Nintendo and Valve Team Up to Block Dolphin Emulator from Steam

It was reported earlier this week that Nintendo has DMCA’d the Dolphin Emulator, and it’s release on Steam will be delayed indefinitely. However, it has now come to light that Valve had actually worked together with Nintendo to take down the emulator from Steam.

Valve confirmed they reached out to Nintendo first. Some people owe me an apology over my reporting on this when I said Nintendo did NOT take legal action and it went valve reached out, Nintendo asked them to take it down, and so they did. Stop shooting the messenger because you… pic.twitter.com/LPqZ6wLO8R

— Nintendo Prime (@NintyPrime) June 2, 2023

Just today, on 3rd of May, The Verge had acquired some copies of the letters between Valve and Nintendo. From these it can clearly be seen how Valve had brought the issue of the Wii Common Key to Nintendo’s attention.

If you aren’t aware, Dolphin is an emulator that is designed to run GameCube and Wii games, both of which belong to Nintendo. Now, the issue of playing games on an emulator can be debatable, but what Dolphin was doing here was actively decrypting Wii games to go past the anti-piracy measures Nintendo had set.

Quoting the DMCA: "the Dolphin emulator operates by incorporating these cryptographic keys without Nintendo’s authorization and decrypting the ROMs at or immediately before runtime."

…this is objectively true. I just checked, the Wii Common Key is in the emulator source code.

— Yakumono (@LuigiBlood) May 27, 2023

Nintendo claims that because this is a violation of the Copyright Act, it is illegal to distribute the emulator. Due to the presence of the Wii Common Key (to decrypt the games) within the emulator, legal experts believe Nintendo may have a solid case.

Valve had noticed this when Dolphin publicly announced they were coming to Steam. Something that’s more unusual here is that Dolphin was taken off of Steam without giving them a chance to counter this. From this, it can very easily be seen how Dolphin may have done something that has given Valve a pretty solid reason to kick it out of the platform.

Valve emphasised that Steam is an open platform where only legally authorised content can be distributed. The company has made it clear that it does not have the authority to resolve disagreements between third parties and that it instead relies on the parties involved to do so through the appropriate legal channels or through negotiation.

While the joint effort between Nintendo and Valve may have effectively prevented the Dolphin Emulator from being distributed through Steam, it is uncertain whether Nintendo would file a lawsuit against Valve. After all, the emulator was identified on Valve’s platform.

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