Wii emulator Dolphin hit with DMCA notice by Nintendo to block Steam launch

Earlier this year, the team behind the Dolphin emulator announced that an official Steam launch is soon on the way, taking a big step forward in general accessibility for the popular Nintendo GameCube and Wii emulator. However, with the launch looming, it has been hit with a major Nintendo-sized roadblock.

"Dolphin on Steam Indefinitely Postponed," the development team posted earlier today on its official website, confirming that a DMCA claim from Nintendo has been received by Valve against the emulator's launch on the platform. The full post says:

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 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.

We appreciate your patience in the meantime.

As mentioned in the post, the Steam store page for Dolphin is no longer available, with the link simply sending users to the Steam home page instead.

The Dolphin team now must make the decision to counter the claim with Valve and possibly take things up with Nintendo's lawyers. Or they can go along with the claim and do away with the Steam launch completely.

PC Gamer has managed to get a hold of the legal notice in question, which reads:

"Because the Dolphin emulator violates Nintendo’s intellectual property rights, including but not limited to its rights under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)’s Anti-Circumvention and AntiTrafficking provisions, 17 U.S.C. § 1201, we provide this notice to you of your obligation to remove the offering of the Dolphin emulator from the Steam store."

"The Dolphin emulator operates by incorporating these cryptographic keys without Nintendo’s authorization and decrypting the ROMs at or immediately before runtime. Thus, use of the Dolphin emulator unlawfully 'circumvent[s] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under' the Copyright Act," another section reads.

As PC Gamer also notes, previous lawsuits based in the United States involving emulation, like Sony's fights against Bleem! and Connectix, have ended up favoring emulators' side. However, we will have to see if Dolphin wants to end up in a legal battle over a Steam version. The free and open-source Dolphin emulator's website and GitHub portals are unaffected.

Source Dolphin-emu via PC Gamer