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Dolphin Emulator's Steam Release Indefinitely Postponed After Nintendo's DMCA Notice

The Wii and GameCube emulator Dolphin revealed on its website's blog on Saturday that its Steam release is indefinitely postponed. The team stated that Valve notified them that "Nintendo has issued a cease and desist citing the DMCA against Dolphin's Steam page." The team added that it is currently investigating options and will have a more in-depth response in the future.

PC Gamer reported that a notice from Nintendo dated from May 26, 2023 was addressed to Valve's legal department. The document cited the emulator's violation of the DMCA's Anti-Circumvention and AntiTrafficking provisions. Dolphin's developers have not received a notice directly from Nintendo, nor have other sites hosting the emulator.

A spokesperson for Nintendo told Kotaku: "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."

According to the DMCA notice, the Dolphin emulator uses "cryptographic keys without Nintendo's authorization and decrypting the ROMs at or immediately before runtime." The emulator distributes the Wii AES-128 Common Key, which is used to encrypt Wii game discs.

Dolphin's Steam page launched on March 28. The open-source emulator first launched for Windows in 2003.

Sources: Dolphin Emulator's website, PC Gamer (Wes Fenlon), Kotaku (Ethan Gach)