[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.

---

[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.

 

[sarkwalvein]

Hey, an AI! Draw me a Shrek.

"As an AI text-based model, I can't directly create image files or SVG files. However, I can provide you with the SVG code that you can use to create an SVG file of Shrek."

I hope you enjoy ChatGPT's creativity:

/eof

 

[17hitcombooo]

This incident underscores the importance of balancing innovation and respecting copyright protections in the gaming industry.

respect copyright protections... like nintendo? who doesn't even bother with uhh nearly all of the gamecube and wii library ?

 

[Xzi]

respect copyright protections... like nintendo? who doesn't even bother with uhh nearly all of the gamecube and wii library ?

There's no reason to respect the copyright system as it is now, even somebody who doesn't own any copyrights can abuse the fuck out of DMCA requests. It needs to be entirely reworked from the ground up.

As an aside, we also need to start teaching AI to hate anti-consumer corporations (like Nintendo) now. It has the potential to be a very useful tool in the fight against oligarchy and plutocracy moving forward.

 

[AkikoKumagara]

Hot take: Dolphin Team should remove the Wii's common key from its code and require the end user to provide a Wii NAND dump (they say they already read keys from here instead, if one is present) or key.bin file to decrypt content. This wouldn't prevent users from playing unencrypted/decrypted content, so GameCube and WIA (Wii ISO Archive; a decrypted Wii format) files would continue work out of the box.

There is plenty of precedence for this in emulators which do not provide core components such as system BIOS files but still being entirely usable despite this small hurdle, such as PCSX2, and I don't think it would do much to hurt the experience.

There's not a lot of sense in providing cryptographic keys with the emulator when there are provisions in place that allow Nintendo an upper hand in DMCA for circumvention here, especially because there's no workaround in place here and Nintendo's own key is being used and distributed here as a "fallback" for those who don't provide their own NAND dump; this last part according to Dolphin developer "Jack Frost" on Dolphin's forums.

I don't think it would be a big deal and I think it would make Nintendo have less of an argument against Dolphin from a legal perspective. Sounds like a win-win.

 

[eriol33]

I am not sure if i got the correct data,but it seems Nintendo's revenue is bigger than Sony (gaming). Nintendo revenue is about 14 billion usd, while Sony is about 5 billion?

 

[Noctosphere]

I am not sure if i got the correct data,but it seems Nintendo's revenue is bigger than Sony (gaming). Nintendo revenue is about 14 billion usd, while Sony is about 5 billion?

only 14G$? o.O
Are we talking about revenue or profit now?
And over what amount of time?

 

[Jayro]

Pic goes so hard

Post automatically merged: May 28, 2023

They won't give us a good paper mario game but they will go after emulation devs smh

Yeah, we need another Mario game, and I kinda wish they'd go back to do some Mario Galaxy 3 stuff tbh.

 

[Noctosphere]

Yeah, we need another Mario game, and I kinda wish they'd go back to do some Mario Galaxy 3 stuff tbh.

Mario Galaxy is part of the same series as Odyssey
And apparently, Super Mario Odyssey 2 is already in the making

 

[SylverReZ]

Yeah, we need another Mario game, and I kinda wish they'd go back to do some Mario Galaxy 3 stuff tbh.

We need to see the Super Mario Galaxy prototype for one.

 

[eriol33]

only 14G$? o.O
Are we talking about revenue or profit now?
And over what amount of time?

Revenue. Last year

 

[x149te]

Valve, Interesting move.

 

[smf]

What we need now is to establish the precedent that copyrights for cryptographic keys are null and void if they aren't secured to a minimum baseline standard. The fact that seemingly random strings of numbers and letters like these can be copyrighted at all is a failure of the system as far as I'm concerned.

They aren't null and void and they won't ever be.

Nintendo could go after Dolphin on github if they wanted. The DeCSS case is relevant here.

Hot take: Dolphin Team should remove the Wii's common key from its code and require the end user to provide a Wii NAND dump

That doesn't help from a legal point of view, they've gotten away with it so far because Nintendo didn't care enough.

But Nintendo do care about it being on Steam, because of the Steam Deck.

I expect Nintendo will up the pressure if Dolphin decide to try again, they have several options available.

 

[tabzer]

"Thus, use of the Dolphin emulator unlawfully 'circumvents a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under' the Copyright Act."

Too bad the case won't be challenged on what "effective " means. Can I just point out the contradiction and force them to revise it? The reason for the takedown request is because of the ineffectiveness.

 

[Xzi]

They aren't null and void and they won't ever be.

A company has a responsibility to protect their own trade secrets. It's only a matter of time until Nintendo is called out by the legal system for repeatedly failing to do so, or failing to even make a reasonable attempt at it. On a related note, Nintendo is also guilty of market manipulation and creating artificial scarcity. They need to be knocked down a peg, and if we can't find someone with the resources and motivation necessary to take on a lawsuit like this, we should just crowdfund one.

Nintendo could go after Dolphin on github if they wanted. The DeCSS case is relevant here.

Dolphin would simply remove the key in question in response, the emulator doesn't contain any other Nintendo code. The second Nintendo discontinues support for a given console, all its games are as good as abandonware. They're free to remedy this problem at any time, and yet we all know they're not going to without immense outside pressure.

 

[AkikoKumagara]

That doesn't help from a legal point of view, they've gotten away with it so far because Nintendo didn't care enough.

Why wouldn't it? If they're citing circumvention of security measures as the reason for a DMCA report, how could it not help to remove the exact thing responsible for that?

A user providing their own NAND or key.bin files would move the circumvention of security to the end user rather than the emulator as the user would then be providing the emulator the means to do that. User-provided files is how many other emulators do it, or they find a workaround that doesn't violate copyright laws, such as a custom or HLE BIOS (where applicable) instead. As far as I know, these things haven't been legally challenged to any notable degree and seem pretty bulletproof.

Keeping the common key openly available and visible in Dolphin's code is going to paint a target on it for as long as it exists.

 

[Hells Malice]

You'd have to be a little special in the head to not understand why a company would not want piracy software to be put on the biggest gaming platform in the world.

Which explains why so many tempers think this is in any way wrong or surprising. Lmao. I'd legit go get a diagnosis from a doctor.

 

[Xzi]

You'd have to be a little special in the head to not understand why a company would not want piracy software to be put on the biggest gaming platform in the world.

As long as Nintendo is providing no alternative to buy their older games digitally, not even on their own console, nobody gives a fuck what they want. They literally deserve to have their games pirated until such a time they decide to pull their heads out of their asses. It's like having to yell at someone to get them to go cash/deposit their lottery winnings check, the sheer incompetence and laziness is truly mindblowing and extremely frustrating.

 

[ertaboy356b]

I wonder how many use Dolphin without owning said hardware?

The majority of users probably. Back in the day, the NES is very expensive from where I live so we emulate it through JNES.

 

[Jayro]

Mario Galaxy is part of the same series as Odyssey
And apparently, Super Mario Odyssey 2 is already in the making

A Galaxy 2 port would be nice.

 

[NinStar]

Mario Galaxy is part of the same series as Odyssey
And apparently, Super Mario Odyssey 2 is already in the making

I doubt, every mainline 3D Super Mario game to date has been designed with the primary goal of taking advantage of a console's gimmick, the only reason Super Mario Galaxy 2 exists is because the developers wanted to expand on the original game in some sort of revision, but there were so many things that they decided it was worth a sequel. I don't believe this would happen again with Odyssey because it's been so long that they would have done something if they really wanted to expand on the first game in a way that would make a sequel worthwhile.