Nintendo has blocked the Steam version of GameCube and Wii emulator Dolphin
The team behind the upcoming Steam release of popular GameCube and Wii emulator Dolphin says it’s been blocked by Nintendo, and one emulation expert thinks Dolphin is at fault in this instance.
In a short statement on the Dolphin website, its creators wrote: “It is with much disappointment that we have to announce that the Dolphin on Steam release has been indefinitely postponed.
“We were notified by Valve that Nintendo has issued a cease and desist citing the DMCA against Dolphin’s Steam page, and have removed Dolphin from Steam until the matter is settled.
“We are currently investigating our options and will have a more in-depth response in the near future.”
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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. Using this argument, some claim that emulators can be entirely legal in some circumstances, such as the playing of homebrew games.
However, in the case of Dolphin, Twitter user @LuigiBlood has suggested that the emulator itself is at fault because it includes the Wii Common Key, a cryptographic key used by the Wii to decrypt games.
This has been backed up by developer and emulation expert Modern Vintage Gamer, who explains in a new video how the Dolphin emulator may not be legally protected, given that its inclusion of the Wii Common Key means the software actively circumvents anti-piracy measures.
@LuigiBlood quoted a part of Nintendo’s DMCA takedown which states: “The Dolphin emulator operates by incorporating these cryptographic keys without Nintendo’s authorisation and decrypting the ROMs at or immediately before runtime”.
The user also
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