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Nintendo is threatening legal emulation…and it doesn’t look good

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Dolphin, the popular Nintendo GameCube and Wii emulator has been removed on Steam due to a DMCA citation from Nintendo. In this episode I take a closer look at what’s gone down and why Dolphin is in potentially some legal trouble.

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43 Comments

  5. Some issues not addressed by the "experts":

    A) It's basic circumvention, not emulation, which is illegal, as specified in the DMCA laws.
    B) Nintendo doesn't want a DOTA and Penders situation where they'll lose their rights to their properties. They didn't become a big company without being protective of their IPs.
    C) Nintendo is not the only one who goes after emulators, Sega did it first (versus Accolade) and followed by Sony (Connectix and Bleemcast). Atlus, owned by SegaSammy, also does DMCA takedowns.

  8. Bc they wanna resell you wii games on the store for the 3rd time🙄 ive bought a lot of these games and consoles 3-4 times a piece. I think I’m good😂

  10. One thing to note is that we that we don't know whether Dolphin on Steam included the keys or if you had to manually provide them.
    We just know that this is Nintendo's legal strategy against Dolphin.

  13. Nintendo knows they can't compete with their own games of yesteryear which had mass-appeal. They must be frustrated by this simple fact and are too anal to do what Microsoft tried to do with it's backwards compatible catalog.

    It is odd though why Microsoft chose to put out Viva Piñata (and stupid titles like that) instead of games that people will actually play and pay money for. I guess it comes down to licensing? The Godfather comes to mind (ex- Paramount).

  16. What I really don't understand is, if those keys really are illegal to distribute, why hasn't Nintendo gone for Dolphin itself in all the years it's been available and has only reacted to the potential Steam release yet stopped there? Why is it still possible to download the Dolphin emulator at all?

  17. I still think it was incredibly stupid to make a Steam version, they had to know this would bait the full force of Nintendo's lawyers. What did they think would happen? Are they trying to martyr themselves?

  23. It's ironic since Nintendo themselves have technically stolen code from the start, DK, Ikegami Tsushinki.
    A whoops by Dolphin, I'm willing to bet Nintendo will go all out!!!! Despite the fact you as far as i know you cannot buy a replacement console or the parts from Nintendo to service your OG console, you can not buy a lot of the original games or you have to pay a lot of money and need the new platform for a remaster which is just not the same. They have made there money and ethically and by law you supposed to own a copy of the game you emulate anyway. Great Video thank you Modern Vintage Gamer.

  25. Used to really like nintendo but there new nintendo switch machine is useless for me my hands are to big to use the controls properly.

  27. They do it now because they want to make sure it is only available on their platform, since they are going to do something with it soon, if they had no intension on doing something with it soon, weather is going to be on Nintendo switch online expension pack, or as a bunch of gamecube remaster, it could be possible it is both since gamecube was the only platform that never got virtual console, so if they do not go it all re-master and neither go with virtual console, it will be the first time Game Cube game will start as a subscriber thing, and never start as virtual console, however for the more popular title they might also make re-master of does maybe. I'm only guessing. If it was really just to stop dolphin emulator on steam, just for the sake of stoping it. They would have done it way early then that. So that mean Nintendo unintentionally leak that game cube and Wii are comming soon but that is just guessing.

  28. The worst thing is that it wasn't even a DMCA.

    It was pure and simple corporate pressure by Nintendo on Valve. Caused by Valve themselves.

    Valve really lost lots of reputation in this situation.

  31. I wonder how Miyaomoto and the others sleep at night, knowing that in the future, people are going to pirate the shit out of their company, long after they are gone, and especially after the company eventually goes under?

  32. Unless nitendo is about to make a GameCube or a Wii player on the nitendo swich I don't think they should go after the dolphin emulator there's no other way to play these games unless you going to dish out the money and pay for the real copy and Nintendo not getting money for it

  41. Why would Dolphin need to be on Steam anyway? Trying to sell an emulator on an official store just seems like a very shaky ground to be on. I guess having it there would be nice for Steam Deck but still.

  42. werent you able to run custom apps on steam deck already? just run the app just not through steam? am i missing something? gamecube is like 20 years old and not doing anything with any of those games. the same with wii not doing anything with it.

  43. To me this smells like Nintendo might be re-releasing some wii games soon and that's why they're only going after dolphin just now, everytime they go after something is because they want to release something