Nintendo explains its decision to block Dolphin’s Steam release, saying it ‘stifles innovation’

Nintendo has explained why it took action to block an upcoming Steam release of popular GameCube and Wii emulator Dolphin.

The team behind the emulator recently stated on its website that the Steam release of Dolphin had been “indefinitely postponed”, saying that according to Valve, Nintendo had “issued a cease and desist citing the DMCA against Dolphin’s Steam page”.

While it’s often argued that emulators themselves are legal and it’s the use of ROM images of copyrighted games which is illegal, it’s been recently suggested that Dolphin may be an exception because it includes the Wii Common Key, a cryptographic key used by the Wii to decrypt games.

This appears to be the argument Nintendo is using, claiming that the use of the Wii Common Key in the emulator means it’s actively bypassing piracy protection measures (most other emulators either don’t do this, or require players to source their own console BIOS files to protect the emulators legally).

In a statement to Kotaku, a Nintendo spokesperson said: “Nintendo is committed to protecting the hard work and creativity of video game engineers and developers.

“This emulator illegally circumvents Nintendo’s protection measures and runs illegal copies of games.

“Using illegal emulators or illegal copies of games harms development and ultimately stifles innovation. Nintendo respects the intellectual property rights of other companies, and in turn expects others to do the same.”

Following the news that the Steam version of Dolphin had been blocked, developer and emulation expert Modern Vintage Gamer posted a video claiming that Dolphin may struggle to win this particular battle due to its use of the Wii Common Key.

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“This is something that Nintendo has obviously gone through and said ‘aha, these are ours, these belong to us, these are in our copyrighted BIOS files, these do not belong to you, and this is enough for us to now issue a DMCA takedown’,” he explained.

“To be completely honest with you guys, this is a big miss for Dolphin,” he continued. “They really need to get a handle of the situation and address this very quickly.

“I’m a little surprised that this only results in a removal or an indefinite takedown of Dolphin on Steam, and not the actual GitHub repository because, again, having stuff like this is a big no-no.”

Nintendo also recently issued multiple DMCA takedown requests to GitHub to remove a homebrew tool designed to make it possible to play Switch games on an emulator.