[UPDATE] The entry on the Dolphin blog has been changed slightly to more accurately reflect the situation. While their original post yesterday said Valve had received a DMCA takedown notice from Nintendo, the revision now claims it is a cease & desist order citing the Anti-Circumvention provisions in the DMCA.

Pierre Bourdon, a former member of the Dolphin team, has claimed on Mastodon that the order originated with Valve. He reports that Valve reached out to Nintendo regarding Dolphin, and Nintendo issued the C&D in response. If this is the case, it would impact Dolphin's available options for recourse as Valve retains the right to remove listings from their storefront. It also means, however, that Nintendo is not pursuing legal action against the Dolphin team right now.

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[ORIGINAL STORY] Back in March, the team behind the Dolphin GameCube/Wii emulator announced that they would be bringing Dolphin to Steam sometime in the second quarter of 2023. However, the release seems to be indefinitely delayed after Valve received a DMCA notice from Nintendo. Posting on their blog today, the team announced that Steam had contacted them to let them know of the takedown notice and that the page will be down "until the matter is settled." The team is currently investigating their options and promise a more in-depth update as soon as possible.

PC Gamer claims to have reviewed the document, dated today, May 26. It reads, in part:

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 a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under' the Copyright Act.

Nintendo is attacking the Dolphin Emulator under the DMCA's Anti-Circumvention provisions, citing the inclusion of the Wii's common key in Dolphin's source code. Nintendo argues that because the common key allows Dolphin to decrypt data, it allows users to illegally circumvent measures put in place to control access to works protected under the Copyright Act - in this case, GameCube and Wii games.

Dolphin is somewhat unique in distributing this key already built in to its source code, as most emulators require the end user to provide a key or BIOS on their own. Emulator frontend RetroArch has also been added to Steam but, contrary to Dolphin, hasn't been the target of DMCA attacks by Nintendo, likely because its builds and cores require external BIOS and key files not found within their source code.

As of now, it appears as if this only affects Dolphin Emulator's upcoming release on Steam. It is still available to download on the official website.

 

[Hassal]

It's also weird that they didn't do this when RetroArch was added to Steam. RetroArch actually lets you emulate games Nintendo is still trying to sell (via NSO) so you think they would have reached out and/or Nintendo would have issued a C&D for that too

Looks like there's more to this than meets the eyes. Nintendo is against emulation in general why did Valve even bother politely asking them is what I don't get. Valve could mention every emulation in existence it would be a straight no from Nintendo.

 

[gaga941021]

Looks like there's more to this than meets the eyes. Nintendo is against emulation in general why did Valve even bother politely asking them is what I don't get. Valve could mention every emulation in existence it would be a straight no from Nintendo.

Don't act dumb. Valve reached out, in order to cover their asses.

 

[Hassal]

Don't act dumb. Valve reached out, in order to cover their asses.

Read what I said again. Nintendo isn't okay with emulation. Valve could have said RetroArch the answer would have been the same to take down any Nintendo emulators.

 

[TotalJustice]

Turns out it wasn't a DMCA notice, what actually happened was that Valve contacted Ninty on their own and asked if it was ok and Ninty said no. Since there was no DMCA notification there is nothing Dolphin can do since the normal counter-notice procedure doesn't apply. Please update/fix the title and original post.

https://mastodon.delroth.net/@delroth/110440301402516214

If that's how it played out, it's a bit strange from Valves to part to even both asking Nintendo. We all know their stance on emulation. Though I guess it was more asking "are we legally okay to do this?", to which Nintendo said "no".

And why ask now? Why not in the beginning? Or maybe they did and it took this long for Nintendo to respond.

Which if it did take this long, then maybe N didn't know about the common key inclusion, and so now they know. This would explain why N hadn't already issued a takedown notice to GitHub.

However now, maybe they'll issue a DMCA notice on GitHub as well. By then, dolphin would've (hopefully) scrubbed the key from the git history. Although, all the forks will still have it, so those could get nuked

 

[Jayro]

https://odinlaw.com/what-is-dmca-anti-circumvention/

But the emulator doesn't circumvent anything, that's all done on the user's side of things, so the devs are (once again) in the clear.

 

[linuxares]

But the emulator doesn't circumvent anything, that's all done on the user's side of things, so the devs are (once again) in the clear.

If they include the keys, we suddenly enter the "circumvention" topic. If you look at the link, you get it.

 

[Kioku]

If they include the keys, we suddenly enter the "circumvention" topic. If you look at the link, you get it.

That’s the highlight of the issue at play. Wonder how long it’ll take them to change this…

 

[linuxares]

That’s the highlight of the issue at play. Wonder how long it’ll take them to change this…

I hope so. It's not hard to find these keys and it keeps Dolphin safe

 

[Jayro]

If they include the keys, we suddenly enter the "circumvention" topic. If you look at the link, you get it.

They wouldn't dare include the keys, that's once again a user's problem.

 

[Hassal]

If that's how it played out, it's a bit strange from Valves to part to even both asking Nintendo. We all know their stance on emulation. Though I guess it was more asking "are we legally okay to do this?", to which Nintendo said "no".

And why ask now? Why not in the beginning? Or maybe they did and it took this long for Nintendo to respond.

Which if it did take this long, then maybe N didn't know about the common key inclusion, and so now they know. This would explain why N hadn't already issued a takedown notice to GitHub.

However now, maybe they'll issue a DMCA notice on GitHub as well. By then, dolphin would've (hopefully) scrubbed the key from the git history. Although, all the forks will still have it, so those could get nuked

It would only make sense if Valve knew about the keys but Nintendo didn't. Good ol' corporations backing each other's back. Now that Nintendo is made aware just wait for Github take downs.

 

[linuxares]

They wouldn't dare include the keys, that's once again a user's problem.

Lets do this DMCA safely, https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin/tree/master/Source/Core/Core/IOS In here is a file with the common key etc.

 

[Bladexdsl]

no one seen this coming. and to all the guys in that thread who said nintendo won't do anything: HA! HA!

 

[linuxares]

no one seen this coming. and to all the guys in that thread who said nintendo won't do anything: HA! HA!

Read the update

 

[AlexMCS]

Welcome to Copyright law. It's stupid as all hell!

Time to proudly ignore it then, as we do most pointless laws.

 

[Hassal]

no one seen this coming. and to all the guys in that thread who said nintendo won't do anything: HA! HA!

If the issue is the inclusion of keys, they can just remove them and even reinstate the emulator on Steam. Neither of the two corporations can make legal claims against the emulator without opening a losing war.

 

[Flame]

In solidarity with dolphin, I'm going to create my own NES emulator. From code which I stole from the giga leak, which Nintendo stole from the emulator scene.

 

[sarkwalvein]

In solidarity with dolphin, I'm going to create my own NES emulator. From code which I stole from the giga leak, which Nintendo stole from the emulator scene.

Well, they say "it's no crime to steal from a thief".
(though the legal system may disagree)

 

[HarveyHouston]

Dolphin Emulator is perfectly legal, as it incorporates no actual Nintendo files (these files are supplied by the end-user). This C&D is stupid.

 

[hertzian56]

Dolphin must have had dollar signs in their eyes to want it on steam otherwise why bother, they probably get and have gotten a lot of donations and it's not like anyone who's into vg's and computers hasn't used it or can't find it. Just sites like this and all the other vg sites cover emulators, some more than others.

That being said nintnedont is just another ea in the making if not there already. They seem to really survive off of a few things: 1. a home market obsessed w their consoles and games 2. Nostalgia of gamers outside japan who grew up w their games 3. About 3 ips that are consistently top games mario, zelda, ? 4. The rep of being child friendly games, which is quite dangerous to inattentive parents but look at the world we live in now.

Their glory days are long past them and they'd do better wide releasing games on their own digital store, maybe collab w sony or samsung for a nintendo centered phone for on the go gaming idk

 

[sarkwalvein]

Dolphin Emulator is perfectly legal, as it incorporates no actual Nintendo files (these files are supplied by the end-user). This C&D is stupid.

But it does contains the contents or partial content of a "file" stored inside some secure part of the bios/otp of the Wii's starlet chip; i.e. the private key.

And as explained before it is included to be precise in the file Source/Core/Core/IOS/IOSC.cpp lines 576 and 577 (and some other keys in following lines) of the current commit (commit #34527cadcc) for the master branch of Dolphin's source code in github.

<joke removed>

PS: thinking again about it, better I remove the joke... I don't want it to be the source of stupid behavior and harassment or something.