Dolphin Emulator Abandons Steam Release Plans After Nintendo Legal Threat (arstechnica.com) 16
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A few months ago, the developers behind the Wii/GameCube emulator Dolphin said they were indefinitely postponing a planned Steam release, after Steam-maker Valve received a request from Nintendo to take down the emulator's "coming soon" page. This week, after consulting with a lawyer, the team says it has decided to abandon its Steam distribution plans altogether. "Valve ultimately runs the store and can set any condition they wish for software to appear on it," the team wrote in a blog post on Thursday. "In the end, Valve is the one running the Steam storefront, and they have the right to allow or disallow anything they want on said storefront for any reason."
The Dolphin team also takes pains to note that this decision was not the result of an official DMCA notice sent by Nintendo. Instead, Valve reached out to Nintendo to ask about the planned Dolphin release, at which point a Nintendo lawyer cited the DMCA in asking Valve to take down the page. At that point, the Dolphin team says, Valve "told us that we had to come to an agreement with Nintendo in order to release on Steam... 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." "As for Nintendo, this incident just continues their existing stance towards emulation," the post continues. "We don't think that this incident should change anyone's view of either company."
Despite the disappointing result for the Steam release, the Dolphin team is adamant that "we do not believe that Dolphin is in any legal danger." That's despite the emulator's inclusion of the Wii Common Key, which could run afoul of the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions. The Dolphin Team notes that the Wii Common Key has been freely shared across the Internet since its initial discovery and publication in 2008. And while that key has been in the Dolphin code base since 2009, "no one has really cared," the team writes. [...] With what they believe is a firm legal footing, the team writes that Dolphin development will continue away from Steam, but including a number of UI and quality of life features originally designed for the Steam release. Meanwhile, emulators like RetroArch and the innovative 3dSen continue to be available on Steam, with no immediate sign of a further crackdown from Valve or Nintendo.
The Dolphin team also takes pains to note that this decision was not the result of an official DMCA notice sent by Nintendo. Instead, Valve reached out to Nintendo to ask about the planned Dolphin release, at which point a Nintendo lawyer cited the DMCA in asking Valve to take down the page. At that point, the Dolphin team says, Valve "told us that we had to come to an agreement with Nintendo in order to release on Steam... 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." "As for Nintendo, this incident just continues their existing stance towards emulation," the post continues. "We don't think that this incident should change anyone's view of either company."
Despite the disappointing result for the Steam release, the Dolphin team is adamant that "we do not believe that Dolphin is in any legal danger." That's despite the emulator's inclusion of the Wii Common Key, which could run afoul of the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions. The Dolphin Team notes that the Wii Common Key has been freely shared across the Internet since its initial discovery and publication in 2008. And while that key has been in the Dolphin code base since 2009, "no one has really cared," the team writes. [...] With what they believe is a firm legal footing, the team writes that Dolphin development will continue away from Steam, but including a number of UI and quality of life features originally designed for the Steam release. Meanwhile, emulators like RetroArch and the innovative 3dSen continue to be available on Steam, with no immediate sign of a further crackdown from Valve or Nintendo.
Asking Nintendo for permission (Score:3)
Not so much a legal threat, more like Valve saying "We want to ask Nintendo for Permission first". And of course, Nintendo will never allow permission regardless of whether it's legal or not.
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Except had Dolphin not decided to include the Nintendo keys, the Nintendo lawyer would not have been able to cite the DMCA as a controlling authority. There's a reason when you download advanced emulators(Starting from the Playstation era I believe) from any other website they don't include the encryption keys with the emulator and those must be sourced elsewhere.
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Valve was probably looking for some sort of assurance that there wouldn't be a lawsuit. Even winning a lawsuit can be expensive and tedious.
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Did they look into the case.. Sony vs. Connectix? (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectix_Virtual_Game_Station
Sony was not happy about the first Virtual Playstation emulator either, but the courts ruled in favor of Connectix. In order to kill it, they had to buy it.
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Bleam I think was the first one, and to kill it, Sony sued them and loss until litigation and stalling the company killed it, even though Sony was in the wrong. I wish they could have sued them for the behavior and losses.
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Bleam was not. PSEmu was. However, Bleam was the first to try and improve emulation the same way RealityMan did with UltraHLE, intercepting library calls and implementing them natively instead of emulating them. This is in contrast to Psyche which took the dynamic recompilation approach of translating machine code from ps1 to target platform.
Connectix Virtual Game Station was notable because its emulation was more or less perfect and its running requirements weren't outrageous. It did cost money, though. If
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Purely by coincidence, all future consoles after the PSX used game media that could not be read by PCs (there were a few exceptions I think regarding specific PC disc drive models that could read GameCube or PS2 or whatever but for the most part, nope). I am sure that is just coincidence.
Also that's not really relevant here since Valve was not looking for Dolphin to be legally in the green, but for Nintendo to approve of it, which will never happen.
Why not go after dolphin directly? (Score:2)
Ok so Nintendo says they believe dolphin violates the DMCA. Why then haven't they hit dolphin itself with a takedown notice (or a lawsuit) to get it taken down completely?
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They could do like Sony and fire off endless losing court cases until bankrupting the project but that takes a lot of money down the toilet.
The project is open source and community driven. Pretty hard to bankrupt that and any loss will simply result in Nintendo playing a never ending game of wack-a-mole given the whole source is public.
Besides, if they do actually care then they have bigger fish to fry like the Switch emulators.
The switch emulators (or at least yuzu) don't provide the keys needed to decrypt any official content. Those have to be provided by the end-user dumping the keys from their own Switch. Which is also the reason why Nintendo went after Lockpick (the key dumping tool) awhile back [slashdot.org].
In the end, it's pointless. The
Shocking Development! (Score:2)
Asshole company continues making fat cash off treating its paying customers like criminals at all times.
Not that this is even news anymore, just the way we do business here in The Fascist States of America.
Of the Business.
By the Business.
For the Business.
Murika, fuck yeah.
I Don't Blame Valve (Score:2)
1. Release the emulator with the encryption key and risk getting sued by Nintendo at any point in the future. Such a lawsuit would be extremely expensive and would likely eclipse all profits from the sale of the emulator.
2. Release the emulator without the encryption key. This would require the paying customer to go on a scavenger hunt to obtain the key, possibly from shady sources that may contain malware, and then follow instructions to place that key where the emulator ca