These days we learned that Nintendo had asked Valve to cancel the launch of the dolphin emulator in the Steam store, and this is something that, although surprising at first, anyone could have predicted. But why is Nintendo so obsessed with canceling all kinds of projects that have to do with them from third parties? Well, it seems that they have explained it.
Dolphin is not coming to Steam
It has happened countless times, and the examples go as far as small fan projects. Nintendo does not forgive any use cases of its intellectual property, and unsurprisingly, it has completely canceled the release of the Dolphin emulator on the Steam store. The news of the launch caused a lot of expectation. The famous emulator would finally arrive at the application store so that anyone interested could download the latest version without fear of obtaining fraudulent versions.
Thus, we could install Dolphin directly on the Steam Deck, for example, or have the application always at hand next to our game library. The problem is that Dolphin is basically used to run Nintendo GameCube and Wii ROMS, so as you can understand, Nintendo doesn’t like that one bit.
Why Dolphin is illegal
Unfortunately the Dolphin developers have announced that the release of the emulator on Steam will be postponed indefinitely, so it will most likely never land. The reason for the new decision is in the request that Nintendo sent to Valve, since it sent a cease and desist citing the Digital Age Copyright Act (DMCA).
Can Nintendo sue a tool that runs ROMs but doesn’t include them? Technically yes, since the software includes Wii keys in the source code that are used to decrypt the ROMs. Therefore, Nintendo material is being used without permission.
question of self love
That the company wants to defend its own interests should not surprise anyone, but if someone still does not understand Nintendo’s obsession with banning this type of project, the company has made some statements to Kotaku with which they are quite clear about it:
“Nintendo is committed to protecting the hard work and creativity of game developers and engineers. This emulator illegally bypasses Nintendo’s protection measures and runs illegal copies of games. Using illegal emulators or illegal copies of games hurts the development of other companies’ intellectual property and, in turn, you expect others to do the same.”
It is clear that the company has very specific and perfectly justifiable reasons, so it is within its rights that it has the power to overthrow this type of tool, no matter how useful it may be in some cases.
Fountain: Kotaku
Via: GoNintendo
