Dolphin Emulator, an open-source emulator for GameCube and Wii, was expected to arrive on Steam launching a Steam Page on March 28th only to be met with a DMCA Takedown from Nintendo.
Dolphin Emulator Hit With DMCA Takedown
The news surrounding this DMCA notice has been shared by pcgamer who states that the DMCA notice was addressed to Valve dated May 26th 2023. The notice makes the claim that Dolphin emulator violates Nintendo’s intellectual property rights and requires Valve to remove the emulator from Steam. Dolphin Emulator is claimed on the basis that it “operates by incorporating cryptographic keys without Nintendo’s authorization and decrypting the ROMs at or immediately before runtime”. This takedown was filed through Valve and the Dolphin team has not been contacted by Nintendo and users are still able to download the emulator from the Github page. Yesterday the development team released a statement confirming that the Steam version of Dolphin is postponed indefinitely.
Everyone Hates Nintendo
After having a read of some user opinions it seems as though Nintendo aren’t actually trying to get rid of Dolphin as they don’t actually have any legal grounds to do so. In actuality, Nintendo likely just does not want an emulator on a major storefront such as Steam, if they could Nintendo would’ve had it taken down long ago from its GitHub page. All in all it doesn’t matter how many lawsuits Nintendo send, if they don’t provide any way to play old games easily then people are going to use emulators and even piracy because it is the only way because Wii and Gamecube consoles don’t last forever.
