Dolphin Emulator No Longer Coming to Steam

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Dolphin Emulator, the program most notably used to emulate Nintendo's GameCube games, will not be coming to Steam after all. The Dolphin Emulator team announced that this week in an update on its Steam situation after the program briefly showed up on the PC platform only to be taken off not long afterwards. People speculated on whether it was Nintendo that pulled the plug on the Steam release, Valve that didn't allow it, or the Dolphin team getting cold feet due to potential legal concerns, so the announcement shared on Thursday addressed some of those questions, too.

After seeking legal counsel, the Dolphin team confirmed this week that Nintendo did not formally send a DMCA notice to Valve or Dolphin. Instead, it was Valve that reached out to Nintendo, Dolphin leadership says.

"What actually happened was that Valve's legal department contacted Nintendo to inquire about the announced release of Dolphin Emulator on Steam," Dolphin said. "In reply to this, a lawyer representing Nintendo of America requested Valve prevent Dolphin from releasing on the Steam store, citing the DMCA as justification. Valve then forwarded us the statement from Nintendo's lawyers, and told us that we had to come to an agreement with Nintendo in order to release on Steam."

Dolphin acknowledged that the "frantic" statement put out when the Steam release was first paused didn't help the situation since it led to speculation without many details to accompany those theories. Dolphin said at the time that "Nintendo has issued a cease and desist citing the DMCA against Dolphin's Steam page" which caused it to be removed from Steam.

https://t.co/jEzd4yMiv4
— Dolphin Emulator (@[email protected]) (@Dolphin_Emu) July 20, 2023

But given Nintendo's historical stance against piracy and, by association, wariness of emulation methods, Dolphin said that seeking approval from Nintendo to get the emulator up and running on Steam would be "impossible."

"So, after a long stay of silence, we have a difficult announcement to make," Dolphin said. "We are abandoning our efforts to release Dolphin on Steam. Valve ultimately runs the store and can set any condition they wish for software to appear on it. But given Nintendo's long-held stance on emulation, we find Valve's requirement for us to get approval from Nintendo for a Steam release to be impossible."

The Steam situation also brought about discussions of the legality of Dolphin, particularly when it comes to emulating Wii games which it can also do. Dolphin addressed those concerns, too, while saying "We do not believe that Dolphin is in any legal danger."