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News Dolphin emulator coming to Steam soon (update: nope)

S

Semi Lazy Gamer

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dolphin-emu.org

Coming Soon: Dolphin on Steam!

We are pleased to announce our great experiment - Dolphin is coming to Steam! Our store page is now live, and you can visit it with the handy widget below. However, due to how Steam works, you won't be able to download the emulator through Steam just yet. Feel free to wishlist us to be notified...
dolphin-emu.org dolphin-emu.org





 
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Mekanos said:
Extremely exciting as a brand new Steam Deck owner. Can't wait.
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Just go grab Emudeck rather than wait on this tbh. You'll get Dolphin set up with a bunch of other stuff using community configs, and you can still add EmulationStation or Dolphin directly into the Steam UI. You can go download it through Steam officially later if you want to support the team on that front. Edit: Oh it also has cloud save so it'll probably be worth switching over to the official version when it comes out.
 
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YolkFolk said:
Nintendo:

darth-vader-bacta-tank.gif
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sigh

Nintendo isn't going to do anything, they've never been able to.

Only times Nintendo went agaisnt emulation was when they spread FUD about UltraHLE and Virtual Boy Advance, but that's all they did. They wont ever try to bring down any emulator because Sony already fought that battle before them, and lost. Emulation is legal, emulators don't provide a single Nintendo asset, be it code, bioses or anything else, so the don't have grounds to even issue a C&D.

They're not even fighting agaisnt Yuzu aside of giving a call to Valve after they showed it on a Steam Deck official video.

So, can we just let this meme die already? It's tiring to see it resurface every time, with the person posting it seemingly having no idea of what Nintendo chases or not.
 
Amazing. That could actually get my brother to look into getting a PC as most of our GC discs have died to Disc rot (backed them all up luckily)

UI will be the biggest factor though. As much as I love Dolphin, the UI is... Well. It's a UI lol.

If this gives new life to the emulator and improves compatibility with some of the more problematic games (looking at you Shattered Memories) I am all for it.
 
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Reinhard Schneider said:
sigh

Nintendo isn't going to do anything, they've never been able to.

Only times Nintendo went agaisnt emulation was when they spread FUD about UltraHLE and Virtual Boy Advance, but that's all they did. They wont ever try to bring down any emulator because Sony already fought that battle before them, and lost. Emulation is legal, emulators don't provide a single Nintendo asset, be it code, bioses or anything else, so the don't have grounds to even issue a C&D.

They're not even fighting agaisnt Yuzu aside of giving a call to Valve after they showed it on a Steam Deck official video.

So, can we just let this meme die already? It's tiring to see it resurface every time, with the person posting it seemingly having no idea of what Nintendo chases or not.
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It’s a joke.
 
0
not anymore.
It is with much disappointment that we have to announce that the Dolphin on Steam release has been indefinitely postponed. We were notified by Valve that Nintendo has issued a DMCA against Dolphin's Steam page, and have removed Dolphin from Steam until the matter is settled. We are currently investigating our options and will have a more in-depth response in the near future.

We appreciate your patience in the meantime.
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do note the takedown is merely for the Steam version, and main development on the emulator will likely continue as normal for the forseeable future.
 
This entire endeavor was really dumb, and puts the emulation scene at risk. Incredibly unsurprising that Nintendo would have an issue with an emulator being officially listed and supported on a competitor's device and storefront.
 
Instro said:
This entire endeavor was really dumb, and puts the emulation scene at risk. Incredibly unsurprising that Nintendo would have an issue with an emulator being officially listed and supported on a competitor's device and storefront.
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That's the thing, RetroArch is already there and has emulators for multiple Nintendo consoles. Also, according to the DMCA itself, it's because Dolphin has cryptographic keys bundled (source is PCGamer: )

"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."
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This is still a super shitty and petty thing for Nintendo to do, mind. The TotK leaks must have been the straw that broke the camel's back and made them go absolutely feral.
 
Instro said:
This entire endeavor was really dumb, and puts the emulation scene at risk. Incredibly unsurprising that Nintendo would have an issue with an emulator being officially listed and supported on a competitor's device and storefront.
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Yep. It's a dick thing for Nintendo to do but unsurprising, advertising something that is a gateway to Nintendo piracy on an official platform is asking for trouble.
 
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Reinhard Schneider said:
sigh

Nintendo isn't going to do anything, they've never been able to.

Only times Nintendo went agaisnt emulation was when they spread FUD about UltraHLE and Virtual Boy Advance, but that's all they did. They wont ever try to bring down any emulator because Sony already fought that battle before them, and lost. Emulation is legal, emulators don't provide a single Nintendo asset, be it code, bioses or anything else, so the don't have grounds to even issue a C&D.

They're not even fighting agaisnt Yuzu aside of giving a call to Valve after they showed it on a Steam Deck official video.

So, can we just let this meme die already? It's tiring to see it resurface every time, with the person posting it seemingly having no idea of what Nintendo chases or not.
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Whomp whomp
 
How using unilateral emulation of Nintendo games and consoles as a SELLING point for a plateform and/or a rival hardware has anything to do with non lucrative gaming history preservation?

Sometimes I think people live in a bubble.
 
BassForever said:
Whomp whomp
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Do you know why they haven't gone agaisnt emulation yet? Because they don't have the legal grounds to do so.

But then, the Dolphin team had to go and include the encryption keys, wich is copyrighted material, in Dolphin. Not a single other developer did this.

Pretty sure this is the reason why the Dolphin core isn't available in the Steam version of Retroarch yet. By the way, Retrarch libretro hasn't been issued a DCMA yet, right?

So, i'm still right.

Seriously, last thing i expected when i woke up was finding such a childish reply. Check out what happened and why.
 
Yeah, this doesn't set a precedent against emulators. It sets a precedent against emulators including copyright materials in their own source code.

Honestly, the fact that Dolphin has been illegally distributing Wii common key for all these years is mind-blowing and you wouldn't expect something so incredibly dumb from such a talented team.
 
Paxie said:
This is still a super shitty and petty thing for Nintendo to do, mind
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It's really not. Emulators' legality hangs on the fact that each and every component on them is reverse engineered or based in the official documentation, but never taken directly from the source. That's why most emulators require you to provide either the bios, encryption Keys (in the case of Nintendo) or both. Dolphin and Cemu also allows you to provide a NAND dump if you want a copy of your system.

Encryption keys are a Nintendo copyrighted asset, and integrating them in the source code gives them grounds to act agaisnt them.

It kinda amazes me that they didnt use it to go directly agaisnt the emulator itself.

Anyways, the fix is really simple, they just need to take the encryption keys out of the source code. Once they do that, they'll be golden.
 
Reinhard Schneider said:
Do you know why they haven't gone agaisnt emulation yet? Because they don't have the legal grounds to do so.

But then, the Dolphin team had to go and include the encryption keys, wich is copyrighted material, in Dolphin. Not a single other developer did this.

Pretty sure this is the reason why the Dolphin core isn't available in the Steam version of Retroarch yet. By the way, Retrarch libretro hasn't been issued a DCMA yet, right?

So, i'm still right.

Seriously, last thing i expected when i woke up was finding such a childish reply. Check out what happened and why.
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Brah, you were so confident, and you were wrong. Just own it. I understand exactly why this happened with the encryption keys, the whole point was you being adamant nothing would happen, and then it did. The only childish response was yours.

Fun fact I have a copy of my wii nand on my laptop from a decade ago when I modded my wii.
 
BassForever said:
Brah, you were so confident, and you were wrong. Just own it. I understand exactly why this happened with the encryption keys, the whole point was you being adamant nothing would happen, and then it did. The only childish response was yours.

Fun fact I have a copy of my wii nand on my laptop from a decade ago when I modded my wii.
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I'm not wrong, but i'm not going to take it further than this.

The reason why Sony lost back in the day was because the Bios used by Bleem and Connectix were reverse engineered. Emulator developers have always been cautious enough to never use licensed material in any way or form, and Sony's legal battles actually confirmed that that was the way to proceed.

And Nintendo is not dumb. They let emulators slide not because they agree with their existence but because the don't have a legal ground to stand agaisnt them. It's the reason why you need to add your own BIOS to Playstation and Sega emulators - unless you decide to use their own, reverse engineered HLE bios - or why you need to add the encryption keys to Cemu and use decrypted roms on Citra.

Ever since i learned this, i found strange how Dolphin never asked for the common key, because the reason why the Wii Homebrew scene made such strides was precisely because the encryption keys were dumped.
 
Update by @Alvis on Era
Apparently, Nintendo did not send a DMCA. Rather, Valve initiated contact with Nintendo on their own and asked them what they think about Dolphin being on Steam, and Nintendo replied stating that it violates their copyright and "please take it down" but no DMCA was issued.

Pierre Bourdon (@[email protected])

You may have seen or heard the news about @[email protected] / Valve / Nintendo from a few hours ago. If not, read e.g. https://www.pcgamer.com/nintendo-sends-valve-dmca-notice-to-block-steam-release-of-wii-emulator-dolphin/ from the amazing @[email protected]. Unfortunately...
mastodon.delroth.net mastodon.delroth.net
Moreover, the blog post on Dolphin's website was edited and no longer claims Nintendo sent a DMCA. It now claims that "they sent a cease and desist citing the DMCA" which is a different thing.
issued a cease and desist citing the DMCA
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Tentacle-tropes said:
Update by @Alvis on Era
Apparently, Nintendo did not send a DMCA. Rather, Valve initiated contact with Nintendo on their own and asked them what they think about Dolphin being on Steam, and Nintendo replied stating that it violates their copyright and "please take it down" but no DMCA was issued.

Pierre Bourdon (@[email protected])

You may have seen or heard the news about @[email protected] / Valve / Nintendo from a few hours ago. If not, read e.g. https://www.pcgamer.com/nintendo-sends-valve-dmca-notice-to-block-steam-release-of-wii-emulator-dolphin/ from the amazing @[email protected]. Unfortunately...
mastodon.delroth.net mastodon.delroth.net
Moreover, the blog post on Dolphin's website was edited and no longer claims Nintendo sent a DMCA. It now claims that "they sent a cease and desist citing the DMCA" which is a different thing.
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The team behind Dolphin do not sound particularly knowledgeable regarding the very specific legal issues they're jumping headlong into.
 
Since it would be possible for Dolphin to function without appropriating copyrighted material, I really can't understand why this isn't what they're already doing. I mean, there's no doubt that they're capable of reverse engineering.
 
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The common key being included in Dolphin but never being an issue in the past really feels like a "it wasn't an issue until it was" situation - the devs seemed to think that it was tacitly ok, but I'm going to echo what others have said: many other emulators require the user to source keys, and it (seemingly) hasn't affected their usability or uptake. No idea why the Dolphin devs thought this point of friction was worth jeopardizing the whole thing over.
 
Tentacle-tropes said:
Update by @Alvis on Era
Apparently, Nintendo did not send a DMCA. Rather, Valve initiated contact with Nintendo on their own and asked them what they think about Dolphin being on Steam, and Nintendo replied stating that it violates their copyright and "please take it down" but no DMCA was issued.

Pierre Bourdon (@[email protected])

You may have seen or heard the news about @[email protected] / Valve / Nintendo from a few hours ago. If not, read e.g. https://www.pcgamer.com/nintendo-sends-valve-dmca-notice-to-block-steam-release-of-wii-emulator-dolphin/ from the amazing @[email protected]. Unfortunately...
mastodon.delroth.net mastodon.delroth.net
Moreover, the blog post on Dolphin's website was edited and no longer claims Nintendo sent a DMCA. It now claims that "they sent a cease and desist citing the DMCA" which is a different thing.
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The way I read it:
  • Nintendo doesn't want to make the first move, which could backfire;
  • Dolphin developers are incredibly talented but clueless about the law. Still, they don't want to make the first move, which could backfire, and they made the terrible mistake of including the Wii common key, which could put the entire project in jeopardy;
  • Valve is afraid of what could happen and is basically consulting with Nintendo.

RetroArch was probably seen as less high-profile and "modern" than Dolphin, and it wasn't a problem for Valve. Or maybe the Yuzu precedent made Valve wary of Nintendo.

The best scenario is forgetting Dolphin on Steam and continuing with the status quo (but please, Dolphin devs, remove that common key).

GearDraxon said:
The common key being included in Dolphin but never being an issue in the past really feels like a "it wasn't an issue until it was" situation - the devs seemed to think that it was tacitly ok, but I'm going to echo what others have said: many other emulators require the user to source keys, and it (seemingly) hasn't affected their usability or uptake. No idea why the Dolphin devs thought this point of friction was worth jeopardizing the whole thing over.
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There are a lot of Wii / Wii U small homebrew projects which explicitly require the user to provide the common key. The developers of the biggest Wii-related project should know better.
 
According to MVG, the "illegal number" situation was known from a Libretro dev back in 2020, since Dolphin 3.0.
 
Reinhard Schneider said:
sigh

Nintendo isn't going to do anything, they've never been able to.

Only times Nintendo went agaisnt emulation was when they spread FUD about UltraHLE and Virtual Boy Advance, but that's all they did. They wont ever try to bring down any emulator because Sony already fought that battle before them, and lost. Emulation is legal, emulators don't provide a single Nintendo asset, be it code, bioses or anything else, so the don't have grounds to even issue a C&D.

They're not even fighting agaisnt Yuzu aside of giving a call to Valve after they showed it on a Steam Deck official video.

So, can we just let this meme die already? It's tiring to see it resurface every time, with the person posting it seemingly having no idea of what Nintendo chases or not.
Click to expand...

darth-vader-bacta-tank.gif
 
thoughthaver said:
nah all these emulator teams know exactly what they are getting into they just love poking the bear and seeing what happens
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Most emulator teams are smart enough to not include keys they shouldn't, plan to put the emulator on Steam, and then when it gets pulled after Valve talks to Nintendo, falsely claim a DMCA takedown.

It's an unusual situation all around that doesn't really correspond to the usual bear poking.
 
Hailinel said:
Most emulator teams are smart enough to not include keys they shouldn't, plan to put the emulator on Steam, and then when it gets pulled after Valve talks to Nintendo, falsely claim a DMCA takedown.

It's an unusual situation all around that doesn't really correspond to the usual bear poking.
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Wait, it's Dolphin themselves implying there's a DMCA takedown? That's weird, because if anything I'm seeing people side with Nintendo because the DMCA seems justified, lmao. That's an epic miscalculation if they are lying, and a big blunder if they just don't understand the law.
thoughthaver said:
nah all these emulator teams know exactly what they are getting into they just love poking the bear and seeing what happens
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Eh, that just seems like fanboyism to handwave away the validity of emulators, unless I'm misunderstanding your post. Most emulators are absolutely 100% legal. What's funny is that worse emulators even know not to do these things, so it's either just Dolphin team big ignorant or being outright stupid.
 
AngryAlchemist said:
Wait, it's Dolphin themselves implying there's a DMCA takedown? That's weird, because if anything I'm seeing people side with Nintendo because the DMCA seems justified, lmao. That's an epic miscalculation if they are lying, and a big blunder if they just don't understand the law.
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Check out the Mastodon thread @Tentacle-tropes linked. Nintendo did not issue a DMCA and previous statements alleging such from the Dolphin Foundation were false. They edited that accusation out after the fact but not before the story spread that a DMCA takedown was invoked.
Tentacle-tropes said:
Update by @Alvis on Era
Apparently, Nintendo did not send a DMCA. Rather, Valve initiated contact with Nintendo on their own and asked them what they think about Dolphin being on Steam, and Nintendo replied stating that it violates their copyright and "please take it down" but no DMCA was issued.

Pierre Bourdon (@[email protected])

You may have seen or heard the news about @[email protected] / Valve / Nintendo from a few hours ago. If not, read e.g. https://www.pcgamer.com/nintendo-sends-valve-dmca-notice-to-block-steam-release-of-wii-emulator-dolphin/ from the amazing @[email protected]. Unfortunately...
mastodon.delroth.net mastodon.delroth.net
Moreover, the blog post on Dolphin's website was edited and no longer claims Nintendo sent a DMCA. It now claims that "they sent a cease and desist citing the DMCA" which is a different thing.
Click to expand...
 
Mekanos said:
If they lied about a takedown, I'm left to wonder why exactly.
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My guess is that the person/people who wrote that message on the Dolphin team got confused by the legal jargon (ie. The difference between a C&D and DMCA).

Either that or they are just being edgelords like so many in that scene.
 
Hailinel said:
Check out the Mastodon thread @Tentacle-tropes linked. Nintendo did not issue a DMCA and previous statements alleging such from the Dolphin Foundation were false. They edited that accusation out after the fact but not before the story spread that a DMCA takedown was invoked.
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Yeah I read that, but somehow missed the part where Dolphin themselves claimed that. Weird. What a messy situation.
 
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Jbone916 said:
My guess is that the person/people who wrote that message on the Dolphin team got confused by the legal jargon (ie. The difference between a C&D and DMCA).

Either that or they are just being edgelords like so many in that scene.
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It's always funny when people are like "this is why I don't buy Nintendo games anymore" as they post about their experiences playing the newest Nintendo games. It's people like them that give the emulation scene a bad name.
 
not a lawyer so take anything i'm saying with a massive grain of salt but its interesting whether the AES key would actually legally be copyrighted

As I understand, a randomly generated string of numbers by itself cannot be considered a copyrighted work by definition.

Additionally in Sega vs Accolade, Accolades reverse engineering efforts to figure out the memory address to bypass the tmss was deemed valid. In function would finding a specific memory address and publicizing it be the same as finding a specific key and publicizing it? (assuming legal methods of reverse engineering ofc)

This little debacle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy had similar reasoning but never went to court (company stopped issuing dmcas as well)

The DMCA act itself does make things far more murky with its 'Circumvention of Technological Protection Measures' clause though.

In any case no chance this will be tested here (Dolphin wil probably just remove support for encrypted wii roms if they still want to release), but its interesting that nintendo is using this reasoning again right after using it to 'actually' dmca lockpick, which extracted keys from the switch.
 
neon said:
really?
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Yes, really. I respect and appreciate the work that folks do in the emulation scene for game preservation and accessibility, but it’s undeniable that the scene is also full of individuals with “edgy” behavior.
 
AngryAlchemist said:
Eh, that just seems like fanboyism to handwave away the validity of emulators, unless I'm misunderstanding your post. Most emulators are absolutely 100% legal. What's funny is that worse emulators even know not to do these things, so it's either just Dolphin team big ignorant or being outright stupid.
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if u spend hundreds of hours coding an emulator i have to assume that u know the legal dos and donts. so if they are straight up lying about getting dmca'd then they were just fishing for attention. then again tech types are well known for being clueless about anything that isnt tech so it could also just be good ol idiocy.
 
I mean dolphin devs making such a weird oversight is so bizzare, and then lying or at least stretching the truth about the whole situation too..
 
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Could someone explain to me the benefit of having dolphin be its own application on steam? Deck works pretty well with dolphin through emu deck, and on PC couldn't you add it as an outside program?

Not at all saying it's bad or anything, just curious what would have made this release meaningfully different than options already available
 
Nmanic said:
Could someone explain to me the benefit of having dolphin be its own application on steam? Deck works pretty well with dolphin through emu deck, and on PC couldn't you add it as an outside program?

Not at all saying it's bad or anything, just curious what would have made this release meaningfully different than options already available
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Just cloud saves and auto updates I think.
 
Not gonna lie, I always had the dolphin devs as the biggest geniuses in the emulation front, and as such that they could do no wrong. I was wrong it seems, shocking.
 
any tech community where most people know an assembly instruction set of some kind is almost always full of edgelords
 
SpaceGodzilla said:
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it's worth noting that the Playstation 3 had a similar problem, where the random number generator that was supposed to generate custom cryptographic keys was broken. always giving the exact same result everytime.

there was a lawsuit over people sharing those keys, but it was settled out of court.
i'd imagine legally, the fact that it's identical across every system (unlike the Switch, which does use per-console encryption.) would make it fit under the usual fair use clauses emulators have managed to survive on.
 
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