Dolphin Nintendo emulator no longer releasing on Steam, as team abandons effort
"We have a difficult announcement to make."
GameCube and Wii emulator Dolphin is no longer coming to Steam, as the team behind it is "abandoning" its efforts.
The emulator was first announced to be coming to Steam earlier this year, with the team behind it calling this a "product of many months of work".
However, a few months down the line, the team has dropped plans to launch Dolphin on Valve's platform. In a blog update detailing this decision, the Dolphin team addressed the recently-reported DMCA takedown, stating Nintendo "did not send Valve or Dolphin a Digital Millennium Copyright Act", nor has it "taken any legal action against Dolphin Emulator or Valve".
Rather, a lawyer representing Nintendo contacted Valve and requested it "prevent Dolphin from releasing on the Steam store, citing the DMCA as justification".
The team behind the Dolphin emulator was subsequently told by the platform holder it had to come to an agreement with Nintendo before it could release the emulator on Steam.
"Considering the strong legal wording at the start of the document and the citation of DMCA law, we took the letter very seriously," the Dolphin team wrote, before announcing it would no longer release its emulator on Steam.
"Valve ultimately runs the store and can set any condition they wish for software to appear on it. But given Nintendo's long-held stance on emulation, we find Valve's requirement for us to get approval from Nintendo for a Steam release to be impossible," it wrote.
"Unfortunately, that's that."
The team went on to state it does "not believe that Dolphin is in any legal danger" following this decision, and that "Valve did not make any claims [Dolphin was] violating a US copyright by including the Wii Common Key" in its emulation.
"In the end, Valve is the one running the Steam store front, and they have the right to allow or disallow anything they want on said store front for any reason. As for Nintendo, this incident just continues their existing stance towards emulation. We don't think that this incident should change anyone's view of either company," the post continued.
"As a silver lining, some of the features being developed for the Steam release will still work in Dolphin's normal builds, and are still being developed. One of the features we are most excited for is a full 'Big Picture' GUI that can be used directly with a controller.
"That is still going to happen regardless of a Steam release, alongside several smaller features that were meant to be quality of life improvements for Steam builds."
Eurogamer has asked Nintendo and Valve for further comments.