Dolphin Emulator Won’t Be Released On Steam After All
Dolphin, the Nintendo GameCube and Wii emulator, is not coming to Steam. The project team attributed the launch cancellation to objections from Nintendo.
Dolphin was expected to be released on Steam before the end of June, but in May it was reported that Valve had received a DMCA complaint from Nintendo. As a result, the release of Dolphin on Steam was postponed indefinitely, and the store page was removed.
As the developers explained, Nintendo did not actually send a DMCA complaint to Valve. Valve itself approached Nintendo’s lawyers with a request regarding the announcement of Dolphin for Steam and received a response.
Citing Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Nintendo asked Valve not to release Dolphin on Steam. For a release on the service, Valve required developers to reach an agreement with Nintendo.
The team considered such an outcome impossible, given Nintendo’s negative attitude towards emulators, so they decided not to release Dolphin on Steam. Some features that were prepared for the Steam version will be implemented in regular builds. After consulting with lawyers, the authors also stated that the use of Dolphin keys to decrypt Wii games does not violate the law and if necessary, they are ready to defend this point of view in court.
According to the developers, Dolphin has no legal problems. The team came to this conclusion based on the fact that Nintendo did not put forward any requirements in its letter to Valve, but only asked not to let the emulator on Steam.
