this time, Dolphin has not received any notice from Nintendo or where else the emulator is hosted.

For more information, see Phil Spencer’s comments about supporting legal video game emulation and how Valve accidentally connected a Nintendo Switch emulator to a Steam Deck promotion.

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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @ Adam Bankhurst and further Twitching.