Well that blew up, huh? If you follow emulation or just gaming on the whole, you've probably heard about the controversy around the Dolphin Steam release and the Wii Common Key. There's been a lot of conclusions made, and while we've wanted to defend ourselves, we thought it would be prudent to contact lawyers first to make sure that our understanding of the situation was legally sound. That took some time, which was frustrating to ourselves and to our users, but now we are educated and ready to give an informed response.
They shipped the Wii encryption key along with the emulator. While there’s no established legal precedent that encryption keys are protected by copyright, it’s largely been assumed by those in the industry that they are. It’s also blatantly a measure to circumvent anti piracy measures. If Dolphin required you to go find the Wii encryption key on your own and input it into the emulator, Nintendo would have no grounds to stand on, but they screwed up and risked everything by one of the most infamously anti emulator, litigation happy corporations on earth
Did you read the article? This is Valve’s doing, not Nintendo. The keys weren’t even in question. Valve is requiring the Dolphin devs to get permission from Nintendo, something that will never happen.
It’s more of the usual guilt-till-innocent so it had help getting killed in the Steam crib. Overlord Nintendo wins again. You will never own what you buy so long as the big companies say you don’t.
I’m a pretty big supporter of emulation and love what Dolphin is doing, that said, lets not poke the bear. Dolphin is easy enough to get working everywhere, it doesn’t need to be listed on steam.
Valve then forwarded us the statement from Nintendo’s lawyers, and told us that we had to come to an agreement with Nintendo in order to release on Steam.
We all know Nintendo is a bitch and there’s nothing illegal in emulators, but Valve’s stance looks reasonable to me, it would be serious damage to Steam if they were involved in legal litigation.
In terms of user content this would be correct. However when it comes to games on the platform valve does do curation to ensure games run etc. I don’t know if it has been tested, but that curation could exclude them from the protection. If that was the case they could be directly sued for copyright infringement.
Correct. Valve could have let them release it and let Nintendo go through the DMCA process. As long as Valve follows the process, they would not be the subject of any litigation.
We have a very strong argument that Dolphin is not primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection. Dolphin is designed to recreate the GameCube and Wii hardware as software, and to provide the means for a user to interact with this emulated environment. Only an incredibly tiny portion of our code is actually related to circumvention.
That doesn’t sound like a strong argument to me. I’m a supporter of emulation but I think that the amount of code involved in making it happen doesn’t stop it from being the primary purpose.
what’s being circumvented here is the encryption of Wii games. the primary purpose of Dolphin is not to decrypt Wii games, it is to emulate them (in other words, make them interoperable with PC hardware, as pointed out later). the circumvention of encryption is a necessary part of emulation, but it’s not the primary purpose.
I agree those arguments have no legal ground, but I don’t believe emulators are made with the primary purpose of circumventing protections, it’s just naive to think people wouldn’t use them for that purpose IMO.
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They shipped the Wii encryption key along with the emulator. While there’s no established legal precedent that encryption keys are protected by copyright, it’s largely been assumed by those in the industry that they are. It’s also blatantly a measure to circumvent anti piracy measures. If Dolphin required you to go find the Wii encryption key on your own and input it into the emulator, Nintendo would have no grounds to stand on, but they screwed up and risked everything by one of the most infamously anti emulator, litigation happy corporations on earth
It seems you didn’t read the article at all.
Did you read the article? This is Valve’s doing, not Nintendo. The keys weren’t even in question. Valve is requiring the Dolphin devs to get permission from Nintendo, something that will never happen.
It’s more of the usual guilt-till-innocent so it had help getting killed in the Steam crib. Overlord Nintendo wins again. You will never own what you buy so long as the big companies say you don’t.
I’m a pretty big supporter of emulation and love what Dolphin is doing, that said, lets not poke the bear. Dolphin is easy enough to get working everywhere, it doesn’t need to be listed on steam.
Thanks for posting this. It’s a good read. I’m stoked that Dolphin will continue to be developed with or without Steam.
I wonder if this will affect the ability to use Dolphin on a SteamDeck. I’m sure people will figure out Dolphin on the Deck, or already have.
It’s pretty easy to get the Dolphin flatpak and run EmuDeck. I don’t think people’s ability to use Dolphin will be too hampered
Towards the bottom they mention SteamDeck plans going forward
We all know Nintendo is a bitch and there’s nothing illegal in emulators, but Valve’s stance looks reasonable to me, it would be serious damage to Steam if they were involved in
legallitigation.Yep, I can understand that they don’t want to fight someone else’s fight.
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In terms of user content this would be correct. However when it comes to games on the platform valve does do curation to ensure games run etc. I don’t know if it has been tested, but that curation could exclude them from the protection. If that was the case they could be directly sued for copyright infringement.
Correct. Valve could have let them release it and let Nintendo go through the DMCA process. As long as Valve follows the process, they would not be the subject of any litigation.
They decided to break the process.
Lol “legal litigation” sounds like double secret probation to me, but I agree with you.
Haha :D English is not my first language, if the wording is not correct or there’s a better way of saying it, I welcome any correction :)
All litigation is legal, so you can just say “litigation”.
Oh didn’t know that, thanks!
No worries! You’re all good:)
That doesn’t sound like a strong argument to me. I’m a supporter of emulation but I think that the amount of code involved in making it happen doesn’t stop it from being the primary purpose.
what’s being circumvented here is the encryption of Wii games. the primary purpose of Dolphin is not to decrypt Wii games, it is to emulate them (in other words, make them interoperable with PC hardware, as pointed out later). the circumvention of encryption is a necessary part of emulation, but it’s not the primary purpose.
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The DMCA explicitly carves out emulation. What do you think “interoperability” means?
I agree those arguments have no legal ground, but I don’t believe emulators are made with the primary purpose of circumventing protections, it’s just naive to think people wouldn’t use them for that purpose IMO.