Nintendo blocks the release on Steam of the Dolphin emulator designed for its retro games

Nintendo has woken up and in an unexpected move for some it would have completely blocked the official launch of the popular Dolphin emulator through the platform Steam.

Anyone would swear it happened yesterday, but actually 22 years have passed since the launch of the Game Cube and 17 years since the Wii went on the market. That is enough time for no one doubts.

In the whole standard it could be practically considered as abandonware. But the Japanese company thinks differently because of a small great detail: the games.

Among the old buccaneers and many internet users of the old school, the Dolphin emulator is no stranger. Since it is a project that has been perfecting itself for many years to rescue the old polygonal games of the firm.

This was born in an environment where Nintendo itself had in a corner of oblivion some titles that many wanted to experience again despite the fact that their consoles no longer worked.

But it is a reality that in recent years the company has made an effort to bring its classic games back to its subscription platform.

So the future of the Dolphin project looked a bit uncertain, especially after learning of its official ambitions to expand further. Today it is finally clear to us what the position of the Japanese company would be.

The Dolphin emulator no longer has an arrival date for Steam and Nintendo is responsible for it

On May 26, 2023, those responsible for the development of Dolphin announced through his official blog that they would launch their emulator officially within the popular Steam gaming platform. Which in theory would open ground to be able to run Wii and GameCube games from a PC.

But now, the same entry on their site, corrects the course and now communicate that the launch of Dolphin on Steam has been postponed indefinitely.

The updated post states that Nintendo filed a takedown act under the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) to the Valve team, owners of Steam, against the Dolphin page on the PC game store, and therefore that page has been removed:

“It is with great disappointment that we have to announce that the release of Dolphin on Steam has been postponed indefinitely. We have been notified by Valve that Nintendo issued a cease and desist against Dolphin’s Steam page citing the DMCA, and we have removed Dolphin from Steam until the matter is resolved.

We are currently investigating our options and will have a more in-depth answer in the near future.”

For decades, any activity and project that involves emulators has been in a legal gray area. There is a very fine line that separates a legal project from one that breaks the law.

Unfortunately, in the case of Dolphin it seems that it would be the second type of case, since its software would integrate proprietary Wii code into Dolphin’s source code to decrypt the games.

So for now everything points to Nintendo having every reason and right to block the launch of this particular emulator, due to its own internal architecture.