Dolphin Emulator was developed by the Dolphin team as an open source tool that allows PC gamers to play Wii and GameCube games in high resolution and with enhanced graphics. However, the process was undermined by Nintendo’s DMCA move.
The Dolphin Emulator team announced earlier this year that they were planning to release the emulator on Steam. For this purpose, they created a page on Steam and said that they would start offering this emulator to users after months of work on their blog.
Nintendo’s DMCA move
Nintendo has sent Valve a DMCA strike to prevent Dolphin from being released on Steam. The DMCA notice alleged that Dolphin “infringed on Nintendo’s intellectual property rights” and was an “illegal emulator”.
(The DMCA, translated as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, is a US copyright law of 1998. It was created to block technology, devices, or services that ignore measures to control access to copyrighted works.)
Valve also removed Dolphin from Steam upon this notification. The Dolphin Emulator team, on the other hand, stated on their website that the Steam version of the emulator has been delayed indefinitely. The team said that they will give a more detailed answer on the subject and are investigating their options:
“It is with great disappointment that we have to announce that the Steam release of Dolphin has been delayed indefinitely. We have been informed by Valve that Nintendo has issued a DMCA strike against Dolphin’s Steam page and is removing Dolphin from Steam until the matter is resolved. We are currently exploring our options and will provide a more detailed response in the near future.
Thank you for your patience during this time.”
So why did Nintendo take a DMCA strike from Valve and what will happen after this process?
The notice letter to Valve refers to the DMCA’s anti-infringement clauses. In particular, the Dolphin emulator allegedly works without Nintendo’s permission by including cryptographic keys and decrypting ROMs at or just before runtime. So in a way, the games are taken from Nintendo without permission, this is the reason for the warning.
When a notice is sent with DMCA justification, the party receiving the notice (Steam) has to wait 10-14 days. If the copyright owner (Nintendo) sues the alleged infringer within this time, the material (in this case, the Dolphin Emulator) remains closed. If no action is taken, however, Nintendo must re-enable or allow access to the allegedly infringing activity (emulator).
So Dolphin will not be on Steam for now, but the project’s GitHub page and official website were not affected by the event. Also, there are no direct warnings to the developers. We just have to wait and see, as there are no lawsuits filed at the moment.
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