Nintendo gave the reasons to block the launch of the emulator Dolphin, which led to the removal of his page from Steam. A heavy blow for lovers of retro games on any alternative platform.
The release was scheduled for May 27, but has been postponed indefinitely, according to its creators. “We are currently investigating our options and we will have a deeper answer in the near future.” said the Dolphin development team.
As it explains TechRadar, since emulation is a gray area in terms of legality, Dolphin uses the Wii Common Key. This implies circumvention of protection measures against hacking.
Although Dolphin will remain off Steam, its Github page remains, since the emulator developers did not receive any contact or legal notice from Nintendo.
The Nintendo document that stopped the arrival of the Dolphin emulator on Steam
The specialized portal PC Gamer had access to the document sent by Nintendo to the legal department of Valve Software, the company behind Steam, where it requested the removal of the Dolphin emulator.
The document reads: “Because the Dolphin emulator violates Nintendo’s intellectual property rights, including, but not limited to, your rights under the anti-circumvention and anti-trafficking provisions of the Copyright Act The Digital Millennium Act (DMCA), 17 USC § 1201, we provide you with this notice of your obligation to remove the Dolphin emulator offer from the Steam store.”
“The Dolphin emulator operates by embedding these cryptographic keys without permission from Nintendo and decrypting ROMs at runtime or immediately before,” the company adds.
“Therefore, the use of the Dolphin emulator illegally circumvents a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected by copyright law”.