• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Valve helped Nintendo kick the Dolphin Emulator off Steam

Draugoth

Draugoth

Gold Member
www.theverge.com

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

But it may have a very good reason for playing chicken.
www.theverge.com www.theverge.com

According to copies of communication that the Dolphin Team provided to The 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.
Click to expand...

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.

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:

nintendo_valve_email_1_redacted.jpg



“Thank you for bringing the announced offering of the Dolphin emulator on Valve’s Steam store to Nintendo’s attention,”
Click to expand...

Nintendo’s lawyer says. Email via Dolphin Team.
 
Last edited:
Quasicat

Quasicat

Member
Now that it’s come out the Dolphin uses some sort of encryption technology that was pulled from the Wii console, this makes sense. Hopefully the developers behind Dolphin will go in and remove the code in question and release a “clean” version.
 
DeepEnigma

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
Quasicat said:
Now that it’s come out the Dolphin uses some sort of encryption technology that was pulled from the Wii console, this makes sense. Hopefully the developers behind Dolphin will go in and remove the code in question and release a “clean” version.
Click to expand...
Reminds me of the CIC lockout chip days of the NES and the Tengen fiasco.
 
Nydius

Nydius

Member
I thought this was known from the beginning? People just had a typical knee-jerk "Nintendo being bad guys again!" response to the headlines without reading the articles. All the original articles I saw on it said the same thing: Valve initiated the discourse. Likely to cover their asses against potential litigation if they went ahead and let it on their service.
 
Midn1ght

Midn1ght

Member
rofif said:
I honestly don't think most pc gamers care about nintendo games.
PC master race is too proud to play kids game mario probably
Click to expand...
Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, Rocket League, Fall Guys, etc...

Hello?

I'll give you that Mario, Donkey Kong and Kirby probably wouldn't be as popular on PC (Sonic is very popular on PC tho)

But Zelda, Animal Crossing, Splatoon, Smash Brothers, Pokemon,...

Come on now...
 
DemonGamerTTT

DemonGamerTTT

Member
rofif said:
I honestly don't think most pc gamers care about nintendo games.
PC master race is too proud to play kids game mario probably
Click to expand...

First of all, kids games are fun and relaxing. They help people to escape from the stress and worries of everyday life. They also bring back happy memories of my childhood and make me feel young at heart.

Let the grown ups fuck around from time to time...
 
Barakov

Barakov

Gold Member
EheQkpc.jpg

I don't like this.

Still this is smart move on Valve's part to keep Nintendo and its' gorillas happy. Probably a bad move to show the Yuzu emulator on that Steam Deck mock up.

Really don't want to bring this up, but it kinda begs the question why Retroarch is okay and this isn't.
 
Captain Toad

Captain Toad

Banned
Why would they go out of their way to piss off Nintendo who lives in the courts over Dolphin? If I was Valve, I wouldn't anger them over something so trivial to them.
 
93xfan

93xfan

Banned
StealthGoblin said:
Well if I were Valve I wouldn’t want to get involved with Nintendo’s lawyers. Keep the beast happy.
Click to expand...
Beyond that, there’s no money in people emulating games. Wouldn’t you rather they buy games on your platform rather than enjoy something that doesn’t make you any money? There’s even a risk the customer may discover they like classic games better than some of the games you’re sellling
 
Last edited:
theclaw135

theclaw135

Banned
BlackTron said:
I agree, I expect better/wiser from Steam.
Click to expand...

More that the Dolphin team slipped up. Wii games are encrypted, and the DMCA is federal law that places many convoluted (and frequently amended I might add) legal restrictions on how/when it's acceptable to circumvent DRM.
 
BlackTron

BlackTron

Member
theclaw135 said:
More that the Dolphin team slipped up. Wii games are encrypted, and the DMCA is federal law that places many convoluted (and frequently amended I might add) legal restrictions on how/when it's acceptable to circumvent DRM.
Click to expand...
I know exactly what happened. I think it was unwise of Steam.
 
BlackTron

BlackTron

Member
kvltus lvlzvs said:
Probably goes to show a lot about how steams marketplace process works. Would explain the profound amounts of shovelware. The steam marketplace is like ancapistan apparently
Click to expand...
theclaw135 said:
Well yeah, Steam did post a "coming soon" page for software potentially in violation of the DMCA (even if nobody could download it).
Click to expand...

Can't even say they were hardly paying attention and it slipped through the cracks with that coming soon page. So it's even worse really, showed they were fully cognizant of the whole thing.

I'm not really arguing about semantics whether it was legal or not, just that it wasn't smart. This is the type of thing that leads to problems, at a glance.
 
tkscz

tkscz

Member
Out side of the steam deck, what purpose would they need to port the emulator over to steam? Dolphin is one of the easiest emulators to install, I can figure out why they did this.
 
TrueLegend

TrueLegend

Member
Emulation doesn't violate shit. I think it's rather extra generous that we even discuss and talk about their ban. Corporations that are trying to do this are doing criminal actions under the guise of law citing the selective interpretations of the law. If emulation is a crime Nintendo is a bigger criminal in this regard since they are emulating so many things that they never invented like computers, the way hard drives work, down to the fucking concrete which they use for building offices.
 
Tams

Tams

Member
TrueLegend said:
Emulation doesn't violate shit. I think it's rather extra generous that we even discuss and talk about their ban. Corporations that are trying to do this are doing criminal actions under the guise of law citing the selective interpretations of the law. If emulation is a crime Nintendo is a bigger criminal in this regard since they are emulating so many things that they never invented like computers, the way hard drives work, down to the fucking concrete which they use for building offices.
Click to expand...

Read the last sentence of the posted page of the letter.
 
O

onnextflix5

Member
Well now we know why ms blocked emulators on Xbox lol, fuck ms,Nintendo and valve, emulation is 100% legal, even Nintendo uses emulation, they would have a hard time convincing any judge to conclude otherwise.
 
rofif

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
Topher said:
I don't think you have a good understanding of either the PC or Nintendo gaming demographics my man.
Click to expand...
Ask my coworkers and they will say yay for witcher 3 and battefield 5 but laugh at mario.
Not me. I would play it. I never had a switch but I will get switch 2 maybe
 
Topher

Topher

Gold Member
rofif said:
Ask my coworkers and they will say yay for witcher 3 and battefield 5 but laugh at mario.
Not me. I would play it. I never had a switch but I will get switch 2 maybe
Click to expand...

You think your coworkers are representative of.......what again?
 
jshackles

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Isn't there a Dolphin core for Retroarch? Retroarch is on Steam.

So, the fact it's not there as standalone seems like a bit of a non-issue.
 
Stuart360

Stuart360

Member
Its ironic really that the 2 things publishers and studios hate the most, piracy and emulation, are the 2 things that allow us to play old games today, the only way to playa lot of old games today, and are the 2 leading factors in game preservation, something that should be super important to gamers and the medium as a whole.
 
Last edited:
IFireflyl

IFireflyl

Gold Member
rofif said:
It's not a hot take.
Click to expand...

Based on the ratio of likes to responses, it definitely was a hot take.

rofif said:
pcmr dont care for nintendo games. They see it as kids games.
I am not talking about myself here.
I am not pcmr
Click to expand...

The best part of PCMR is having choices/options. I am a part of the PCMR. I have almost 10 TB of ROMs from various consoles. I rip my Switch games from the disk so I can move them to my PC when I'm not traveling (in which case I use my Switch). The friends I have who are part of the PCMR also enjoy emulating console games on their gaming PCs. Quit speaking for everyone. PCMR is doing fine without your white knighting against them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Nintendo Switch 2’s biggest competition isn’t PS5 or Xbox – it’s portable PCs
Opinion Hardware 2
74
4K
Deerock71 replied
The Steam Deck | Review Mega Thread
News Analysis Review 2
80
10K
EekTheKat replied
GDC: Steam Controller hands-on impressions (read OP)
2 3
107
17K
ashecitism replied
CES 2014 Steam Hardware (and Software?) Partners - Updates in the OP
2 3 4
179
24K
HariKari replied
Fighting Games Weekly | May 11-17 | Sticks and Stones Break Zangief's Bones
34 35 36 37 38
2K
143K
Emperor Bohe replied
Top Bottom