GameCube and Wii emulator Dolphin is no longer coming to Steam
GameCube and Wii emulator Dolphin is no longer coming to Steam.
Having “indefinitely postponed” Dolphin’s Steam release earlier this year, the team behind the software has now said it is “abandoning” its efforts to bring the emulator to Valve‘s marketplace in an official capacity.
“What actually happened was that Valve’s legal department contacted Nintendo to inquire about the announced release of Dolphin Emulator on Steam,” it explained. “In reply to this, a lawyer representing Nintendo of America requested Valve prevent Dolphin from releasing on the Steam store, citing the DMCA as justification.
“Valve then forwarded us the statement from Nintendo’s lawyers, and told us that we had to come to an agreement with Nintendo in order to release on Steam. Considering the strong legal wording at the start of the document and the citation of DMCA law, we took the letter very seriously.”
It added: “So, after a long stay of silence, we have a difficult announcement to make. We are abandoning our efforts to release Dolphin on Steam.
“Valve ultimately runs the store and can set any condition they wish for software to appear on it. 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.”
While it’s often argued that emulators are legal and it’s the use of ROM images of games (which contain copyrighted data) which is illegal, it’s recently been suggested that Dolphin may be at fault because it includes the Wii Common Key, a cryptographic key used by the Wii to decrypt games.
Speaking to Kotaku, a Nintendo spokesperson said: “Nintendo is committed to protecting the hard work and creativity of video game engineers and developers. This emulator
Read more on videogameschronicle.com
