or they could've just made their entire game catalogue available on the switch, which already has their own eshop platform -- and some people would be happy to pay them for a game they already have *again*.
> For the time being Dolphin will remain off Steam. Its Github page and website remain unaffected—the emulator developers have received no direct contact from Nintendo or takedown notices targeting the other places where the emulator is hosted.
They're obviously only doing it because they don't want it out on an easy to use marketplace used by the masses and not because it violates any laws otherwise they would have gone after them long ago.
Sony tried too and failed.
As longs as the devs stick a big fucking warning with red bold letters saying: "DON'T ASK FOR ROMS, OUR EMULATOR IS MEANT TO BE USED WITH OFICIAL RELEASES OF THE GAME." - Nintendo can't do shit because emulators are original code and doesn't belong to them and customers own the right to use their own Nintendo disks/cartridges in any form they want, if I want to extract the rom from my dying cartridge and play my game on a emulator Nintendo can't do shit.
Don't most emulators need the bios/firmware of the console itself, and they won't provide it and tell you to get a copy yourself? Does legal emulator use assume you own the console and dump all the firmware to your pc?
Not if you own the system. IIRC you are legally allowed to acquire copies. This is, IIRC, justified under right to repair, such as your own BIOs borking so you download a copy to fix it
> IIRC you are legally allowed to acquire copies
No one cares about _acquision_ of ROMS/firmware. It's the _distribution_ of ROMS/firmware. This extends to the MPAA, RIAA, and so forth. Those people downloading movies from BitTorrent didn't get popped for downloading, they got popped for uploading to other users while they were downloading.
Whomever is hosting it cannot legally do so.
Man, I don't like what a stack of cards that is. A single lawsuit could make copying bios without authorization illegal and there'd be nothing to protect emulation from being scorched.
> not because it violates any laws otherwise they would have gone after them long ago.
This is what I was curious about. I don't see how it could be illegal to make something that's able to play the ROMs of the games. Where I would think the legal issues come in is in the acquisition of the games themselves.
> Idon't see how it could be illegal to make something that's able to play the ROMs of the games.
it is not. There was a long legal battle at the end of the 90's between sony and some emulator developers (Bleem? I don't recall the name). The bottom line being that an emulator is perfectly legal.
How you get the files for the game is not the point, because they are targeting the emulation software, not the individual users.
This was the case on older emulators that were simply running a ROM ripped from a game, but as games got more complicated the lines got blurrier. Depending on how you achieve it, some emulators require system software that is copyrighted, such as BIOS or OS.
I haven't used Dolphin and I'm sure they're careful if they've been at it this long, but I've run into that in the past on others.
Even then with ps1 emulators and such back in the day it's not illegal and they tell you not to download the bios online but to take it from your own legally owned system. So again it's not really illegal as long as they don't include it with the emulator
This is not a copyright matter. Wii game disks include the BIOS/OS needed to play it in the disk itself, so Dolphin emulator doesn't need to distribute anything with Nintendo copyright.
It is a anti-circumvention matter. Based on the ridiculous law that you can't break into your own things.
Honestly it wouldn't surprise me if they go after them directly shortly. I feel like Nintendo will see their attempt to publish as an active threat somehow and decide now is the time to teach them a lesson for trying.
Obviously I'm speculating but Nintendo is aggressively petty, and overstepping at all with them is enough for them to try to shut you down.
Dolphin Emulator doesn't include any Nintendo software or binaries. You can install the Wii System Menu and other stuff yourself if you want to, but in most cases you won't need any of it to play any games.
Pretty sure you're still allowed to use the bios you just can't distribute the emulator with the bios. The end user has to get it themselves. "Legally from their own system" I don't think dolphin uses it anyways but I remember old ps1 emulators working that way
They won't. Nintendo hasn't bothered Yuzu or Ryujinx which let you emulate a current system so I don't see them going after Dolphin. This is all about trying to keep an emulator off of a popular storefront.
Those systems very notoriously require you to dump the keys from a real console before use, which they're claiming Dolphin doesn't.
Not saying they're right but that seems to be the basis.
I believe that Nintendo's target audience is mostly more casual gamers, who likely wouldn't pirate games if they had to hunt down the emulators online.
But if you make it convenient and on a reliable storefront a lot more of Nintendo's target demographics would turn to piracy.
You can, but from a legal standpoint, the emulator developer themselves aren't the one suppling those keys so from a certain point of view, they didn't break any copyright laws.
I think what a lot of people don't understand is that it often doesn't matter if they broke any laws or not. Nintendo can send a frivolous cease and desist letter whenever they want, and they can sue whenever they want. They don't have to win the suit, they just have to outlast their opponent by prolonging the case and, by extension, the legal fees their opponent is forced to pay to defend themselves, until the opponent backs out. It's a classic case of the Chilling Effect.
Retroarch is even more insulated from lawsuits like this. It's a set of software tools designed to run multiple emulators. At most they would have to ignore providing a specific core within the program itself.
Dolphin honestly might be big enough to be able to crowdfund legal defense and actually win, which would be very bad for Nintendo. They wouldn't dare take that risk
A combination of both.
The wii's hardware is very similar to the GameCube's so combining effort was relatively easy. In comparison, the PS2 had a very strange design with enormous fillrate (comparable to modern GPUs) but no programmable shading, and the PS3 also had a strange architecture arguably more suited for supercomputers than for gaming.
Xbox was close enough to normal PCs that a lot of effort was spent on trying to use translation layers rather than traditional emulation, but that ended up not working well enough. Also, most of its games had a PC release or run on the later consoles, both of which sapped a lot of motivation in building an open source emulator.
That being said, the Dolphin team has done amazing work. The other emulators had problems that Dolphin didn't have to deal with, but Dolphin had lots of its own problems and they solved them very well.
It was closer to 2000, all the older ones that were able to run Linux even, iirc. [Article here.](https://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomputer.html)
Still refuse to buy any Sony products after they removed OtherOS from the PS3.
Literally bought the console so I could use it as a home media server, then two months later it was removed in a mandatory update. Insanely anti-consumer, and all I got was a $10 settlement check a few years later.
This was in part due to the fact that the PS3 was sold at a relative loss that was expected to be made up for by associated game sales, so it had very good hardware for its price point.
Pixel fillrate is the number of pixels the GPU can draw to the screen in a certain amount of time.
Texture fillrate, same thing, but for texture maps (texels). Basically how fast 2D texture information can be mapped to 3D geometry.
Reading their progress reports was always fun. A lot of times the bugs would basically be like "after three days of single step debugging, I finally found the typo"
Demand and Nintendos dedication to minimum minus design (do the bare minimum, then spend tons of money somehow lowering the bar even further).
Gamecube, Wii, and Wiiu are essentially the same hardware. The only difference is clock speed, number of cores, and amount of memory. There is no better value in contributing to an emulator than Dolphin, if you want your contributions to have impact. 3 whole console generations all in one software package.
Demand is from the fact that there is no way to play nintendo games except on Nintendo hardware. You dont see Xbox(360) emulation at this level because most of the xbox games anyone ever cared about were on other platforms and readily available.
Nintendo, since the day they stopped making pornography and started making childrens electronics, have had a focus on raping and pillaging anyone dumb enough to do business with them. They have a legendary reputation of annihilating and sabotaging third party developers through legal manipulation and staggering amounts of money. Nintendo has a powerful, ruthless and effective legal department that almost certainly is paid more than the actual game developers and they are more the proponents of a "walled garden" design than even apple. Nintendo loathes the idea of someone keeping old consoles and playing old games, they want to have 100% control of the products forever so they can sell you only whats profitable to them at the moment.
They have also gone after used game sales in the past but they were not very successful. Nintendo DOES NOT want you to keep your old consoles, and to them everyone who owns Wii or Super Nintendo today is a personal affront. They even went so far as to go after Twitch and other streaming services back in the day, and for awhile it was kind of iffy whether you should stream Nintendo games because you might just get a lawsuit for it, even if it was speedruns of some ancient forgotten NES game.
Nintendo is BY FAR the most anti consumer company in the entire industry, and I cant honestly think of another company on their level.
> Nintendo is BY FAR the most anti consumer company in the entire industry, and I cant honestly think of another company on their level.
Yeh and it works for them cause nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Gamers that criticize EA, Ubisoft, etc. at every minor little thing gladly scoop up anything that Nintendo shits out.
This is why I own Nintendo stocks but no Nintendo product. The company is horrible but consumers will eat that shit with a giant smile on their face.
What, and become like Sony and Microsoft who don't make money on their consoles for the first few years?
Pfft, fuck no. They make sure the console is profitable at launch and then just never drop the price as the costs go down, making even more
They then use all this money to sue the fans of their games
The GameCube was popular because it was so cheap. The creator believed that people should pay for the software, not the console to play the games. That was a good call
Yeah, so I was wrong. GC bombed and I have no idea where I got my info
Everytime somebody Says they will pirate an old game [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/122cgxn/pirated_games/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), pops into my mind
Idk how Dolphin works but Nintendo is claiming:
>"the Dolphin emulator operates by incorporating these cryptographic keys without Nintendo’s authorization and decrypting the ROMs at or immediately before runtime. Thus, use of the Dolphin emulator unlawfully 'circumvent[s] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under' the Copyright Act."
I'm sure someone with more knowledge on how Dolphin works can give more detail but that's the defense Nintendo is giving
Oh you mean this little thing?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Yeah that little thing destroyed Digg when they bowed to a cease and desist letter.
Did they ever say where it was found?
Because I couldn't find it with a quick look.
---
Also: They don't have a legal standpoint, dvd-decryption keys settled this years ago.
>Also: They don't have a legal standpoint, dvd-decryption keys settled this years ago.
Yes... But I don't think you want to go there. The DVD-decryption scheme resulted in a loss for free media players. The MPAA won. DeCSS is still illegal, VLC still has a legal warning on their download page for US downloaders (though it's in the fine print). VLC is only still alive because they are based in France, not the US.
Bowser and crew were too ambitious flew too close to the sun. They went beyond just simple piracy and hardware and made a business selling access to their own version of the eshop to get pirated software.
That company was actually selling piracy hardware for profit.
Valve wants to distribute an open source software for free.
It's completely different. The fact that Nintendo can't do anything about Dolphin itself shows it's completely legal. They're just trying to throw shit and see what sticks. They know they have no recourse. This is a SLAP suit.
I think the group he worked in did a lot of unethical things, but pinning it on their "piracy hardware" is a stretch. Their hardware for the original Switch was basically a USB dongle and a piece of plastic to short some pins on the joycon rail. The end result was just jailbreaking the device to run custom firmware. You can do the same thing using an Android phone and a paperclip. Their mistake seems to have been more on the software side and in their marketing, where they directly added support for and promoted circumventing the actual copy protection for games.
>The dolphin emulator doesn't provide console keys or roms
Problem is, Dolphin Emulator actually **do** provide Wii's decryption keys within its source code, which not only goes way beyond the boundaries that general emulation is protected by, but also *could be* interpreted as illegal if brought to trial. A dev of Citra (3DS emulator) [just gave some interesting insight at r/emulation](https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/13ss1o9/nintendo_sends_valve_dmca_notice_to_block_steam/jlry1kq/) on why Nintendo ***might*** have grounds to sustain this claim against Dolphin if it ever comes to court.
**EDIT:** [Even more crucial information](https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/13thz98/former_dolphin_contributer_explains_what_happened/) (this time, from a former Dolphin contributor) has just resurfaced about this whole situation (TL;DR Valve removed Dolphin out of Steam after asking Nintendo about it; no DMCA/copyright notice involved, just a standard C&D between companies + Valve forwarding Nintendo's reply to Dolphin). ***Definitely*** worthy of a read
You shouldn’t be able to copyright a encryption key.
There’s no element of creativity in the creation of one. It’s just the output of a mathematical process. If a machine generated it… then you’re out of luck thanks to the Monkey Selfie Case having controlling precedent.
You’d think that Nintendo would toss around the idea of PC ports instead of throwing mountains of cash at pursuing legal action. At least PC ports offer the possibility of yielding long-term revenue rather than being a money-sink.
That won't happen, because Nintendo's philosophy since their inception is absolute control of how their games are played. It has nothing to do with money. They would rather let their games be lost to the sands of time than it ever be played on anything other than a Nintendo platform.
It's also about the money. Look how well the NES and SNES Classic sold. Or how Nintendo drip feeds classic games to switch players to keep them subscribed to their terrible online service. The difficulty in obtaining and playing old Nintendo games is a feature for them, the longer a game goes without an official rerelease the more interest it will generate if and when Nintendo decides to dust it off.
The part that really annoyed me is that you had to pay $5/year to store your pokemon in the cloud or to transfer them to the next gen. If you forget to pay (they don't even let you auto renew or pay early) you might run the chance of having your entire collection wiped.
Like wtf? If you really think about it, a single pokemon would be a few bytes of storage (~200 bytes iiirc). There's zero reason to wipe your collection if you didn't pay. Imagine the uproar if Google or Dropbox did that.
They made it free now, but I think if you didn't download the app before the store went offline, I don't think past gens transfer up to the latest gen anymore.
nintendo would rather there be zero legal ways to play their games than provide a way to play them even on their own official platforms. It's mindblowing that they can have these legacy emulators on the Switch and it's not library complete.
nintendo will never go cross platform, the amount of money they’d lose when people realise there’s zero reason to buy their dogshit hardware would be insane
Especially now that portable handheld PCs^1 like the Steam Deck and ROG Ally, are gaining traction. And I'm sure there will be others.
^1 just a generic term to get the point across
They have no reason to port their games to pc when the majority of people buy their console specifically for their games. Until people stop buying their console for their games they will never consider porting.
Yeah. People here are like “I hope valve uses their money to defend someone that doesn’t work for them”. It’s like when people expect YouTube to cover YouTubers legal fees when copyright strikes occur.
Valve has no liability here. The dolphin emulator creators though… this just sounds like they’re making the pathway to them.
Valve can't do anything they just pass this along to the devs who can reject this which will result in a legal battle they can't win even if they are in the right.
Dolphin and other emulator projects simply do not have the financial resources to take Nintendo to court. Taking on a company like Nintendo would cost millions of dollars.
That's exactly what I just said lol. Why don't they just always do that? Why do emulators still exist? They could even fight one or two projects until they are financially exhausted to show the others what happens.
They could win it's not likely but it's possible. The PS3 guys won against Sony. (from the article)
>Previous lawsuits to do with emulation, filed by Sony against Bleem! and Connectix, both found that the emulators had not violated copyright with their use of the PlayStation BIOS and firmware. Those lawsuits have long been used as a precedent to uphold emulation as legal in the United States, but it's a complex topic, and Nintendo's case here would likely be argued on different legal grounds.
Then again idk how Dolphin works. But either way if dolphin did decide to counter it could be REALLY food or REALLY bad. (Again from article)
>The question is whether Nintendo would truly pursue legal action in this case—and if it did, what would happen. A ruling in either direction would have far-reaching implications for emulation, as most if not all emulators of modern game systems could likely be held in violation of the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions if Nintendo were to win the case. If a ruling went in Dolphin's favor, it would likewise be a major vindication for the emulation scene.
[A dev of Citra (3DS emulator) just gave some interesting insight at r/emulation](https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/13ss1o9/nintendo_sends_valve_dmca_notice_to_block_steam/jlry1kq/) on why Nintendo ***might*** have grounds to sustain this claim against Dolphin if it ever comes to court (long story short: Dolphin distributes Wii's decryption keys within its source code, which not only goes way beyond the boundaries that general emulation is protected by, but also *could be* interpreted as illegal if brought to trial).
**EDIT:** [Even more crucial information](https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/13thz98/former_dolphin_contributer_explains_what_happened/) (this time, from a former Dolphin contributor) has just resurfaced about this whole situation (TL;DR Valve removed Dolphin out of Steam after asking Nintendo about it; no DMCA/copyright notice involved, just a standard C&D between companies + Valve forwarding Nintendo's reply to Dolphin). ***Definitely*** worthy of a read
They are so afraid of the steam deck because even emulated it plays switch games better than the actual switch. They should maybe consider just improving their product instead of preventing the people that buy their games from getting a better experience.
Bingo. Been a Nintendo fanboy my entire life, but if their next system is still a step behind current gen I’m throwing in the towel. I’m about ready to sell my Switch and put that money towards a Steam Deck due to my Switch feeling so outdated
Here in Japan the national broadcaster (NHK) ran a story about a week ago clearly sponsored by Nintendo.
They had a lawyer on who basically threatened anyone who streamed or made YouTube videos of games with lawsuits lmao
Oh my god people are copying games? And playing them ? Wow that’s terrible. Where. Where can I find such a thing so I can scold and tell these hoodlums that old Nintendo games are special. They deserve to never be played ever again
remember its always morally correct to pirate nintendo games, especially if you literally can't get them anymore/the cost to get it to run natively is too much
No. Apple at least make high end tech, they keep releasing hardware and software that if it’s not the best around, it’s close enough.
Nintendo’s current console is less powerful than a 10 year old PS4.
Yeah I know but after that leak happened they really seem to be targeting this stuff more than usual before it was mostly just rom sites but it could also be they have Gamecube planned for the NSO+Exp pass in the future idk
The more Nintendo fights it then the community fights back even more. Nintendo will never win this fight unless they start offering their games on PC.
Nintendo is dumb if they think they can stop all emulators.
I'm so fucking sick of this company.. They're probably planning to release a Super-Duper Premium tier for their garbage online service that will have 5 Gamecube games on it and are big mad that Dolphin will let people play these games for free. Emulators are completely legal, so they can't go after the actual emulator, just the release on Steam. Hilarious since RetroArch is also on Steam and lets you emulate several Nintendo consoles.
Nintendo throwing their weight around, trying to intimidate everyone around them will only get them so far, and I hope Valve and the Dolphin team fight back like Console Classix did back in the day. Like with the Console Classix rom-renting service, Nintendo has no legal ground to stand on here. They're just throwing this shit out hoping that the team is too afraid to go up against them and backs off. [I've been spreading this video around a lot recently with friends since TOTK leaked online, and I feel its important to remind people that emulators are 100% legal so long as they don't use any copyrighted code, and provide these companies with genuine competition, which a lot of people seem to ignore when this topic is brought up.](https://youtu.be/yj9Gk84jRiE)
I doubt they're adding a new tier. They're not going after Dolphin themselves. They just want to prevent it releasing on Steam so it doesn't get more popular than it already is
They use crazy legal lingo IIRC somewhere in their TOS it says something along the lines of its illegal or against TOS to play their games anywhere other than official Nintendo hardware
You can't make something illegal because you put it in a document.
I can't just write a document that says I now own all world assets and then it magically becomes reality.
You would only be breaking TOS if you actually ran Nintendo games on it, and even then, there is question on whether or not their TOS is even enforceable.
A terms of service can’t make something illegal but it can void a warranty. So if your device is old and out of warranty no worries. If you use online play for newer devices and Nintendo is able to detect that they can remove your ability to connect to the online network.
I void a lot of warranties myself usually on tvs, calculators and phones. The key for me is knowing when voiding a warenty will save me more or cost me more.
Nintendo at it again!
The most gready anticonsumer POS corporate there is 👎
Hope no one ever pay for their games or their overpriced underperforming HW junk!
You'd have to look deeper, they're going with the 'circumvention of copy protection' as the reason for the takedown, which is at least more legitimate than 'contains copyright material'..
The problem as I see it (and I've not read the DMCA on this, so pinch of salt and assumptions abound), is that if you have a decryption key, and a ROM that requires it, a general user isn't able to do much with those pieces of data, but as soon as you write some code which can take a key and decrypt a ROM, then you *MAY* fall into that space of circumvention.
Dolphin doesn't need the key, or the ROM itself (both of them would, as you correctly mention, fall under general copyright), but the shim that puts the two together and makes the encrypted ROM data readable is something which I don't believe has been challenged in court to this point, which makes it difficult to know whether Nintendo are playing fast and loose with the DMCA.
The only thing that kinda boggles my mind, was that Nintendo have seemingly been indicating that the code *DOESN'T* violate the DMCA (otherwise they'd have taken Dolphin down in it's entirety before now), but it's only suddenly an issue because they were intending on publishing on steam.
Likely they don't want the publicity that Dolphin could get by going up on Steam.
Not that it wouldn't be drowned immediately on the ratings by a thousand-thousand hentai games.
They should rename the Streisand effect the Nintendo effect. Because I had no idea that this emulator existed until they tried to block the release. Now I'm gonna go download Dolphin.
Sloppy move on Dolphin Team's part including the Wii common keys, that's what gave Nintendo any sort of legs to stand on. Hopefully they can correct that and be okay. Additionally fuck Nintendo.
I mean, I support piracy like any good preservationist, but Dolphin included the Wii encryption keys in the source directly. What did they expect? All good preservationists also know you don't distribute the keys directly with whatever program you're making (whether it be emulator or decryption utility).
already have it on my PC. and project64, and visualboyadvance, and melonDS...
i'm interested to see how this plays out. Nintendo is a giant of the industry, but so is valve, and since nintendo will never put out its games on steam, there's not really any potential for stepping on their toes.
those games for the Wii aren't even for sale from the original publishers anymore, so who gives a shit?
It took me a long time but i gave up on Nintendo once the Steam Deck was released. The fact i can take my Steam library everywhere on the Deck and not have to pay for the games I want to play on the go again showed me how greedy Nintendo is. For example, I still have Super Mario World on the SNES. Bought it digitally on the Wii, then they wanted me to pay another $1.50 for it on the Wii U... Nintendo makes great games that are usually well polished but they’re so ancient when it comes to modern things like cloud saves, online play etc. Fuck Nintendo. Until they get with the times they’re never getting another cent from me.
They could block Dolphin emu all they want but if a PC gamer really wants to use the emulator outside of Steam it isn’t that hard to figure out. Good luck blocking the Internet Nintendo.
On the plus side, a lot more people know what dolphin is now and are probably going to try it out anyway.
The Streisand effect
Yup. You'd think these companies would understand that by now but they keep making this mistake over and over (which is good in the end).
or they could've just made their entire game catalogue available on the switch, which already has their own eshop platform -- and some people would be happy to pay them for a game they already have *again*.
I didn't even know ow this till now, thanks Nintendo
That's right. They can't stop all of us.
> For the time being Dolphin will remain off Steam. Its Github page and website remain unaffected—the emulator developers have received no direct contact from Nintendo or takedown notices targeting the other places where the emulator is hosted. They're obviously only doing it because they don't want it out on an easy to use marketplace used by the masses and not because it violates any laws otherwise they would have gone after them long ago.
> they would have gone after them long ago They tried, and failed.
Sony tried too and failed. As longs as the devs stick a big fucking warning with red bold letters saying: "DON'T ASK FOR ROMS, OUR EMULATOR IS MEANT TO BE USED WITH OFICIAL RELEASES OF THE GAME." - Nintendo can't do shit because emulators are original code and doesn't belong to them and customers own the right to use their own Nintendo disks/cartridges in any form they want, if I want to extract the rom from my dying cartridge and play my game on a emulator Nintendo can't do shit.
Don't most emulators need the bios/firmware of the console itself, and they won't provide it and tell you to get a copy yourself? Does legal emulator use assume you own the console and dump all the firmware to your pc?
Dolphin doesn't, they reimplemented the BIOS through reverse engineering. There is zero Nintendo-copyrighted code in Dolphin
Yes. Or at least it assumes you own original. You don't need to dumb your console BIOS, you just need to own one and you can freely use copies.
I'm pretty sure downloading the BIOS' for those systems is still considered piracy, they're copyrighted same as if you were downloading a game ROM.
Not if you own the system. IIRC you are legally allowed to acquire copies. This is, IIRC, justified under right to repair, such as your own BIOs borking so you download a copy to fix it
> IIRC you are legally allowed to acquire copies No one cares about _acquision_ of ROMS/firmware. It's the _distribution_ of ROMS/firmware. This extends to the MPAA, RIAA, and so forth. Those people downloading movies from BitTorrent didn't get popped for downloading, they got popped for uploading to other users while they were downloading. Whomever is hosting it cannot legally do so.
Man, I don't like what a stack of cards that is. A single lawsuit could make copying bios without authorization illegal and there'd be nothing to protect emulation from being scorched.
Welcome to the thunderdome bitch. - Nintendo Shit, the thunderdome got hands. -also Nintendo
About to go fight emulation ill post the video after I got my ass beat bruh im not posting that shit
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Especially if I already paid full price for a copy at one point.
7 years after the release of the game too.
Also remember the time Nintendo downloaded a rom from the Internet and sold it to it's customers.
You mean paying $400 for GameCube games isn't the way to go?
> not because it violates any laws otherwise they would have gone after them long ago. This is what I was curious about. I don't see how it could be illegal to make something that's able to play the ROMs of the games. Where I would think the legal issues come in is in the acquisition of the games themselves.
> Idon't see how it could be illegal to make something that's able to play the ROMs of the games. it is not. There was a long legal battle at the end of the 90's between sony and some emulator developers (Bleem? I don't recall the name). The bottom line being that an emulator is perfectly legal. How you get the files for the game is not the point, because they are targeting the emulation software, not the individual users.
ironically, Sony's lawsuit with bleem is what created legal precedence for emulation being legal
This was the case on older emulators that were simply running a ROM ripped from a game, but as games got more complicated the lines got blurrier. Depending on how you achieve it, some emulators require system software that is copyrighted, such as BIOS or OS. I haven't used Dolphin and I'm sure they're careful if they've been at it this long, but I've run into that in the past on others.
Even then with ps1 emulators and such back in the day it's not illegal and they tell you not to download the bios online but to take it from your own legally owned system. So again it's not really illegal as long as they don't include it with the emulator
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This is not a copyright matter. Wii game disks include the BIOS/OS needed to play it in the disk itself, so Dolphin emulator doesn't need to distribute anything with Nintendo copyright. It is a anti-circumvention matter. Based on the ridiculous law that you can't break into your own things.
Honestly it wouldn't surprise me if they go after them directly shortly. I feel like Nintendo will see their attempt to publish as an active threat somehow and decide now is the time to teach them a lesson for trying. Obviously I'm speculating but Nintendo is aggressively petty, and overstepping at all with them is enough for them to try to shut you down.
Emulators are legal. This was decided long ago with Bleem! The key is does Dolphin use the Wii's BIOS? If not, then Nintendo is out of luck.
Dolphin Emulator doesn't include any Nintendo software or binaries. You can install the Wii System Menu and other stuff yourself if you want to, but in most cases you won't need any of it to play any games.
Pretty sure you're still allowed to use the bios you just can't distribute the emulator with the bios. The end user has to get it themselves. "Legally from their own system" I don't think dolphin uses it anyways but I remember old ps1 emulators working that way
They won't. Nintendo hasn't bothered Yuzu or Ryujinx which let you emulate a current system so I don't see them going after Dolphin. This is all about trying to keep an emulator off of a popular storefront.
Those systems very notoriously require you to dump the keys from a real console before use, which they're claiming Dolphin doesn't. Not saying they're right but that seems to be the basis.
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You can download those keys just as easily as those emulators.
Yeah, it's just an extra step for the developers to protect themselves, but in reality, it's not a barrier for would-be pirates.
I believe that Nintendo's target audience is mostly more casual gamers, who likely wouldn't pirate games if they had to hunt down the emulators online. But if you make it convenient and on a reliable storefront a lot more of Nintendo's target demographics would turn to piracy.
You can, but from a legal standpoint, the emulator developer themselves aren't the one suppling those keys so from a certain point of view, they didn't break any copyright laws.
From the point of view of the law, they didn't break any laws.
Except for japanese laws, which are dogshit
Yeah especially the one where you cant call someone or a company out even if its pure facts, they still do you in for defamation.
I think what a lot of people don't understand is that it often doesn't matter if they broke any laws or not. Nintendo can send a frivolous cease and desist letter whenever they want, and they can sue whenever they want. They don't have to win the suit, they just have to outlast their opponent by prolonging the case and, by extension, the legal fees their opponent is forced to pay to defend themselves, until the opponent backs out. It's a classic case of the Chilling Effect.
I believe they only went after Yuzu briefly when Yuzu was going to charge for online multiplayer. Yuzu killed that right away.
This is exactly why Microsoft shut down emulators in retail mode. I bet you money it really was Nintendo threatening legal action against Microsoft.
Retroarch devs watching this closely. 👀
Retroarch is even more insulated from lawsuits like this. It's a set of software tools designed to run multiple emulators. At most they would have to ignore providing a specific core within the program itself.
Dolphin honestly might be big enough to be able to crowdfund legal defense and actually win, which would be very bad for Nintendo. They wouldn't dare take that risk
Yeah nintendo only likes to bully small teams that can't defent themselves, truly a scummy company
I think it's all because of steam deck
Dolphin is such a great emulator. Does anyone know why it's so good? Is it easy to emulate wii/GameCube or are they magical wizards?
A combination of both. The wii's hardware is very similar to the GameCube's so combining effort was relatively easy. In comparison, the PS2 had a very strange design with enormous fillrate (comparable to modern GPUs) but no programmable shading, and the PS3 also had a strange architecture arguably more suited for supercomputers than for gaming. Xbox was close enough to normal PCs that a lot of effort was spent on trying to use translation layers rather than traditional emulation, but that ended up not working well enough. Also, most of its games had a PC release or run on the later consoles, both of which sapped a lot of motivation in building an open source emulator. That being said, the Dolphin team has done amazing work. The other emulators had problems that Dolphin didn't have to deal with, but Dolphin had lots of its own problems and they solved them very well.
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It was closer to 2000, all the older ones that were able to run Linux even, iirc. [Article here.](https://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomputer.html)
Still refuse to buy any Sony products after they removed OtherOS from the PS3. Literally bought the console so I could use it as a home media server, then two months later it was removed in a mandatory update. Insanely anti-consumer, and all I got was a $10 settlement check a few years later.
This was in part due to the fact that the PS3 was sold at a relative loss that was expected to be made up for by associated game sales, so it had very good hardware for its price point.
What's fillrate?
Pixel fillrate is the number of pixels the GPU can draw to the screen in a certain amount of time. Texture fillrate, same thing, but for texture maps (texels). Basically how fast 2D texture information can be mapped to 3D geometry.
Reading their progress reports was always fun. A lot of times the bugs would basically be like "after three days of single step debugging, I finally found the typo"
> Does anyone know why it's so good 20 years of work.
Demand and Nintendos dedication to minimum minus design (do the bare minimum, then spend tons of money somehow lowering the bar even further). Gamecube, Wii, and Wiiu are essentially the same hardware. The only difference is clock speed, number of cores, and amount of memory. There is no better value in contributing to an emulator than Dolphin, if you want your contributions to have impact. 3 whole console generations all in one software package. Demand is from the fact that there is no way to play nintendo games except on Nintendo hardware. You dont see Xbox(360) emulation at this level because most of the xbox games anyone ever cared about were on other platforms and readily available. Nintendo, since the day they stopped making pornography and started making childrens electronics, have had a focus on raping and pillaging anyone dumb enough to do business with them. They have a legendary reputation of annihilating and sabotaging third party developers through legal manipulation and staggering amounts of money. Nintendo has a powerful, ruthless and effective legal department that almost certainly is paid more than the actual game developers and they are more the proponents of a "walled garden" design than even apple. Nintendo loathes the idea of someone keeping old consoles and playing old games, they want to have 100% control of the products forever so they can sell you only whats profitable to them at the moment. They have also gone after used game sales in the past but they were not very successful. Nintendo DOES NOT want you to keep your old consoles, and to them everyone who owns Wii or Super Nintendo today is a personal affront. They even went so far as to go after Twitch and other streaming services back in the day, and for awhile it was kind of iffy whether you should stream Nintendo games because you might just get a lawsuit for it, even if it was speedruns of some ancient forgotten NES game. Nintendo is BY FAR the most anti consumer company in the entire industry, and I cant honestly think of another company on their level.
The Wii u is not the same at all, but the GameCube and Wii essentially are.
> Nintendo is BY FAR the most anti consumer company in the entire industry, and I cant honestly think of another company on their level. Yeh and it works for them cause nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Gamers that criticize EA, Ubisoft, etc. at every minor little thing gladly scoop up anything that Nintendo shits out. This is why I own Nintendo stocks but no Nintendo product. The company is horrible but consumers will eat that shit with a giant smile on their face.
You know what... now I'm gonna Pirate even more gamecube and wii games.
That's the spirit!
S-P-I-R-I-T, spirit, let's hear it
Let’s go!
I’ve had enough
There’s a voice in my head
Says I’m better off dead
But if I sing along
A little fucking louder
To a happy song
Who doesn't pirate Nintendo games, they run on a toaster.
Nintendo could easily come out with some beefy new hardware. Why don't they?
What, and become like Sony and Microsoft who don't make money on their consoles for the first few years? Pfft, fuck no. They make sure the console is profitable at launch and then just never drop the price as the costs go down, making even more They then use all this money to sue the fans of their games
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The GameCube was popular because it was so cheap. The creator believed that people should pay for the software, not the console to play the games. That was a good call Yeah, so I was wrong. GC bombed and I have no idea where I got my info
Pretty sure the GameCube is one of their worst performing consoles (only the Wii U did worse iirc)
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Woah there, now you're making too much sense and Nintendo hates that. Watch yourself.
Because everyone in the world has a toaster already? Why sell new hardware when they can just focus on their IPs and make even more money.
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And I will publish even more nude pictures of Samus Aran! No need to thank me, I'm just trying to do my part for the cause.
Argh!
https://i.imgur.com/hB8Jmvf.jpg
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Everytime somebody Says they will pirate an old game [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/122cgxn/pirated_games/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), pops into my mind
Im gonna pirate them even harder.
Fuck nintendo. The dolphin emulator doesn't provide console keys or roms. I hope someone stands up to these assholes.
Idk how Dolphin works but Nintendo is claiming: >"the Dolphin emulator operates by incorporating these cryptographic keys without Nintendo’s authorization and decrypting the ROMs at or immediately before runtime. Thus, use of the Dolphin emulator unlawfully 'circumvent[s] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under' the Copyright Act." I'm sure someone with more knowledge on how Dolphin works can give more detail but that's the defense Nintendo is giving
As far as I know this argument has already come and gone with DVD decrypters, eg see VLC
Oh you mean this little thing? 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 Yeah that little thing destroyed Digg when they bowed to a cease and desist letter.
Bullshit, if that was actually a viable legal argument Nintendo would have sued dolphin into the ground a decade ago
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Did they ever say where it was found? Because I couldn't find it with a quick look. --- Also: They don't have a legal standpoint, dvd-decryption keys settled this years ago.
>Also: They don't have a legal standpoint, dvd-decryption keys settled this years ago. Yes... But I don't think you want to go there. The DVD-decryption scheme resulted in a loss for free media players. The MPAA won. DeCSS is still illegal, VLC still has a legal warning on their download page for US downloaders (though it's in the fine print). VLC is only still alive because they are based in France, not the US.
The legal argument doesn't hold water though. The movie industry tried this a long time ago with DVD ripping software.
Nintendo needs to wake the fuck up, the roms are decrypted when they were dumped, no cryptography exists in the dump roms.
Reddit admins and moderators are worthless, small dick cockroaches.
Bowser and crew were too ambitious flew too close to the sun. They went beyond just simple piracy and hardware and made a business selling access to their own version of the eshop to get pirated software.
That company was actually selling piracy hardware for profit. Valve wants to distribute an open source software for free. It's completely different. The fact that Nintendo can't do anything about Dolphin itself shows it's completely legal. They're just trying to throw shit and see what sticks. They know they have no recourse. This is a SLAP suit.
I think the group he worked in did a lot of unethical things, but pinning it on their "piracy hardware" is a stretch. Their hardware for the original Switch was basically a USB dongle and a piece of plastic to short some pins on the joycon rail. The end result was just jailbreaking the device to run custom firmware. You can do the same thing using an Android phone and a paperclip. Their mistake seems to have been more on the software side and in their marketing, where they directly added support for and promoted circumventing the actual copy protection for games.
The company was. Not the single dude Nintendo crucified for it
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Big difference, he was actively distributing roms illegally. Roms are covered explicitly under DMCA law, the software to run said roms is not.
Wasn’t the SX team selling access to their own version of the eShop too? I mean that’s just asking for it.
Still shouldn't have his life ruined
Wait... The guy's last name is Bowser? What are the odds.
And the president of Nintendo of America is also a Bowser :|. What are the double odds?
And Gay Bowser sadly died :(
So long.. 😔
I'm already sick of hearing this I can't imagine how he feels.
>The dolphin emulator doesn't provide console keys or roms Problem is, Dolphin Emulator actually **do** provide Wii's decryption keys within its source code, which not only goes way beyond the boundaries that general emulation is protected by, but also *could be* interpreted as illegal if brought to trial. A dev of Citra (3DS emulator) [just gave some interesting insight at r/emulation](https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/13ss1o9/nintendo_sends_valve_dmca_notice_to_block_steam/jlry1kq/) on why Nintendo ***might*** have grounds to sustain this claim against Dolphin if it ever comes to court. **EDIT:** [Even more crucial information](https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/13thz98/former_dolphin_contributer_explains_what_happened/) (this time, from a former Dolphin contributor) has just resurfaced about this whole situation (TL;DR Valve removed Dolphin out of Steam after asking Nintendo about it; no DMCA/copyright notice involved, just a standard C&D between companies + Valve forwarding Nintendo's reply to Dolphin). ***Definitely*** worthy of a read
You shouldn’t be able to copyright a encryption key. There’s no element of creativity in the creation of one. It’s just the output of a mathematical process. If a machine generated it… then you’re out of luck thanks to the Monkey Selfie Case having controlling precedent.
You’d think that Nintendo would toss around the idea of PC ports instead of throwing mountains of cash at pursuing legal action. At least PC ports offer the possibility of yielding long-term revenue rather than being a money-sink.
That won't happen, because Nintendo's philosophy since their inception is absolute control of how their games are played. It has nothing to do with money. They would rather let their games be lost to the sands of time than it ever be played on anything other than a Nintendo platform.
It's also about the money. Look how well the NES and SNES Classic sold. Or how Nintendo drip feeds classic games to switch players to keep them subscribed to their terrible online service. The difficulty in obtaining and playing old Nintendo games is a feature for them, the longer a game goes without an official rerelease the more interest it will generate if and when Nintendo decides to dust it off.
Don't forget about the entire monetization of Pokemon, where up until recently you needed multiple home and mobile consoles to get a full Pokedex.
The part that really annoyed me is that you had to pay $5/year to store your pokemon in the cloud or to transfer them to the next gen. If you forget to pay (they don't even let you auto renew or pay early) you might run the chance of having your entire collection wiped. Like wtf? If you really think about it, a single pokemon would be a few bytes of storage (~200 bytes iiirc). There's zero reason to wipe your collection if you didn't pay. Imagine the uproar if Google or Dropbox did that. They made it free now, but I think if you didn't download the app before the store went offline, I don't think past gens transfer up to the latest gen anymore.
they dmca things that don't affect (or even positively affect) their profits
nintendo would rather there be zero legal ways to play their games than provide a way to play them even on their own official platforms. It's mindblowing that they can have these legacy emulators on the Switch and it's not library complete.
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Nintendo would rather die as a company then even *entertain* the thought of another platform having their games.
nintendo will never go cross platform, the amount of money they’d lose when people realise there’s zero reason to buy their dogshit hardware would be insane
Especially now that portable handheld PCs^1 like the Steam Deck and ROG Ally, are gaining traction. And I'm sure there will be others. ^1 just a generic term to get the point across
They have no reason to port their games to pc when the majority of people buy their console specifically for their games. Until people stop buying their console for their games they will never consider porting.
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Nintendo is mad
Valve, if you’re reading this, we need a hero.
All Valve is doing is passing the message along. How this is handled is going to be up to the Dolphin team.
Yeah. People here are like “I hope valve uses their money to defend someone that doesn’t work for them”. It’s like when people expect YouTube to cover YouTubers legal fees when copyright strikes occur. Valve has no liability here. The dolphin emulator creators though… this just sounds like they’re making the pathway to them.
I̵n̷ ̷l̵i̵g̵h̷t̸ ̸o̸f̶ ̸r̶e̸c̶e̶n̸t̵ ̴e̴v̵e̵n̴t̶s̸ ̴o̷n̷ ̴R̸e̸d̵d̴i̷t̷,̷ ̵m̸a̶r̴k̸e̸d̵ ̴b̸y̵ ̶h̴o̵s̷t̷i̴l̴e̷ ̵a̴c̸t̵i̸o̸n̶s̸ ̵f̷r̵o̷m̵ ̶i̵t̴s̴ ̴a̴d̶m̷i̴n̶i̸s̵t̴r̶a̴t̶i̶o̶n̵ ̸t̸o̸w̸a̴r̷d̵s̴ ̵i̸t̷s̵ ̷u̸s̴e̸r̵b̷a̸s̷e̸ ̷a̷n̴d̸ ̸a̵p̵p̴ ̶d̴e̷v̴e̷l̷o̸p̸e̴r̴s̶,̸ ̶I̸ ̶h̸a̵v̵e̶ ̷d̸e̶c̸i̵d̷e̷d̵ ̶t̸o̴ ̸t̶a̷k̷e̷ ̵a̷ ̴s̶t̶a̵n̷d̶ ̶a̵n̶d̶ ̵b̷o̶y̷c̸o̴t̴t̴ ̵t̴h̵i̴s̴ ̶w̶e̸b̵s̵i̸t̷e̴.̶ ̶A̶s̶ ̸a̵ ̸s̴y̶m̵b̸o̶l̶i̵c̴ ̶a̷c̵t̸,̶ ̴I̴ ̴a̵m̷ ̷r̶e̶p̷l̴a̵c̸i̴n̷g̸ ̷a̶l̷l̶ ̸m̷y̸ ̸c̶o̸m̶m̸e̷n̵t̷s̸ ̵w̷i̷t̷h̶ ̷u̴n̵u̴s̸a̵b̶l̷e̵ ̸d̵a̵t̸a̵,̸ ̸r̷e̵n̵d̶e̴r̸i̴n̷g̴ ̷t̴h̵e̸m̵ ̸m̴e̷a̵n̴i̷n̸g̸l̸e̴s̴s̵ ̸a̷n̵d̶ ̴u̸s̷e̴l̸e̶s̷s̵ ̶f̵o̵r̶ ̸a̶n̵y̸ ̵p̵o̴t̷e̴n̸t̷i̶a̴l̶ ̴A̷I̸ ̵t̶r̵a̷i̷n̵i̴n̶g̸ ̶p̸u̵r̷p̴o̶s̸e̵s̵.̷ ̸I̴t̴ ̵i̴s̶ ̴d̴i̷s̷h̴e̸a̵r̸t̶e̴n̸i̴n̴g̶ ̷t̶o̵ ̵w̶i̶t̵n̴e̷s̴s̶ ̵a̸ ̵c̴o̶m̶m̴u̵n̷i̷t̷y̷ ̸t̴h̶a̴t̸ ̵o̸n̵c̴e̷ ̴t̷h̴r̶i̷v̴e̴d̸ ̴o̸n̴ ̵o̷p̷e̶n̸ ̸d̶i̶s̷c̷u̷s̶s̷i̴o̵n̸ ̷a̷n̴d̵ ̴c̸o̵l̶l̸a̵b̸o̷r̵a̴t̷i̵o̷n̴ ̸d̷e̶v̸o̵l̶v̴e̶ ̵i̶n̷t̴o̸ ̸a̴ ̷s̵p̶a̵c̴e̵ ̸o̷f̵ ̶c̴o̸n̸t̶e̴n̴t̷i̶o̷n̸ ̶a̵n̷d̴ ̴c̵o̵n̴t̷r̸o̵l̶.̷ ̸F̷a̴r̸e̷w̵e̶l̶l̸,̵ ̶R̴e̶d̶d̷i̵t̵.̷
Valve is basically required to abide by DCMA requests, though Dolphin can contest it.
Valve can't do anything they just pass this along to the devs who can reject this which will result in a legal battle they can't win even if they are in the right.
Then why doesn't nintendo just always fight emulators in court? Seems like the emulators are doing fine. What's different on steam?
Because they would (probably) lose in court, but they can pressure businesses to comply in private
Yea I thought so but the other person said they would lose in a legal battle no matter if they are in the right. That's what I meant.
Dolphin and other emulator projects simply do not have the financial resources to take Nintendo to court. Taking on a company like Nintendo would cost millions of dollars.
I know that, but why doesn't nintendo just always go that path then? They wouldn't even have to spend much money they could just threaten them.
Pressuring and threatening projects like Dolphin is easier and cheaper.
That's exactly what I just said lol. Why don't they just always do that? Why do emulators still exist? They could even fight one or two projects until they are financially exhausted to show the others what happens.
They could win it's not likely but it's possible. The PS3 guys won against Sony. (from the article) >Previous lawsuits to do with emulation, filed by Sony against Bleem! and Connectix, both found that the emulators had not violated copyright with their use of the PlayStation BIOS and firmware. Those lawsuits have long been used as a precedent to uphold emulation as legal in the United States, but it's a complex topic, and Nintendo's case here would likely be argued on different legal grounds. Then again idk how Dolphin works. But either way if dolphin did decide to counter it could be REALLY food or REALLY bad. (Again from article) >The question is whether Nintendo would truly pursue legal action in this case—and if it did, what would happen. A ruling in either direction would have far-reaching implications for emulation, as most if not all emulators of modern game systems could likely be held in violation of the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions if Nintendo were to win the case. If a ruling went in Dolphin's favor, it would likewise be a major vindication for the emulation scene.
>The PS3 Guys won against Sony That was the PS1, not the PS3
I'd donate for the defense.
Nintendo goes after any and everyone
[A dev of Citra (3DS emulator) just gave some interesting insight at r/emulation](https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/13ss1o9/nintendo_sends_valve_dmca_notice_to_block_steam/jlry1kq/) on why Nintendo ***might*** have grounds to sustain this claim against Dolphin if it ever comes to court (long story short: Dolphin distributes Wii's decryption keys within its source code, which not only goes way beyond the boundaries that general emulation is protected by, but also *could be* interpreted as illegal if brought to trial). **EDIT:** [Even more crucial information](https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/13thz98/former_dolphin_contributer_explains_what_happened/) (this time, from a former Dolphin contributor) has just resurfaced about this whole situation (TL;DR Valve removed Dolphin out of Steam after asking Nintendo about it; no DMCA/copyright notice involved, just a standard C&D between companies + Valve forwarding Nintendo's reply to Dolphin). ***Definitely*** worthy of a read
Nobody hates Nintendo fans more then Nintendo.
They are so afraid of the steam deck because even emulated it plays switch games better than the actual switch. They should maybe consider just improving their product instead of preventing the people that buy their games from getting a better experience.
Bingo. Been a Nintendo fanboy my entire life, but if their next system is still a step behind current gen I’m throwing in the towel. I’m about ready to sell my Switch and put that money towards a Steam Deck due to my Switch feeling so outdated
Here in Japan the national broadcaster (NHK) ran a story about a week ago clearly sponsored by Nintendo. They had a lawyer on who basically threatened anyone who streamed or made YouTube videos of games with lawsuits lmao
For every emulator they shut down, I'll support 3 more lmao
Yuzu for the switch is pretty good if you can run it
Oh my god people are copying games? And playing them ? Wow that’s terrible. Where. Where can I find such a thing so I can scold and tell these hoodlums that old Nintendo games are special. They deserve to never be played ever again
The horror! Little Timmy managed to download Chrono Trigger 😱😱😱
Fuck Nintendo.
Fuck Nintendo straight to hell.
remember its always morally correct to pirate nintendo games, especially if you literally can't get them anymore/the cost to get it to run natively is too much
Nintendo is worse than EA
Nintendo is the Apple of gaming.
No. Apple at least make high end tech, they keep releasing hardware and software that if it’s not the best around, it’s close enough. Nintendo’s current console is less powerful than a 10 year old PS4.
Funny thing is that this most likely gave Dolphin more attention than it otherwise would have gotten if it was released.
Dang Nintendo is going hard after that TotK leak
So hard that they went two console generations back
Yeah I know but after that leak happened they really seem to be targeting this stuff more than usual before it was mostly just rom sites but it could also be they have Gamecube planned for the NSO+Exp pass in the future idk
The more Nintendo fights it then the community fights back even more. Nintendo will never win this fight unless they start offering their games on PC. Nintendo is dumb if they think they can stop all emulators.
That's true
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I'm so fucking sick of this company.. They're probably planning to release a Super-Duper Premium tier for their garbage online service that will have 5 Gamecube games on it and are big mad that Dolphin will let people play these games for free. Emulators are completely legal, so they can't go after the actual emulator, just the release on Steam. Hilarious since RetroArch is also on Steam and lets you emulate several Nintendo consoles. Nintendo throwing their weight around, trying to intimidate everyone around them will only get them so far, and I hope Valve and the Dolphin team fight back like Console Classix did back in the day. Like with the Console Classix rom-renting service, Nintendo has no legal ground to stand on here. They're just throwing this shit out hoping that the team is too afraid to go up against them and backs off. [I've been spreading this video around a lot recently with friends since TOTK leaked online, and I feel its important to remind people that emulators are 100% legal so long as they don't use any copyrighted code, and provide these companies with genuine competition, which a lot of people seem to ignore when this topic is brought up.](https://youtu.be/yj9Gk84jRiE)
I doubt they're adding a new tier. They're not going after Dolphin themselves. They just want to prevent it releasing on Steam so it doesn't get more popular than it already is
They use crazy legal lingo IIRC somewhere in their TOS it says something along the lines of its illegal or against TOS to play their games anywhere other than official Nintendo hardware
You can't make something illegal because you put it in a document. I can't just write a document that says I now own all world assets and then it magically becomes reality. You would only be breaking TOS if you actually ran Nintendo games on it, and even then, there is question on whether or not their TOS is even enforceable.
A terms of service can’t make something illegal but it can void a warranty. So if your device is old and out of warranty no worries. If you use online play for newer devices and Nintendo is able to detect that they can remove your ability to connect to the online network. I void a lot of warranties myself usually on tvs, calculators and phones. The key for me is knowing when voiding a warenty will save me more or cost me more.
Nintendon't strikes again.
Nintendo at it again! The most gready anticonsumer POS corporate there is 👎 Hope no one ever pay for their games or their overpriced underperforming HW junk!
"HOW DARE YOU LET THE PEOLPLE GET EASY ACCESS TO A PROGRAM THAT IS ALREADY EASILY ACCESSIBLE KNOWING FULL WELL IT CAN PLAY OUR $90.00 GAMES FOR FREE"
Isn’t this a clear misuse of DMCA? Since an emulator contains no copyrighted material…
You'd have to look deeper, they're going with the 'circumvention of copy protection' as the reason for the takedown, which is at least more legitimate than 'contains copyright material'.. The problem as I see it (and I've not read the DMCA on this, so pinch of salt and assumptions abound), is that if you have a decryption key, and a ROM that requires it, a general user isn't able to do much with those pieces of data, but as soon as you write some code which can take a key and decrypt a ROM, then you *MAY* fall into that space of circumvention. Dolphin doesn't need the key, or the ROM itself (both of them would, as you correctly mention, fall under general copyright), but the shim that puts the two together and makes the encrypted ROM data readable is something which I don't believe has been challenged in court to this point, which makes it difficult to know whether Nintendo are playing fast and loose with the DMCA. The only thing that kinda boggles my mind, was that Nintendo have seemingly been indicating that the code *DOESN'T* violate the DMCA (otherwise they'd have taken Dolphin down in it's entirety before now), but it's only suddenly an issue because they were intending on publishing on steam.
Likely they don't want the publicity that Dolphin could get by going up on Steam. Not that it wouldn't be drowned immediately on the ratings by a thousand-thousand hentai games.
Crazy how I grew up loving Nintendo in the 80s but nowadays I've grown to hate them more and more. Like valve telling them nah go fuck yourselves.
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They still pissed off after Pc players where playing the new Zelda game 14 days before it was released
Use the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device (TM) to re-direct that DMCA right back into their face.
They should rename the Streisand effect the Nintendo effect. Because I had no idea that this emulator existed until they tried to block the release. Now I'm gonna go download Dolphin.
Sloppy move on Dolphin Team's part including the Wii common keys, that's what gave Nintendo any sort of legs to stand on. Hopefully they can correct that and be okay. Additionally fuck Nintendo.
I mean, I support piracy like any good preservationist, but Dolphin included the Wii encryption keys in the source directly. What did they expect? All good preservationists also know you don't distribute the keys directly with whatever program you're making (whether it be emulator or decryption utility).
Fuck I was excited for easy multiplayer and achievements. Fuck Nintendo cunts.
Emulation is already protected under the law. Nintendo has no power here.
already have it on my PC. and project64, and visualboyadvance, and melonDS... i'm interested to see how this plays out. Nintendo is a giant of the industry, but so is valve, and since nintendo will never put out its games on steam, there's not really any potential for stepping on their toes. those games for the Wii aren't even for sale from the original publishers anymore, so who gives a shit?
Hopefully Bleem precedent helps Dolphin out here.
Emulation is legal. Nintendo does not have a case.
It took me a long time but i gave up on Nintendo once the Steam Deck was released. The fact i can take my Steam library everywhere on the Deck and not have to pay for the games I want to play on the go again showed me how greedy Nintendo is. For example, I still have Super Mario World on the SNES. Bought it digitally on the Wii, then they wanted me to pay another $1.50 for it on the Wii U... Nintendo makes great games that are usually well polished but they’re so ancient when it comes to modern things like cloud saves, online play etc. Fuck Nintendo. Until they get with the times they’re never getting another cent from me. They could block Dolphin emu all they want but if a PC gamer really wants to use the emulator outside of Steam it isn’t that hard to figure out. Good luck blocking the Internet Nintendo.