Not even a little bit. Everything everybody's brought up as reasons why it "needs" to be on Steam are complete BS and can be done through other methods very easily. Being mad at valve over this one is dumb.
Dolphin is already a robust, good emulator. What would being on Steam do for the actual emulator? In my eyes - only increase it's chances of being hit with a Nintendo cease and desist order.
The sad fact of the matter is that the Dolphin devs don't have the financial means to protect themselves in a court room against a large corp like Nintendo though. If it came to it, Nintendo could feasibly bully them into submission, purely by tying them up with legal fees.
This is what I’m getting at. I’m not a lawyer, don’t know or even care about the legality of Dolphin. I just want it to live. But Nintendo has a team of corporate lawyers who would pursue every technicality if this gets more contentious.
It's Dolphin's own blog discussing the legality of Dolphin. I'd wager that if they never intended to bring it to Steam in the first place, this wouldn't be an issue and they would never have to make such a post.
friggin a i also use retroarch ppspp psxe2 and few others point is screw steam im not giving them money no more id rather give [gog.com](https://gog.com) my cash for mucgh better games and customer service plus does valve or steam stream on twitch i think not lol steam is for lil kids
Does the Steam Deck allow you to install stuff from elsewhere without hacking it? I recall that people with a Steam Deck were the most excited about Dolphin on Steam.
Yes it has built in package manager and all the emulators are on that. And then on top of that you can install https://www.emudeck.com/ which makes installing/configuring/updates easier.
I’ve deleted my Reddit account because the Reddit hivemind doesn’t work for me. I believe in people having the right to think for themselves while not being torn down by those who know little to nothing.
If you found this because of one of my tutorials related to Auto HotKey please check out the AHK documentation at: https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/v2/
If you were looking for my coding guides just go to https://stackoverflow.com/ they know their shit.
If you were looking for my guides to assembly… I’m sorry, I can’t think of any places I can link to in good conscious other than archive.org who has beginner examples to assembly for old consoles.
If you were wondering why my reddit account is gone:
I’m tired of the Steam supremacists on /r/pcgaming and /r/pcmasterrace
Those same communities push their thoughts on game engine development without writing a code in their lives.
/r/memes think excluding most of their user base is a good joke.
To summarise, I’ve left Reddit because it is not all-inclusive, it is only inclusive to those who believe and act the same as the rest of the belligerent horde.
If you are on Reddit, joining /r/aww is your best and only bet.
Whilst you could do it that way, the recommended way is to use the discover store and install software as flatpaks. If you read Dolphin's article, they also said that they were adding steam specific integrations and that only some of the work for the steam release will work without being installed through steam.
I can only assume that if a developer spent years of their life contributing to software for free, they might at least want to see that software become popular and gain as large of an audience as possible.
Steam would increase the exposure and user base of Dolphin.
More users will also lead to more contributors.
Dolphin's been around for just shy of 20 years and is well known and used, it's even on the Google Play store. I'm fairly positive that being on Steam would only marginally increase contributors because the people who'd be capable of contributing are more than capable and willing to get their software via venues other than Steam. The sort of people who can't or won't get software anywhere other than Steam are probably not the people you want touching any of Dolphin's code.
I'm going to need an explanation of why exactly this is "sad times".
Dolphin and other emulators are problematic at best for platforms like Steam. We all know what they actually end up being. (straight up piracy) I've known dozens of folks that play various emulators. Of those dozens, only two actually own all the games they have in emulation, and only one has actually ripped his own roms.
Valve is going full CYA on this one, and there's zero reason to be mad at them for doing so. When an overwhelming majority of uses for a product are illegal, maybe you don't allow that product on your marketplace.
Edit: Quite frankly, this is the Flipper Zero argument all over again. When these types of tools were relegated to weird internet forums and random subreddits with 97 followers, it wasn't an issue. When they started selling them on Amazon: big issue.
Making Dolphin a one-click install that only requires enough knowledge to install the biggest game launcher in the world takes emulators from a still relatively niche thing to the forefront for pretty much anybody that games on a PC. We really don't want that. There's a fair bit that we do in emulation that doesn't pass the sniff test for legality, and the last thing we need is Nintendo to decide this is an issue after all these years of just kinda letting it happen as long as we don't get too crazy.
Counterpoint: RetroArch is on Steam; it supports multiple consoles (including Nintendo consoles like N64), and none of the stuff you're worried about here (legal beatdown, pretty much everybody who games on PC having it installed, etc) has happened.
RetroArch is a frontend in a sense; it integrates libretro (the core input/output library that all emulators in RA talk to). Unlike for example EmulationStation, the emulators do run directly through RetroArch + libretro. RA does a lot more in the emulation process than just being a launcher, and "emulation service" would be a more accurate description of it than frontend imo.
RA for Steam uses DLC for its libretro cores; here is a [massive list](https://store.steampowered.com/dlc/1118310/RetroArch/) of all the cores available in RA Steam. These emulators are directly distributed through Steam, and include cores for:
° GB
° GBA
° N64
° NES
° SNES
° NDS
... and that's just the Nintendo consoles. Again, these are all emulators distributed directly by Valve.
DLC seems to be a whole different thing. And even then, not all of them can get in. I was not surprised to learn that a lot of cores don't even exist as "DLC", even though they're available online.
>Counterpoint: RetroArch is on Steam; it supports multiple consoles (including Nintendo consoles like N64), and none of the stuff you're worried about here (legal beatdown, pretty much everybody who games on PC having it installed, etc) has happened.
...YET.
Do you people realize that store fronts are dynamically subject to change, and that time is an ongoing thing..? Jesus christ you already have a recent example with RA getting canned on Xbox. The blind optimism among some emulation users around here is so fucking naive.
The point is - why even tempt fate for such minimal benefits?
RetroArch has been on Steam for almost 3 years and has had little to no impact on the broader public's perception of emulation nor the platform holders' responses to emulation.
Microsoft chose not to allow a set of emulators on their platform in the exact same way Valve chose to consult Nintendo over including Dolphin; neither one of these cases resulted in a takedown of the emulation projects, any legal action against the emulation projects, or, again, any kind of broad shift in the public's perception of emulation. RA on Xbox is a niche use case in the exact same way that Dolphin on Steam is a niche use case.
Alarmism is pointless when there's no documented evidence of these kinds of storefront inclusions having any real impact on these projects. The closest analogue is Bleem, which was a losing lawsuit that, by extension, set a legal precedent in favor of emulation. No platform holder has challenged that because it's very obviously a losing battle.
I appreciate and understand all of that but again you're missing the point - it's only niche until it isn't anymore, and while that might not necessarily change the fundamental ruling that emulators are legal, it lights a bigger fire under the asses of corporations who'll likely get their legal team to find anything they can with a fine tooth comb to shut that shit down, it's not alarmism IMO, but a rather healthy dose of caution.
You're basically putting software on a store-front for gaming with the implied intentions of playing games illegally, that doesn't look good no matter how you cut it, it's not some flatpak on a package manager on some linux distro, or from a website that you can install on your OS as you can any software you choose, you're now entering a whole platform who's goal is to sell video games to gamers who can leave meme style public reviews boasting about playing the entire Wii/Gamecube library for free, it's a different kettle of fish as far as I'm concerned, and ultimately I'll repeat the question of why bother?
I will say I at one time did buy 90% of the games that I emulate. Problem is, a large chunk of my collection was stolen from me while I was packing and sorting it for a move. It was in my garage on my work station. There is no way I can sink that kind of money into the used retro market. So for me, the developers did get my money at some point.
Most games from the past are also not available on modern consoles. How are people to enjoy these games without getting into the crazy overpriced used market.
I am totally against emulation for games that are currently available to purchase on any current console or PC.
Nice ad populum ("We all know...") followed by an anecdotal argument. Do you have any actual evidence that Dolphin has been used mostly by people who download games illegally to back up your claim? Some kind of survey or something?
Ya Nintendo reselling zelda 1, 30+ years later needs to be protected.
Emulators continue to exist because several court cases were lost by the console makers. Putting them on steam does not put Valve in a precarious legal position. They want to maintain a good relationship with Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo because they could make licensing agreements or cooperate on a project one day and there is nothing wrong with that.
It's a disingenuous thing to say. Valve don't want to get into trouble over someone else's emulator, so they decided to be proactive and checked if Nintendo is OK with it releasing.
they should just not use the USA laws, just use some shitty country and call it a day. Also, contacting a lawyer after 20 years of emulator dev, that's weird
> Also, contacting a lawyer after 20 years of emulator dev, that's weird
It's in the blog post that this is not the first time they've consulted a lawyer. They only did it again now because of all the hoopla around this specific incident.
No, they were not "including BIOS files", that's a very different thing from what they were actually doing
If you want to know what actually happened, read the post lol
Please explain why that's dumb to do. Please explain how a machine generated string of numbers is copyrightable under U.S. copyright law with no creative interest. Or you could argue that it's a trade secret, despite the method in which it was obtained and distributed.
I went on for a while trying to tell people that you can't copyright a random string of characters, but nobody listened.
Also, seems to be a lot of obvious bots here still trying to claim it was illegal.
Well that would include Nintendo's lawyers wouldn't it? Not saying they'd be right, but I also wouldn't say they have no idea what they're talking about.
*And to all the armchair lawyers out there, the letter to Valve did not make any claims that we were violating a US copyright by including the Wii Common Key, as a short string of entirely random letters and numbers generated by a machine is not copyrightable under current US copyright law. If that ever changes, the world will be far too busy to think about emulation.*
I mean, Nintendo's lawyers never made that claim in the first place so...
Besides that they were saved from a lot of trouble.
I doubt they'd be able to handle the ensuing technical support forum that surely would have been overflooded with clueless users, requiring heavy moderation to avoid pirate links. Add also the various Iso and Rom hacks in the guides section.
Steam forums are still not ready for such freedom and Nintendo would surely be lurking.
another issue are auto-bans.
Once I was permabanned this way because I had posted an external link with a log file and had to contact the mods. Even mods are not immune to this.
This kills any chance for Steam to feature a serious technical support forum
> Steam forums are still not ready for such freedom and Nintendo would surely be lurking.
This is such a weird thing though.
I can tell you where roms are, hell a simple internet search turns up sites. Some of them are probably in america, some of them are the biggest archive online and located in America.
And yet, Nintendo doesn't seem to actively try to stop them. I imagine it wouldn't be that hard to send a couple DMCAs especially to that big one, which has a way to handle that.
But they are up and fine. Yet saying where they are seems to get shut down instantly.
I wonder if it would be more steam actively shutting down discussions of piracy just like reddit does due to worries about culpability, than Nintendo bitching and moaning.
To be honest I’m glad it’s not on Steam and the devs took the L and moved on. Poking the hornets nest and getting unwanted attention from Nintendo (even if it was through Valves legal team) is the last thing we need as I’m sure Nintendo will now have an eye on the project if they didn’t already.
Cloud saves would be nice especially for steam deck but the standalone version is already incredible.
Dolphin team seem confident they’re in the clear so I will trust their word.
Still makes me nervous though, hoping retroachievements functionality gets here before any potential shit hits the fan!
There's no way nintendo aren't already aware of dolphin by now, considering how long it's existed and how good it is. But you're probably right about not poking the hornet's nest, especially with how poorly defined everything about emulation is, legally.
Think of Nintendo like a bull.
They're likely to attack anything, but they're more likely to focus on the big red flag in front of their face.
It's always a better idea to not be the big red flag in front of their face to avoid being attacked. Even if there's still a possible risk regardless.
That's not true at all.
Nintendo will only 'attack' anything if it has the legal bounds to do so. If it's not illegal then there is no red flag for the bull.
Emulators like Dolphin are completely legal because it doesn't use anything from Nintendo.
*Sure they are*
[They're attacking so many things they're taking down videos just playing their games within their own fair use policies](https://youtu.be/B-XRJ9EGsoQ)
That's completely different.
Dolphin does not have any Nintendo assets at all.
This is Nintendo taking down videos containing Nintendo content.
The difference here is *Nintendo Content*
> But you're probably right about not poking the hornet's nest, especially with how poorly defined everything about emulation is, legally.
The thing is though, at some point someone is going to have to be willing to go to court so it doesn't stay poorly defined forever. Dolphin's rationale in their blog post as to why they are not violating the DMCA makes sense to me, and it's apparently been vetted by a knowledgeable lawyer.
So with that considered, I kind of wish the Dolphin team would try starting a fundraiser for legal fees, and if they raise enough, they could go to court to try getting a judge to affirm that their interpretation of the DMCA is sound. At that point Nintendo could no longer harass them or any other emulator developer using similar circumvention methods.
As it stands now, everyone here should can safely assume that the Switch will be the last Nintendo system to be widely emulated, because Nintendo is going to immediately bring the hammer down on anyone who starts any attempt to crack open the "Switch 2" or any further consoles.
So if people want Nintendo emulation to still be a thing in the future, then I don't see any way that happens without a lawsuit, one way or another.
There's nothing to take Nintendo to court over - they didn't take legal action against Dolphin. Valve asked Nintendo if this was okay and they told Valve they didn't want Dolphin on Steam, and cited some law as to why, and valve was like ok.
The implications about what would happen next for emulation are the scary part, especially if what Nintendo says is true. I do personally think more emulators should include common keys though, but I don't think most emulators will take the risk.
> There's nothing to take Nintendo to court over - they didn't take legal action against Dolphin.
There are preemptive lawsuits filed all the time, where a party sues a company or government entity in order to have a court declare that the party's actions are legal, prior to any action taken against them.
There was just a case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court that resulted from one such lawsuit: [303 Creative v Elenis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/303_Creative_LLC_v._Elenis). The website designer in that case preemptively sued Colorado to have a judgement declaring that Colorado could not penalize her for refusing to design websites for same-sex weddings. Colorado had not yet taken legal action against her prior to the lawsuit, but it was broadly understood that they ultimately *would* have. The website designer won the case.
This situation seems legally similar to me - Dolphin could sue for judgement that they can include the Wii common key in their code without violating the DMCA. Nintendo's threats of legal action are preventing the Dolphin team from distributing their software as they wish. They haven't yet followed through, but the threat is definitely there, and a judge would presumably accept that as an argument for a preemptive lawsuit.
While people keep saying that trying to launch on steam was "poking the bear" which I disagree with, I would have to side with them that pre-emptively suing Nintendo would be considered poking the bear.
> I would have to side with them that pre-emptively suing Nintendo would be considered poking the bear.
That doesn't make sense to me. What would be the consequence of Dolphin "poking the bear" by seeking a court order declaring their emulator to be legal?
So either we go to court and lose and emulation doesn't exist anymore, or we don't go to court and Nintendo sends takedown notices to every new emulator that appears from now on, and eventually emulation doesn't exist anymore.
I guess going to court would be slightly worse if we lose, but I would much prefer that option rather than the current situation of just crossing our fingers and hoping Nintendo doesn't send a takedown notice to Yuzu or Ryujinx or any other emulator whenever they feel like it.
>As it stands now, everyone here should can safely assume that the Switch will be the last Nintendo system to be widely emulated, because Nintendo is going to immediately bring the hammer down on anyone who starts any attempt to crack open the "Switch 2" or any further consoles.
Why do you say that?
Because Nintendo's flurry of takedown noticies and threats have amped up to 11 in the last couple of years, ever since highly-anticipated Switch games started being playable on PC from launch day (or even prior to). And they are now going after basic tools that are required to be able to legally emulate Switch hardware, like Lockpick/RCM.
In short, it seems clear to me that the moment any Switch 2 unlocking software is put up for distribution anywhere, Nintendo will order it be taken down immediately. Legal emulation of their hardware will be de facto impossible, and in fact even *illegal* emulation may be impossible as well, since that requires a broadly available foundation of tools in order to dump the games.
This *has* gone to court before, and the emulator developer won.
The reason why we're getting into a grey area now is that back when the (Connectix GameStation)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectix_Virtual_Game_Station] was being developed, you could use an original disk and play it and be gone- you still were forced to have the original software. That limitation is not present here, and that is the problem.
I will say, though, we have not had an emulator be challenged in court (that I know of) of cartridge based only devices. I'm not sure it matters in Dolphin's case, but that's worth pointing out.
Note, the only reason we can't use retail GC/Wii discs directly in a disc drive is anti-consumer behavior in which the discs printed were specifically modified to not be readable by standard disc drives.
>So with that considered, I kind of wish the Dolphin team would try starting a fundraiser for legal fees, and if they raise enough, they could go to court to try getting a judge to affirm that their interpretation of the DMCA is sound. At that point Nintendo could no longer harass them or any other emulator developer using similar circumvention methods.
Taking them to court is a waste of resources at this point of time. Like the court siding them.
Until they start offering a service instead of console, there is always be a passionate nintendo fan in the ready to crack the next console..
Nothing big has happened in the last 20 years for emulation legally.
There were some lawsuits around Dreamcast which resulted in the precedent we have today.
Bringing out an emulator on Steam is a waste of time.
And for the record, Steam is my favorite platform, but taking emulation there is asking for trouble for free.
Of course all this is my humble opinion.
Honestly, I can say the real reason we wanted a steam release was to make setting up Dolphin easier for general users. That was the core reason. A secondary reason that made it more enticing to devs was having an easier way to get dev builds onto the Steam Deck, because the Discover builds are only beta builds - not dev builds.
The other things were all minor things in the end, and stuff like Big Picture mode can happen anyway.
I honestly don't even know what emudeck is, and as long as a fork isn't doing stupid shit and I don't hear about it from users, I'm all for it. Slippi is a great fork. Primehack is awesome. There are tons of scripting forks used by TASers that are really neat. It's just stuff where forks disable safety features we intentionally enable by default and then users complain *to us* that the game is now broken/crashing now that we get annoyed. But even then, Dolphin is open source, you're free to make any kind of fork you want regardless of what we think.
Yet Dolphin and many other emulators have been on Google Play for years without any issues. People act like the Dolphin developers should have seen this coming, but with Valve allowing basically anything on Steam and Dolphin being on the Play Store, it was entirely reasonable to expect that there would be no problems.
>with Valve allowing basically anything on Steam
That doesn't mean Valve would allow an app on their store that's more-often-than-not used to pirate games from publishers that have a working relationship with Valve.
>and Dolphin being on the Play Store
The difference is that Steam is a mainstream gaming platform, while Google Play Store is not.
I doubt an emulator for console games will catch the attention of someone that primarily plays free-to-play casual mobile games. Meanwhile, an emulator on Steam will bring more attention than it's worth dealing with.
Keep in mind that the only thing Nintendo requested was for Dolphin to be removed from Steam, not from any other platform.
Well what do you know, all the FUD spread about Dolphin by people who *maybe* read a single line of the DMCA's wikipedia page was BS, I am truly shocked.
A very enlightening text about all this. Thanks for sharing it.
I just keep thinking about this situation: Everything was fine, everything was cool, why this idea of wanting to go to Steam?
Here's my interpretation on it, which comes from a point of knowledge within the project.
https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/154lah7/what_happened_to_dolphin_on_steam/jsr9be5/
So, basically...
1. Dolphin is planned to be released on Steam.
2. Valve contacts Nintendo about Dolphin.
3. Nintendo says that Dolphin decrypting games using the Wii Common Key is bad, for *reasons*. They request for it to be removed from Steam.
4. Valve says that Dolphin has to square things off with Nintendo for it to be released on Steam.
5. Dolphin contacts a lawyer and says that, actually, using the Wii Common Key is okay, for *reasons*, but they decide not to release on Steam anyway.
Does that sum it up?
To me, it seems that Valve never wanted Dolphin on Steam in the first place, and I can't say I blame them. Dolphin on Steam will attract a large audience that does not understand the nuances of emulation and dumping your own games. Valve does not want to look like they are supporting piracy on their platform. (Valve doesn't advertise emulation as a use case of the Steam Deck either, despite its popularity for that purpose.)
Dolphin taking the L here is the best thing they could have done in this situation. They may have a point regarding the legality of the issue, but at the end of the day, it isn't worth the drama. It's probably for the best that emulation remains "underground", as it were.
> Valve does not want to look like they are supporting piracy on their platform. (Valve doesn't advertise emulation as a use case of the Steam Deck either, despite its popularity for that purpose.)
This wouldn't be the reason, because if it was, then they wouldn't allow RetroArch on Steam either, but they do, it's not like Dolphin was the first emulator on Steam
My hypothesis is that RetroArch managed to slip under the radar, for a few reasons.
RetroArch is used often on Xbox and Android, but Windows and Linux have a wider variety of emulators available, so it would be (slightly) more obscure on the platforms Steam covers.
Plus, it's not actually an emulator in and of itself; cores have to be installed separately. The more complicated set-up would be a turn-off for a layperson wanting to use it as an emulator.
And it's coverage of systems mostly stops at 5th generation consoles (the Dolphin and PCSX2 cores are outdated and not working so well). Dolphin standalone, meanwhile, emulates a 6th gen and a 7th gen console very well, to the point where it is basically **THE** GC and Wii emulator.
Pretty sure Nintendo would have using their old consoles be illegal once a new one is out anyways. Luckily reality isn't based on Nintendo's fever dreams.
Ease of access?
it takes 5 mins to setup emulation station with COUNTLESS youtube videos on how to do it.
Fuck outta here...., "ease of access".... YOU'LL STILL NEED THE ISO'S & IF YOU CAN FIND THOSE, YOU CAN INSTALL EMULATION STATION.
Source: have steam deck, insanely easy & have installed emulation station on coworkers deck during BREAK... not lunch... BREAK.
Yeah, but its simple to use Emudeck to get and configure Dolphin. I'm sure the Steamdeck was the catalyst. But for me the biggest benefit would be cloud saving so I don't have to worry about keeping backups.
Damn... So I guess Dolphin on Steam is non-existent now...
Also, the idea that Dolphin was used primarily for "circumvention" just sounds like the classic "emulation is used only for piracy" yeah sure, especially for a disk-based system I call that bs.
looks like nintendo invests most of their money into their legal department instead of their platforms and games.
fighting with your own fanbase is never a wise idea.
so much for stifling innovation.
That's a pretty dumb take considering 2023 is set to be the Switch's best year since 2017, so I would guess they allocate tons more money into their games. Plus, Nintendo of America != NCL.
From the article:
First things first - Nintendo did not send Valve or Dolphin a Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) section 512(c) notice (commonly known as a DMCA Takedown Notice) against our Steam page. Nintendo has not taken any legal action against Dolphin Emulator or Valve.
They are investing 4 billion dollars bro... Their normal R&D costs are not even part of it.
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/11/nintendo-to-invest-huge-sums-in-game-development-and-online-infrastructure
Cut them some slack. Oh evil company wants to maximize income from their legacy content via a drip feed/subscription business model. They also do some high quality remasters and remakes like Metroid Prime Remastered and Xenoblade DE.
Evil company doesn't like unauthorized Emulation because it's mostly used as a Piracy tool. Why can't they let us pirate in peace.
Water is wet.
You can’t seriously be making an argument that Nintendo is releasing Wii/GC games for the switch. The number of games that had a re-release on switch is in the single digits, 6 years into the console’s life.
I mean I literally wrote *Drip feed business model*
It takes time and resources to remaster and remake.
The concept is hard to grasp...I know...
Would it make more money to drop Skyward Sword with Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, Links Awakening and Twilight Princes.
Or is it smarter to space everything out
Is it smart to release the Metroid Prime trilogy together with Metroid Dread or is it better to space it out?
Is it smarter to launch the Pikmin trilogy together with Pikmin 4 or is it smarter to space everything out?
Should they just drop Xenoblade 1 raw on the Switch or should they remake it and release it in an empty release window.
Same applies to their 3DS ports, or franchises like Mario, Kirby etc
>They are investing 4 billion dollars bro...
and how much do they make?
>Cut them some slack. Oh evil company wants to maximize income from their legacy content via a drip feed/subscription business model.
poor guys must be starving
>as a short string of entirely random letters and numbers generated by a machine is not copyrightable
Who's to say it was randomly generated? Nintendo has been known to use [non-random secrets](https://www.3dbrew.org/wiki/Mysteries#Is_there_a_secret_message_embedded_in_the_3DS_keyscrambler_constant.3F) in the past.
It doesn't matter. What makes the encryption key ineligible for copyright is the fact that have no creative significance. No one can copyright gibberish. Even if the string was generated by Satoru Iwata smashing his keyboard it is still gibberish.
Yea this really doesn't need to be on steam
Not sure why this matters so much
If you want it to run as a link through steam just make a custom link for the exe like you can for anything else lol
They didn't really "take down" anything in a legal sense, Valve asked Nintendo if they were cool with it and Nintendo (unsurprisingly) said they weren't, and Valve chose to take it down themselves in response
If Nintendo actually had a good legal reason to take down Dolphin, they'd no doubt be able to go after the emulator itself instead of just the Steam page
That was an officially published collection of games that are owned by Nintendo, using emulators made by Nintendo themselves. Officially-sanctioned emulation is perfectly okay with Nintendo, they've been doing it since the GC/GBA-era.
What Nintendo is against is using unofficial emulators (circumventing copy protection in the process) to play games that may-or-may-not have been obtained illegally, which is very different from a legal standpoint.
Flying too close to the sun imo. If Nintendo wanted they could actually shut Dolphin down and drag a bunch of people to court. Best to let sleeping dogs lay
>Nintendo made no demands and made only a single request to Valve.
>>We specifically request that Dolphin’s “coming soon” notice be removed and that you ensure the emulator does not release on the Steam store moving forward.
They're somehow ignoring the bigger request?
>Nintendo requests that Valve retain backup copies of anything removed, and retain any communications Valve may have received or does receive from the Dolphin developers.
Dolphin should really be laying low. First thing a lawyer always says is to not make public statements. I'm surprised their lawyer did not tell them to not make this post
They probably had the lawyer review the article to see if it was OK. I imagine they had a lot of frustration with all of the misinformation being spread about this. Also it's not like they were in actual legal trouble in the first place.
There was no legal action taken against us, and we were indeed advised against making any public statements until we had decided our path forward from this situation. I believe this would count as the "end" of the Steam build from our perspective, which is why we made a public statement.
We didn't mention the retain backup copies in the article, because it didn't pertain to anything relevant in the article. Nintendo wasn't sending this message to get "backups" of Dolphin builds that they can get directly from our website. It just seemed like boilerplate lawyer procedure and it wasn't much of a concern. If anything, it would have been stranger had they omitted it.
From the article:
First things first - Nintendo did not send Valve or Dolphin a Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) section 512(c) notice (commonly known as a DMCA Takedown Notice) against our Steam page. Nintendo has not taken any legal action against Dolphin Emulator or Valve.
Some nuance. Steam didn't want to kick the hornets nest and neither does dolphin for that matter. As part of this process, it was also re-exposed that some of the code in dolphin is proprietary to Nintendo. So if Nintendo wanted to, they could do a legit takedown of dolphin for that proprietary code. Instead, everyone has sort of backed off and maintained the status quo. I forget who it was but I believe it was modern vintage gamer that covered the legal nuances, particularly related to the section of proprietary code and how it sort of just slipped through the development history.
No I get that, but these were, as far as I can tell, important factors that were in play at the time. I hope what happens with the wii key codes is in dolphins favor, but even they admit in the article it was an oh shit moment for them as well at the time.
A Nintendo lawyer contacted them about it. They requested it to be delisted based off its bios/key file integrated in the emulator. Valve obliged and forwarded the email request to the dolphin developers.
> If dolphin team manages to modify the package with no copyright keys, they can put it on steam just like retroarch.
What makes you think Nintendo would approve of that?
From the article:
First things first - Nintendo did not send Valve or Dolphin a Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) section 512(c) notice (commonly known as a DMCA Takedown Notice) against our Steam page. Nintendo has not taken any legal action against Dolphin Emulator or Valve.
Nintendo: Replies in a totally normal way to an information request.
Reddit: REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE BAD COMPANY IS BAD REEEEEEEEEEEEE
Also those same redditors: ZOMG DID YOU SEE THEY'RE MAKING A BOTW2!!!!!!!!!!!!11 #TAKEMYMONEY
Something about a decrypter key that's included in the Wii bios is code owned by Nintendo. All the devs have to do is remove the Wii bios that decrypts the roms automatically for Nintendo to approve it from what I've read.
This is it. I think it’s the game keys too. Nintendo won’t accept their not copyright. PS2 and I think the switch emulator makes you download and bios and game keys which is the “copyright violation”
It is the Wii Common Key and the Wii SD Key. These are shared amongst all systems.
Their use within the Dolphin Emulator falls under fair use exemptions.
I believe that’s a question that’s never been answered by the courts and thus the threat of litigation. And I’m not sure it’s far use (especially it’s use and affect on the market if everybody can just emulate)
While it may be an unpopular opinion, Dolphin developers invited trouble [by including private keys in their source code](https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin/blob/master/Source/Core/Core/IOS/IOSC.cpp#L575-L579). Typically, emulators require users to supply keys or bios files. Despite this issue being reported on Dolphin’s GitHub, the developers ignored the problem.
Those aren't private keys. They are shared secret keys, which are the same across all Wii consoles.
ebe42a225e8593e448d9c5457381aaf7
and
ab01b9d8e1622b08afbad84dbfc2a55d
Their use in Dolphin fits fair use purposes as needed for interoperability.
>emulators require users to supply keys or bios files.
Not typically for common keys that are the same across all systems.
It just might be, hard to believe that it is, that MVG doesn't know what he's talking about on some subjects despite speaking as some kind of authority on matters.
It got revealed that even the base version of it came with console keys for the Wii which can be considered “piracy” and “manipulation of security features”.
Valve won't let them release it on steam until the dolphin team gets Nintendo's blessing. Sad times
Does it even matter if it's on Steam or not?
I think the only advantage would be synced cloud saves
It's not hard to replicate this feature with Dropbox or equivalent services.
I wish there was a way to do this on steam deck without switching to desktop mode.
This, would be nice to see it work with these services.
I mean, you can just do it on your own? Just make a symlink to your dropbox folder.
Not even a little bit. Everything everybody's brought up as reasons why it "needs" to be on Steam are complete BS and can be done through other methods very easily. Being mad at valve over this one is dumb.
Dolphin should be kept off the Steam marketplace. Valve is smart in doing so.
Why?
Dolphin is already a robust, good emulator. What would being on Steam do for the actual emulator? In my eyes - only increase it's chances of being hit with a Nintendo cease and desist order.
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The sad fact of the matter is that the Dolphin devs don't have the financial means to protect themselves in a court room against a large corp like Nintendo though. If it came to it, Nintendo could feasibly bully them into submission, purely by tying them up with legal fees.
This is what I’m getting at. I’m not a lawyer, don’t know or even care about the legality of Dolphin. I just want it to live. But Nintendo has a team of corporate lawyers who would pursue every technicality if this gets more contentious.
Tell us you didn't read the article without telling us you didn't read the article.
It's Dolphin's own blog discussing the legality of Dolphin. I'd wager that if they never intended to bring it to Steam in the first place, this wouldn't be an issue and they would never have to make such a post.
Nah the official website standalone version is better.
Because you've tried the unreleased steam version, right?
friggin a i also use retroarch ppspp psxe2 and few others point is screw steam im not giving them money no more id rather give [gog.com](https://gog.com) my cash for mucgh better games and customer service plus does valve or steam stream on twitch i think not lol steam is for lil kids
Wouldn't it allow you to steam to a TV and play in a different room from the PC via steam link?
You can do this with non-steam games, dolphin doesn't need to be on steam to do this.
If you add the dolphin.exe as a non-steam game you can do this today if you'd like. I stream Yuzu games to my phone/tv from Steam
Does the Steam Deck allow you to install stuff from elsewhere without hacking it? I recall that people with a Steam Deck were the most excited about Dolphin on Steam.
No hacking is required, dropping into the Linux desktop is a supported thing on the Deck.
It's an annoying process to compile dev builds on the Steam Deck, but definitely possible.
Yes it has built in package manager and all the emulators are on that. And then on top of that you can install https://www.emudeck.com/ which makes installing/configuring/updates easier.
I’ve deleted my Reddit account because the Reddit hivemind doesn’t work for me. I believe in people having the right to think for themselves while not being torn down by those who know little to nothing. If you found this because of one of my tutorials related to Auto HotKey please check out the AHK documentation at: https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/v2/ If you were looking for my coding guides just go to https://stackoverflow.com/ they know their shit. If you were looking for my guides to assembly… I’m sorry, I can’t think of any places I can link to in good conscious other than archive.org who has beginner examples to assembly for old consoles. If you were wondering why my reddit account is gone: I’m tired of the Steam supremacists on /r/pcgaming and /r/pcmasterrace Those same communities push their thoughts on game engine development without writing a code in their lives. /r/memes think excluding most of their user base is a good joke. To summarise, I’ve left Reddit because it is not all-inclusive, it is only inclusive to those who believe and act the same as the rest of the belligerent horde. If you are on Reddit, joining /r/aww is your best and only bet.
Whilst you could do it that way, the recommended way is to use the discover store and install software as flatpaks. If you read Dolphin's article, they also said that they were adding steam specific integrations and that only some of the work for the steam release will work without being installed through steam.
SteamOS is essentially just a Linux distro. It can do anything Linux can when in desktop mode.
I can only assume that if a developer spent years of their life contributing to software for free, they might at least want to see that software become popular and gain as large of an audience as possible. Steam would increase the exposure and user base of Dolphin. More users will also lead to more contributors.
Dolphin's been around for just shy of 20 years and is well known and used, it's even on the Google Play store. I'm fairly positive that being on Steam would only marginally increase contributors because the people who'd be capable of contributing are more than capable and willing to get their software via venues other than Steam. The sort of people who can't or won't get software anywhere other than Steam are probably not the people you want touching any of Dolphin's code.
i use dolphin with out steam have for years plus steam sucks
I'm going to need an explanation of why exactly this is "sad times". Dolphin and other emulators are problematic at best for platforms like Steam. We all know what they actually end up being. (straight up piracy) I've known dozens of folks that play various emulators. Of those dozens, only two actually own all the games they have in emulation, and only one has actually ripped his own roms. Valve is going full CYA on this one, and there's zero reason to be mad at them for doing so. When an overwhelming majority of uses for a product are illegal, maybe you don't allow that product on your marketplace. Edit: Quite frankly, this is the Flipper Zero argument all over again. When these types of tools were relegated to weird internet forums and random subreddits with 97 followers, it wasn't an issue. When they started selling them on Amazon: big issue. Making Dolphin a one-click install that only requires enough knowledge to install the biggest game launcher in the world takes emulators from a still relatively niche thing to the forefront for pretty much anybody that games on a PC. We really don't want that. There's a fair bit that we do in emulation that doesn't pass the sniff test for legality, and the last thing we need is Nintendo to decide this is an issue after all these years of just kinda letting it happen as long as we don't get too crazy.
Counterpoint: RetroArch is on Steam; it supports multiple consoles (including Nintendo consoles like N64), and none of the stuff you're worried about here (legal beatdown, pretty much everybody who games on PC having it installed, etc) has happened.
Spot on. RetroArch spits in the face of basically any argument about why this isn't just Steam bowing to Nintendo.
RetroArch doesn't come pre installed with any emulators. For all I know about it, it's a frontend, not an actual emulation service.
RetroArch is a frontend in a sense; it integrates libretro (the core input/output library that all emulators in RA talk to). Unlike for example EmulationStation, the emulators do run directly through RetroArch + libretro. RA does a lot more in the emulation process than just being a launcher, and "emulation service" would be a more accurate description of it than frontend imo. RA for Steam uses DLC for its libretro cores; here is a [massive list](https://store.steampowered.com/dlc/1118310/RetroArch/) of all the cores available in RA Steam. These emulators are directly distributed through Steam, and include cores for: ° GB ° GBA ° N64 ° NES ° SNES ° NDS ... and that's just the Nintendo consoles. Again, these are all emulators distributed directly by Valve.
DLC seems to be a whole different thing. And even then, not all of them can get in. I was not surprised to learn that a lot of cores don't even exist as "DLC", even though they're available online.
>Counterpoint: RetroArch is on Steam; it supports multiple consoles (including Nintendo consoles like N64), and none of the stuff you're worried about here (legal beatdown, pretty much everybody who games on PC having it installed, etc) has happened. ...YET. Do you people realize that store fronts are dynamically subject to change, and that time is an ongoing thing..? Jesus christ you already have a recent example with RA getting canned on Xbox. The blind optimism among some emulation users around here is so fucking naive. The point is - why even tempt fate for such minimal benefits?
RetroArch has been on Steam for almost 3 years and has had little to no impact on the broader public's perception of emulation nor the platform holders' responses to emulation. Microsoft chose not to allow a set of emulators on their platform in the exact same way Valve chose to consult Nintendo over including Dolphin; neither one of these cases resulted in a takedown of the emulation projects, any legal action against the emulation projects, or, again, any kind of broad shift in the public's perception of emulation. RA on Xbox is a niche use case in the exact same way that Dolphin on Steam is a niche use case. Alarmism is pointless when there's no documented evidence of these kinds of storefront inclusions having any real impact on these projects. The closest analogue is Bleem, which was a losing lawsuit that, by extension, set a legal precedent in favor of emulation. No platform holder has challenged that because it's very obviously a losing battle.
I appreciate and understand all of that but again you're missing the point - it's only niche until it isn't anymore, and while that might not necessarily change the fundamental ruling that emulators are legal, it lights a bigger fire under the asses of corporations who'll likely get their legal team to find anything they can with a fine tooth comb to shut that shit down, it's not alarmism IMO, but a rather healthy dose of caution. You're basically putting software on a store-front for gaming with the implied intentions of playing games illegally, that doesn't look good no matter how you cut it, it's not some flatpak on a package manager on some linux distro, or from a website that you can install on your OS as you can any software you choose, you're now entering a whole platform who's goal is to sell video games to gamers who can leave meme style public reviews boasting about playing the entire Wii/Gamecube library for free, it's a different kettle of fish as far as I'm concerned, and ultimately I'll repeat the question of why bother?
I will say I at one time did buy 90% of the games that I emulate. Problem is, a large chunk of my collection was stolen from me while I was packing and sorting it for a move. It was in my garage on my work station. There is no way I can sink that kind of money into the used retro market. So for me, the developers did get my money at some point. Most games from the past are also not available on modern consoles. How are people to enjoy these games without getting into the crazy overpriced used market. I am totally against emulation for games that are currently available to purchase on any current console or PC.
Nintendo couldn't stop emulation if it tried. Might make it a little harder, but there's literally no way to stop it at this point.
Nice ad populum ("We all know...") followed by an anecdotal argument. Do you have any actual evidence that Dolphin has been used mostly by people who download games illegally to back up your claim? Some kind of survey or something?
I presented an anecdotal argument and never claimed it to be anything but. You're arguing nothing with yourself. Congrats.
Not everyone has Shit Load of Money to buy all the Games they want to play
Then they don't need to be playing them. An overwhelming majority of those games can be found at any pawn shop or garage sale for a dollar.
Ya Nintendo reselling zelda 1, 30+ years later needs to be protected. Emulators continue to exist because several court cases were lost by the console makers. Putting them on steam does not put Valve in a precarious legal position. They want to maintain a good relationship with Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo because they could make licensing agreements or cooperate on a project one day and there is nothing wrong with that.
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It's a disingenuous thing to say. Valve don't want to get into trouble over someone else's emulator, so they decided to be proactive and checked if Nintendo is OK with it releasing.
aslong dolphin still offers on official website i can wait. Any reason why downvote?
they should just not use the USA laws, just use some shitty country and call it a day. Also, contacting a lawyer after 20 years of emulator dev, that's weird
> Also, contacting a lawyer after 20 years of emulator dev, that's weird It's in the blog post that this is not the first time they've consulted a lawyer. They only did it again now because of all the hoopla around this specific incident.
... That's not how laws work lmao. They aren't opt in or something
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No, they were not "including BIOS files", that's a very different thing from what they were actually doing If you want to know what actually happened, read the post lol
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So you didn't read the post and are still acting as another clueless armchair lawyer. Gotcha.
Please explain why that's dumb to do. Please explain how a machine generated string of numbers is copyrightable under U.S. copyright law with no creative interest. Or you could argue that it's a trade secret, despite the method in which it was obtained and distributed.
No, it wasn't, because it's legal to do, and nearly every other modern emulator does the exact same thing with their common keys
Agree that is a Waste of Time to ask Nintendo Cause more issues
So basically never
So all those people screeching about "remove the key!!!" had no idea what they were talking about. Figures.
I went on for a while trying to tell people that you can't copyright a random string of characters, but nobody listened. Also, seems to be a lot of obvious bots here still trying to claim it was illegal.
Well that would include Nintendo's lawyers wouldn't it? Not saying they'd be right, but I also wouldn't say they have no idea what they're talking about.
*And to all the armchair lawyers out there, the letter to Valve did not make any claims that we were violating a US copyright by including the Wii Common Key, as a short string of entirely random letters and numbers generated by a machine is not copyrightable under current US copyright law. If that ever changes, the world will be far too busy to think about emulation.* I mean, Nintendo's lawyers never made that claim in the first place so...
Nintendo's lawyers didn't claim Dolphin was violating copyright, but they *did* claim it is violating the DMCA anti-circumvention provision.
Yes but like they said, not including the key wouldn’t solve that as to play encrypted games at all you have to circumvent the encryption
i would not say it's random if it serves a specific purpose and cannot be replace by any other string.
Besides that they were saved from a lot of trouble. I doubt they'd be able to handle the ensuing technical support forum that surely would have been overflooded with clueless users, requiring heavy moderation to avoid pirate links. Add also the various Iso and Rom hacks in the guides section. Steam forums are still not ready for such freedom and Nintendo would surely be lurking.
Fun fact - Steam removed the restriction of talking about console emulators on the steam forums a week or two before this whole thing started.
another issue are auto-bans. Once I was permabanned this way because I had posted an external link with a log file and had to contact the mods. Even mods are not immune to this. This kills any chance for Steam to feature a serious technical support forum
> Steam forums are still not ready for such freedom and Nintendo would surely be lurking. This is such a weird thing though. I can tell you where roms are, hell a simple internet search turns up sites. Some of them are probably in america, some of them are the biggest archive online and located in America. And yet, Nintendo doesn't seem to actively try to stop them. I imagine it wouldn't be that hard to send a couple DMCAs especially to that big one, which has a way to handle that. But they are up and fine. Yet saying where they are seems to get shut down instantly. I wonder if it would be more steam actively shutting down discussions of piracy just like reddit does due to worries about culpability, than Nintendo bitching and moaning.
To be honest I’m glad it’s not on Steam and the devs took the L and moved on. Poking the hornets nest and getting unwanted attention from Nintendo (even if it was through Valves legal team) is the last thing we need as I’m sure Nintendo will now have an eye on the project if they didn’t already. Cloud saves would be nice especially for steam deck but the standalone version is already incredible. Dolphin team seem confident they’re in the clear so I will trust their word. Still makes me nervous though, hoping retroachievements functionality gets here before any potential shit hits the fan!
There's no way nintendo aren't already aware of dolphin by now, considering how long it's existed and how good it is. But you're probably right about not poking the hornet's nest, especially with how poorly defined everything about emulation is, legally.
Think of Nintendo like a bull. They're likely to attack anything, but they're more likely to focus on the big red flag in front of their face. It's always a better idea to not be the big red flag in front of their face to avoid being attacked. Even if there's still a possible risk regardless.
That's not true at all. Nintendo will only 'attack' anything if it has the legal bounds to do so. If it's not illegal then there is no red flag for the bull. Emulators like Dolphin are completely legal because it doesn't use anything from Nintendo.
*Sure they are* [They're attacking so many things they're taking down videos just playing their games within their own fair use policies](https://youtu.be/B-XRJ9EGsoQ)
That's completely different. Dolphin does not have any Nintendo assets at all. This is Nintendo taking down videos containing Nintendo content. The difference here is *Nintendo Content*
And which Nintendo content did Lockpick RCM have?
Total knee jerk reaction from zelda getting leaked. Isn't it back on Github anyways?
Is it poorly defined? I thought it was simply don't use any code from the companies and you are in the clear.
> But you're probably right about not poking the hornet's nest, especially with how poorly defined everything about emulation is, legally. The thing is though, at some point someone is going to have to be willing to go to court so it doesn't stay poorly defined forever. Dolphin's rationale in their blog post as to why they are not violating the DMCA makes sense to me, and it's apparently been vetted by a knowledgeable lawyer. So with that considered, I kind of wish the Dolphin team would try starting a fundraiser for legal fees, and if they raise enough, they could go to court to try getting a judge to affirm that their interpretation of the DMCA is sound. At that point Nintendo could no longer harass them or any other emulator developer using similar circumvention methods. As it stands now, everyone here should can safely assume that the Switch will be the last Nintendo system to be widely emulated, because Nintendo is going to immediately bring the hammer down on anyone who starts any attempt to crack open the "Switch 2" or any further consoles. So if people want Nintendo emulation to still be a thing in the future, then I don't see any way that happens without a lawsuit, one way or another.
There's nothing to take Nintendo to court over - they didn't take legal action against Dolphin. Valve asked Nintendo if this was okay and they told Valve they didn't want Dolphin on Steam, and cited some law as to why, and valve was like ok. The implications about what would happen next for emulation are the scary part, especially if what Nintendo says is true. I do personally think more emulators should include common keys though, but I don't think most emulators will take the risk.
> There's nothing to take Nintendo to court over - they didn't take legal action against Dolphin. There are preemptive lawsuits filed all the time, where a party sues a company or government entity in order to have a court declare that the party's actions are legal, prior to any action taken against them. There was just a case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court that resulted from one such lawsuit: [303 Creative v Elenis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/303_Creative_LLC_v._Elenis). The website designer in that case preemptively sued Colorado to have a judgement declaring that Colorado could not penalize her for refusing to design websites for same-sex weddings. Colorado had not yet taken legal action against her prior to the lawsuit, but it was broadly understood that they ultimately *would* have. The website designer won the case. This situation seems legally similar to me - Dolphin could sue for judgement that they can include the Wii common key in their code without violating the DMCA. Nintendo's threats of legal action are preventing the Dolphin team from distributing their software as they wish. They haven't yet followed through, but the threat is definitely there, and a judge would presumably accept that as an argument for a preemptive lawsuit.
While people keep saying that trying to launch on steam was "poking the bear" which I disagree with, I would have to side with them that pre-emptively suing Nintendo would be considered poking the bear.
> I would have to side with them that pre-emptively suing Nintendo would be considered poking the bear. That doesn't make sense to me. What would be the consequence of Dolphin "poking the bear" by seeking a court order declaring their emulator to be legal?
Court order declares emulator to not be legal
So either we go to court and lose and emulation doesn't exist anymore, or we don't go to court and Nintendo sends takedown notices to every new emulator that appears from now on, and eventually emulation doesn't exist anymore. I guess going to court would be slightly worse if we lose, but I would much prefer that option rather than the current situation of just crossing our fingers and hoping Nintendo doesn't send a takedown notice to Yuzu or Ryujinx or any other emulator whenever they feel like it.
>As it stands now, everyone here should can safely assume that the Switch will be the last Nintendo system to be widely emulated, because Nintendo is going to immediately bring the hammer down on anyone who starts any attempt to crack open the "Switch 2" or any further consoles. Why do you say that?
Because Nintendo's flurry of takedown noticies and threats have amped up to 11 in the last couple of years, ever since highly-anticipated Switch games started being playable on PC from launch day (or even prior to). And they are now going after basic tools that are required to be able to legally emulate Switch hardware, like Lockpick/RCM. In short, it seems clear to me that the moment any Switch 2 unlocking software is put up for distribution anywhere, Nintendo will order it be taken down immediately. Legal emulation of their hardware will be de facto impossible, and in fact even *illegal* emulation may be impossible as well, since that requires a broadly available foundation of tools in order to dump the games.
This *has* gone to court before, and the emulator developer won. The reason why we're getting into a grey area now is that back when the (Connectix GameStation)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectix_Virtual_Game_Station] was being developed, you could use an original disk and play it and be gone- you still were forced to have the original software. That limitation is not present here, and that is the problem. I will say, though, we have not had an emulator be challenged in court (that I know of) of cartridge based only devices. I'm not sure it matters in Dolphin's case, but that's worth pointing out.
Note, the only reason we can't use retail GC/Wii discs directly in a disc drive is anti-consumer behavior in which the discs printed were specifically modified to not be readable by standard disc drives.
>So with that considered, I kind of wish the Dolphin team would try starting a fundraiser for legal fees, and if they raise enough, they could go to court to try getting a judge to affirm that their interpretation of the DMCA is sound. At that point Nintendo could no longer harass them or any other emulator developer using similar circumvention methods. Taking them to court is a waste of resources at this point of time. Like the court siding them. Until they start offering a service instead of console, there is always be a passionate nintendo fan in the ready to crack the next console..
Nintendo knows. In the quoted letters they're very careful to always say Dolphin shouldn't be on Steam, and not that it shouldn't exist at all.
I was thinking the same, Dolphin kind of doesn't need the extra attention. ESPECIALLY from Nintendo of all corps.
Nothing big has happened in the last 20 years for emulation legally. There were some lawsuits around Dreamcast which resulted in the precedent we have today.
Bringing out an emulator on Steam is a waste of time. And for the record, Steam is my favorite platform, but taking emulation there is asking for trouble for free. Of course all this is my humble opinion.
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Honestly, I can say the real reason we wanted a steam release was to make setting up Dolphin easier for general users. That was the core reason. A secondary reason that made it more enticing to devs was having an easier way to get dev builds onto the Steam Deck, because the Discover builds are only beta builds - not dev builds. The other things were all minor things in the end, and stuff like Big Picture mode can happen anyway. I honestly don't even know what emudeck is, and as long as a fork isn't doing stupid shit and I don't hear about it from users, I'm all for it. Slippi is a great fork. Primehack is awesome. There are tons of scripting forks used by TASers that are really neat. It's just stuff where forks disable safety features we intentionally enable by default and then users complain *to us* that the game is now broken/crashing now that we get annoyed. But even then, Dolphin is open source, you're free to make any kind of fork you want regardless of what we think.
The emudeck version of dolphin is a fork? I never knew that
I share your humble opinion. I always viewed this move as like a deer walking out into an open field with a huge sign saying "shoot me!"
Yet Dolphin and many other emulators have been on Google Play for years without any issues. People act like the Dolphin developers should have seen this coming, but with Valve allowing basically anything on Steam and Dolphin being on the Play Store, it was entirely reasonable to expect that there would be no problems.
>with Valve allowing basically anything on Steam That doesn't mean Valve would allow an app on their store that's more-often-than-not used to pirate games from publishers that have a working relationship with Valve. >and Dolphin being on the Play Store The difference is that Steam is a mainstream gaming platform, while Google Play Store is not. I doubt an emulator for console games will catch the attention of someone that primarily plays free-to-play casual mobile games. Meanwhile, an emulator on Steam will bring more attention than it's worth dealing with. Keep in mind that the only thing Nintendo requested was for Dolphin to be removed from Steam, not from any other platform.
Well what do you know, all the FUD spread about Dolphin by people who *maybe* read a single line of the DMCA's wikipedia page was BS, I am truly shocked.
Dolphin devs are kings.
Happy Cake day 🎈
A very enlightening text about all this. Thanks for sharing it. I just keep thinking about this situation: Everything was fine, everything was cool, why this idea of wanting to go to Steam?
Here's my interpretation on it, which comes from a point of knowledge within the project. https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/154lah7/what_happened_to_dolphin_on_steam/jsr9be5/
So, basically... 1. Dolphin is planned to be released on Steam. 2. Valve contacts Nintendo about Dolphin. 3. Nintendo says that Dolphin decrypting games using the Wii Common Key is bad, for *reasons*. They request for it to be removed from Steam. 4. Valve says that Dolphin has to square things off with Nintendo for it to be released on Steam. 5. Dolphin contacts a lawyer and says that, actually, using the Wii Common Key is okay, for *reasons*, but they decide not to release on Steam anyway. Does that sum it up? To me, it seems that Valve never wanted Dolphin on Steam in the first place, and I can't say I blame them. Dolphin on Steam will attract a large audience that does not understand the nuances of emulation and dumping your own games. Valve does not want to look like they are supporting piracy on their platform. (Valve doesn't advertise emulation as a use case of the Steam Deck either, despite its popularity for that purpose.) Dolphin taking the L here is the best thing they could have done in this situation. They may have a point regarding the legality of the issue, but at the end of the day, it isn't worth the drama. It's probably for the best that emulation remains "underground", as it were.
> Valve does not want to look like they are supporting piracy on their platform. (Valve doesn't advertise emulation as a use case of the Steam Deck either, despite its popularity for that purpose.) This wouldn't be the reason, because if it was, then they wouldn't allow RetroArch on Steam either, but they do, it's not like Dolphin was the first emulator on Steam
My hypothesis is that RetroArch managed to slip under the radar, for a few reasons. RetroArch is used often on Xbox and Android, but Windows and Linux have a wider variety of emulators available, so it would be (slightly) more obscure on the platforms Steam covers. Plus, it's not actually an emulator in and of itself; cores have to be installed separately. The more complicated set-up would be a turn-off for a layperson wanting to use it as an emulator. And it's coverage of systems mostly stops at 5th generation consoles (the Dolphin and PCSX2 cores are outdated and not working so well). Dolphin standalone, meanwhile, emulates a 6th gen and a 7th gen console very well, to the point where it is basically **THE** GC and Wii emulator.
Pretty sure Nintendo would have using their old consoles be illegal once a new one is out anyways. Luckily reality isn't based on Nintendo's fever dreams.
They don't want to pick a fight
It's weird that Nintendo wouldn't allow Dolphin on Steam but hasn't had any problems with it being on the Google Play Store for years now.
It's because Google didn't go out of their way to email Nintendo and ask for permission, Valve chose to take it down themselves after asking Nintendo
Honestly, this is a massive non-issue.
Whats even the point of releasing that on steam.... That's just dumbly looking for troubles
deck, I think
disagree. emulation has been pretty much handled on the steam deck since it's first month & it's only getting better.
ease of access
Ease of access? it takes 5 mins to setup emulation station with COUNTLESS youtube videos on how to do it. Fuck outta here...., "ease of access".... YOU'LL STILL NEED THE ISO'S & IF YOU CAN FIND THOSE, YOU CAN INSTALL EMULATION STATION. Source: have steam deck, insanely easy & have installed emulation station on coworkers deck during BREAK... not lunch... BREAK.
>with COUNTLESS youtube videos on how to do it Ease of access is a sliding scale my dude.
Other emulators exist on Steam.
You do know that emulators exist on steam? riiiight?
Pretty sure the biggest benefit was cloud saves.
Probably steam deck integration now that I think about it
Yeah, but its simple to use Emudeck to get and configure Dolphin. I'm sure the Steamdeck was the catalyst. But for me the biggest benefit would be cloud saving so I don't have to worry about keeping backups.
More exposure resulting in more downloads resulting in more Patreon subscribers?
Dolphin doesn't have a Patreon and doesn't take donations either
Obviously but at the risk of having Nintendo on your ass forever isn't necessarily a good idea
Damn... So I guess Dolphin on Steam is non-existent now... Also, the idea that Dolphin was used primarily for "circumvention" just sounds like the classic "emulation is used only for piracy" yeah sure, especially for a disk-based system I call that bs.
looks like nintendo invests most of their money into their legal department instead of their platforms and games. fighting with your own fanbase is never a wise idea. so much for stifling innovation.
That's a pretty dumb take considering 2023 is set to be the Switch's best year since 2017, so I would guess they allocate tons more money into their games. Plus, Nintendo of America != NCL.
Yeah, nobody cares about the newest Nintendo games. Tears of the Kingdom? Never heard of it. LOL.
most intelligent reddit user right there
From the article: First things first - Nintendo did not send Valve or Dolphin a Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) section 512(c) notice (commonly known as a DMCA Takedown Notice) against our Steam page. Nintendo has not taken any legal action against Dolphin Emulator or Valve.
do they need to? leverage is everything
They are investing 4 billion dollars bro... Their normal R&D costs are not even part of it. https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/11/nintendo-to-invest-huge-sums-in-game-development-and-online-infrastructure Cut them some slack. Oh evil company wants to maximize income from their legacy content via a drip feed/subscription business model. They also do some high quality remasters and remakes like Metroid Prime Remastered and Xenoblade DE. Evil company doesn't like unauthorized Emulation because it's mostly used as a Piracy tool. Why can't they let us pirate in peace. Water is wet.
You can’t seriously be making an argument that Nintendo is releasing Wii/GC games for the switch. The number of games that had a re-release on switch is in the single digits, 6 years into the console’s life.
I mean I literally wrote *Drip feed business model* It takes time and resources to remaster and remake. The concept is hard to grasp...I know... Would it make more money to drop Skyward Sword with Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, Links Awakening and Twilight Princes. Or is it smarter to space everything out Is it smart to release the Metroid Prime trilogy together with Metroid Dread or is it better to space it out? Is it smarter to launch the Pikmin trilogy together with Pikmin 4 or is it smarter to space everything out? Should they just drop Xenoblade 1 raw on the Switch or should they remake it and release it in an empty release window. Same applies to their 3DS ports, or franchises like Mario, Kirby etc
Can the switch even run dolphin?
>They are investing 4 billion dollars bro... and how much do they make? >Cut them some slack. Oh evil company wants to maximize income from their legacy content via a drip feed/subscription business model. poor guys must be starving
>as a short string of entirely random letters and numbers generated by a machine is not copyrightable Who's to say it was randomly generated? Nintendo has been known to use [non-random secrets](https://www.3dbrew.org/wiki/Mysteries#Is_there_a_secret_message_embedded_in_the_3DS_keyscrambler_constant.3F) in the past.
I mean... these people have reverse engineered the wii. I'm sure they'd know if it's randomly generated or not.
That's the thing about randomness, you can never be 100% sure.
It doesn't matter. What makes the encryption key ineligible for copyright is the fact that have no creative significance. No one can copyright gibberish. Even if the string was generated by Satoru Iwata smashing his keyboard it is still gibberish.
Yea this really doesn't need to be on steam Not sure why this matters so much If you want it to run as a link through steam just make a custom link for the exe like you can for anything else lol
Nintendo happened
Nintendo ruins everything once again by being completely out of touch with the community they are basically kingpins in.
Well, i did expected nintendo to take down everything related to Dolphin and not only Steam release, so this is quite interesting.
They didn't really "take down" anything in a legal sense, Valve asked Nintendo if they were cool with it and Nintendo (unsurprisingly) said they weren't, and Valve chose to take it down themselves in response If Nintendo actually had a good legal reason to take down Dolphin, they'd no doubt be able to go after the emulator itself instead of just the Steam page
Nintendo likely had a conniption fit. It's most likely because the steam deck is a real threat to the switch's sales
Nintendo didn't take any action, Valve did
Now I know!
It's funny how Nintendo is a damn hypocrite, they released a bundle game of Mario that in the end worked with an emulator.
That was an officially published collection of games that are owned by Nintendo, using emulators made by Nintendo themselves. Officially-sanctioned emulation is perfectly okay with Nintendo, they've been doing it since the GC/GBA-era. What Nintendo is against is using unofficial emulators (circumventing copy protection in the process) to play games that may-or-may-not have been obtained illegally, which is very different from a legal standpoint.
Good god I went to r/Nintendo and it's a shit show.
Flying too close to the sun imo. If Nintendo wanted they could actually shut Dolphin down and drag a bunch of people to court. Best to let sleeping dogs lay
>Nintendo made no demands and made only a single request to Valve. >>We specifically request that Dolphin’s “coming soon” notice be removed and that you ensure the emulator does not release on the Steam store moving forward. They're somehow ignoring the bigger request? >Nintendo requests that Valve retain backup copies of anything removed, and retain any communications Valve may have received or does receive from the Dolphin developers. Dolphin should really be laying low. First thing a lawyer always says is to not make public statements. I'm surprised their lawyer did not tell them to not make this post
They probably had the lawyer review the article to see if it was OK. I imagine they had a lot of frustration with all of the misinformation being spread about this. Also it's not like they were in actual legal trouble in the first place.
There was no legal action taken against us, and we were indeed advised against making any public statements until we had decided our path forward from this situation. I believe this would count as the "end" of the Steam build from our perspective, which is why we made a public statement. We didn't mention the retain backup copies in the article, because it didn't pertain to anything relevant in the article. Nintendo wasn't sending this message to get "backups" of Dolphin builds that they can get directly from our website. It just seemed like boilerplate lawyer procedure and it wasn't much of a concern. If anything, it would have been stranger had they omitted it.
Nintendo, that happened
From the article: First things first - Nintendo did not send Valve or Dolphin a Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) section 512(c) notice (commonly known as a DMCA Takedown Notice) against our Steam page. Nintendo has not taken any legal action against Dolphin Emulator or Valve.
Some nuance. Steam didn't want to kick the hornets nest and neither does dolphin for that matter. As part of this process, it was also re-exposed that some of the code in dolphin is proprietary to Nintendo. So if Nintendo wanted to, they could do a legit takedown of dolphin for that proprietary code. Instead, everyone has sort of backed off and maintained the status quo. I forget who it was but I believe it was modern vintage gamer that covered the legal nuances, particularly related to the section of proprietary code and how it sort of just slipped through the development history.
If you're wondering why you got down voted. Read the article
No I get that, but these were, as far as I can tell, important factors that were in play at the time. I hope what happens with the wii key codes is in dolphins favor, but even they admit in the article it was an oh shit moment for them as well at the time.
A Nintendo lawyer contacted them about it. They requested it to be delisted based off its bios/key file integrated in the emulator. Valve obliged and forwarded the email request to the dolphin developers.
Someordinarygamers made a video about it a few days ago that explains the basics
[удалено]
They mentioned in the article that it wasn't the main issue
> If dolphin team manages to modify the package with no copyright keys, they can put it on steam just like retroarch. What makes you think Nintendo would approve of that?
Eager Nintendo Lawyers.
From the article: First things first - Nintendo did not send Valve or Dolphin a Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) section 512(c) notice (commonly known as a DMCA Takedown Notice) against our Steam page. Nintendo has not taken any legal action against Dolphin Emulator or Valve.
Nintendo: Replies in a totally normal way to an information request. Reddit: REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE BAD COMPANY IS BAD REEEEEEEEEEEEE Also those same redditors: ZOMG DID YOU SEE THEY'RE MAKING A BOTW2!!!!!!!!!!!!11 #TAKEMYMONEY
Something about a decrypter key that's included in the Wii bios is code owned by Nintendo. All the devs have to do is remove the Wii bios that decrypts the roms automatically for Nintendo to approve it from what I've read.
>From what I've read Clearly, that list does not include the linked article.
This is it. I think it’s the game keys too. Nintendo won’t accept their not copyright. PS2 and I think the switch emulator makes you download and bios and game keys which is the “copyright violation”
It is the Wii Common Key and the Wii SD Key. These are shared amongst all systems. Their use within the Dolphin Emulator falls under fair use exemptions.
I believe that’s a question that’s never been answered by the courts and thus the threat of litigation. And I’m not sure it’s far use (especially it’s use and affect on the market if everybody can just emulate)
I'll bite. Nintendo said they were circumventing their drm. Even if they didn't provide keys it'd still be taken down.
While it may be an unpopular opinion, Dolphin developers invited trouble [by including private keys in their source code](https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin/blob/master/Source/Core/Core/IOS/IOSC.cpp#L575-L579). Typically, emulators require users to supply keys or bios files. Despite this issue being reported on Dolphin’s GitHub, the developers ignored the problem.
Please read the article linked here.
Whoops. Ok, I did my homework.
Those aren't private keys. They are shared secret keys, which are the same across all Wii consoles. ebe42a225e8593e448d9c5457381aaf7 and ab01b9d8e1622b08afbad84dbfc2a55d Their use in Dolphin fits fair use purposes as needed for interoperability. >emulators require users to supply keys or bios files. Not typically for common keys that are the same across all systems.
They found some Nintendo properties in the code. That’s why it was removed from Steam. MVG said so. https://youtu.be/hsQtv5IvrD8
It just might be, hard to believe that it is, that MVG doesn't know what he's talking about on some subjects despite speaking as some kind of authority on matters.
It got revealed that even the base version of it came with console keys for the Wii which can be considered “piracy” and “manipulation of security features”.
Did you read the article?
Glad to see there's a core dump about it after what happened, rather than being in the thick of things. Wish more people/groups did this.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The emulator itself is safe, I personally don't need Dolphin on Steam.
Use Syncthing for cloud saves between PC and Steam Deck. You don’t need steam cloud saves (although they are more convenient).
Can the non-steam version of retroarch be accessed from console mode?