What Happened to Dolphin 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.

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.

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

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.