Read the emails: Valve helped Nintendo kick the Dolphin Emulator off Steam

theverge.com:

By Sean Hollister, a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.

Did you hear the one about how Nintendo blocked the Dolphin Emulator from making its way to Steam, purportedly with a DMCA takedown? That’s not the whole story.

According to copies of communication that the Dolphin Team provided toThe Verge, Valve helped Nintendo kick Dolphin out — first by bringing the Wii and GameCube emulator to Nintendo’s attention in the first place, and second by unilaterally deciding to pull the plug without giving Dolphin an out.

“We operate Steam as an open platform, but that relies on creators shipping only things they have the legal right to distribute”

Valve doesn’t dispute this. “Given Nintendo’s history of taking action against some emulators, we brought this to their attention proactively after the Dolphin team announced it was coming soon to Steam,” Valve spokesperson Kaci Aitchison Boyle tells The Verge.

That feels weird to me — but the emails also show Valve may have had very good reason to nip Dolphin in the bud.

Here’s the entire email that Valve received from Nintendo’s lawyers on May 26th, so you can follow along:

First, bottom of the first paragraph: “Thank you for bringing the announced offering of the Dolphin emulator on Valve’s Steam store to Nintendo’s attention,” Nintendo’s lawyer says. In a series of Mastodon posts on May 27th, former Dolphin Foundation treasurer Pierre Bourdon suggested that Valve poked the bear, and this — plus Valve’s comment to The Verge — confirms it.

But second, the email confirms this is nothing likea typical “DMCA takedown request” — and that may be why Valve didn’t give