The famous Dolphin Emulator, the go-to program for emulating Nintendo’s GameCube and WIi games, has had its Steam release postponed indefinitely due to a cease and desist order from Nintendo. The owners of the emulator said so this week after noticing that the software’s Steam listing had been removed from the platform until the issue was resolved. While people can still use Dolphin Emulator outside of Steam, it’s unclear when – or if, at this point – the emulator will actually come to Steam.
Wario64 from Twitter and others noticed friday that Dolphin Emulator had been delisted on Steam, with the product page no longer accessible despite having been live for a few months after the announcement of the Steam release of Dolphin Emulator months ago. Some wondered if this was a mistake as this kind of thing can happen from time to time for pretty normal reasons but based on a statement shared by the creators of Dolphin Emulator on the website of the program, this is not the case here.
“It is with great disappointment that we have to announce that the release of Dolphin on Steam has been postponed indefinitely,” the statement from Dolphin Emulator reads. “We have been notified by Valve that Nintendo has issued a cease and desist citing the DMCA against Dolphin’s Steam page, and have removed Dolphin from Steam until the matter is resolved. We are currently reviewing our options and We’ll have a more in-depth answer in the near future.”
https://t.co/2Y3uT0G7Ev
– Dolphin emulator (@[email protected]) (@Dolphin_Emu) May 27, 2023
Although Dolphin has been around for some time now as an emulation solution for those looking to play some of Nintendo’s older games, it has been pointed out that in this particular case Nintendo may have motives for its action in justice. Twitter User LuigiBlood quoted Nintendo’s DMCA which stated that “The Dolphin emulator works by embedding these cryptographic keys without Nintendo’s permission and decrypting the ROMs at or immediately before runtime.” It’s too early to tell what this might mean for Dolphin as a whole, but it’s safe to say that Steam’s situation likely won’t be resolved anytime soon.
Nintendo has been notoriously contentious in the past when it comes to its classic games, ROMs, emulation, and related areas. The most recent situation with Gary Bowser is a perfect example. Although Nintendo has a legal basis to stand on in many of these cases, the company has also been criticized for its preservation (or lack thereof) when it comes to older games on the Game Boy Advance, GameCube and others. platforms with games that are getting harder and harder to play unless you own the original console and the game itself.
Dolphin should have more updates in the future as development continues, so we’ll see what happens to the emulator’s Steam plans.