What Happened to Dolphin on Steam?
dolphin-emu.org
dolphin-emu.org
In essence, the entirety of Dolphin's functionality provides legal cover for the small amount related to the key, under DMCA exception wording.
Kudos to the Dolphin team.
...which is completely unrelated, since it was Valve who asked Nintendo even though they didn't really have to.
https://gbatemp.net/threads/nintendo-reportedly-issues-dmca-...
Nintendo has an ideological position that essentially the first sale doctrine is wrong and they have privilege over you for things you legally purchased.
They already don't and yet that's what they are doing.
There's a difference between legal and private pressure.
Nintendo doesn't have any right, in the legal sense. That doesn't mean it's smart for Valve to make an enemy of Nintendo. It's obvious Nintendo uses that pressure. Not legal pressure. The DMCA claim is just pretense.
If Nintendo believes they had a valid claim why only enforce it with Steam but no other places Dolphin is available?
no that code is most most likely not illegal at all because there are cases, under DMCA, where code like that is fully legal
this is nothing but a ruse of Nintendo threatening Valve to avoid having to do a proper DMCA request/suing as such an action can be disputed in court, an dispute Nintendo is likely to lose
so it's basically Nintendo pressuring Valve to circumvent proper DMCA enforcement procedures in their favor in a sketchy dishonest way which undermines the law (but might happen to not be illegal)
if Nintendo would think it's illegal they would already have used DMCA to take down Dolphin everywhere, instead of using such roundabout ways
1. Start a lawsuit against Valve rather than Dolphin Team as a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation). Valve could then end up spending millions defending itself from the mad tyrant and the best case is it spent millions to confirm it was doing nothing wrong in the first place.
2. Tell all their 3rd party publishers to stop publishing on Steam, in order to continue doing business with them, utterly ruining Steam.
In both these cases, it has nothing to do with legality or the DMCA, which Dolphin Team's own lawyers have explained if you'd just read the article. It has to do with a big bully getting angry if it doesn't get what it wants, and is willing to throw its weight around.
Portal: Companion Collection (containing Portal and Portal 2) came put last year.
Retro games are in jeopardy of being lost forever because publishers/developers actively work against making it possible to preserve game history.
If that doesn't do harm to the common good, I don't know what does.
Also I doubt they would care about the legality in the slightest. It's not like they would send a press release about it.
It would be an one-time, in-person, strictly private meeting between the respective publishers and executive management. Like the one where they're shown a new console and talk about renewed licensing terms for the platform.
Nintendo is straight up evil. US courts have told them in direct language that they are wrong and emulation is fine, but they don't give a fuck and the US seems against preventing big money entities from harassing people with lawsuits or fixing the goddamn court system to not cost you a million dollars when you are unambiguously in the right.
They need Valve to not block them for Nintendo without legal case based on some excuses (which Valve as store owner is somewhat allowed to do).
And the one thing Nintendo does not want is a legal case, because they know they are most likely going to lose it and then it's likely not just dolphin which would take advantage of the additional legal clarity created by the case.
In the EU I'm not sure there even would be a case because the law being _that_ clear cut in favor of Dolphin.
but it's Valve which is blocking them not Nintendo
and sure Valve might do so on behest of Nintendo but it's still Valves doing so
the idea that Dolphine (or Valve) have to asks Nintendo for anything is just completly absurd and beyond any legal basis
which is why Nintendo doesn't use the proper legal methods here IMHO, because then you can dispute it and they can (probably will) lose
but as long as Valve plays along there is nothing much Dolphin can do, so again it's Valve who first needs to be convinced before then either Nintendo gives up or you have a proper legal dispute with them
anyway like you correctly pointed out there is no way for Dolphin to affect Valve so the is no way for Dolphi on steam
AI art isn't illegal, but Steam still has taken a position of not wanting to be the middleman for distribution of such content.
All indications are that the dubious legality of ML-generated art is exactly why Valve is not approving those games. Valve isn't taking a moral stance against ML-generated art, they're playing it safe legally by avoiding distributing such games when they cannot ensure the ML models were not trained on unlicensed content and will not spew copyright infringements.
Valve isn't taking a moral stance against emulators, they're playing it safe legally by avoiding distributing such games when they cannot ensure that unlicensed software won't be run on them and will not invite copyright takedowns.
---
Valve doesn't want to carry software that they may be sued over as a distributor.
Until they are on very firm standing that it is ok, they pull the software.
https://kotaku.com/workers-resources-steam-pc-dmca-takedown-...
https://kotaku.com/workers-resources-soviet-republic-pc-dmca...
As a distributor of software, Steam has no appetite for distributing any software that may lead it to legal entanglements. Spurious DMCA requests, AI art, or credible threats from Nintendo - that game cannot be distributed.
Valve limited there store to "in general not contain products of a certain type (here AI art containing)".
But in case of Dolphin this isn't the case but a explicit ban of dolphine without it braking Valve TOS.
If Valve would but in their TOS that "emulators are generally not allowed" then rejecting Dolphine would be okay and no one would have wirten any blogs or news articles about it, or even tried to put it on steam.
It's is in the sense that through Valve Nintendo effectively circumvented the legal protections targets of DMCA take down notices have.
So while this is not using law it has everything to do with circumventing law.
If Valve says no, Dolphin doesn't come out on Steam. If Valve says "ask Nintendo", and Nintendo says no, Dolphin doesn't come out on Steam. Dolphin doesn't get a pass to be published everywhere because what they're doing is legal.
Bollocks. Nintendo has a reputation for suing the hell out of anyone, often repeatedly, even if they would likely lose. They're rabid about protecting their IP, to the point where they're infamous for it.
Family friendly front-end, but ruthless corporation behind it. They'd absolutely get lawyers and charge in aggressively.
Valve has nothing to gain by putting their money at risk for someone else's emulator; "no dog in this fight".
And with how it's currently they for sure guaranteed won't see dolphin or similar on steam, a sure fire way which might even be cheaper then suing.
Also AFIK in most cases where they sue they either have a good chance of winning or losing will just lose that case and not set a precedence which can cost them dearly.
The only thing they'd really lose is the money they already spent on lawyers, and they're more than happy to accept that loss. Nintendo will sue in futile situations just to make the other party miserable.
If you considers how many people in this chat alone just blindly assumed it's illegal, and that's given a "more tech affine audience of HN, then that is a huge deal.
Nor does Valve have anything to gain if this actually shifts legal precedents; it may even hurt them in the long run.
Legal or illegal doesn't matter, this is a cost-benefit for defending someone else's project, and the cost is plainly not worth it.
Valve just said they did.
>They need Valve to not block them for Nintendo without legal case based on some excuses
Or what, they sue Valve? It's still their store. Valve can reject any title for any reason (well, almost any reason. But proving discimination here would be difficult).
I've come across this issue with Valve's vague rulings for dozens of titles, so I'm not exactly surprised the outcome here once again favors Valve. But people are still in blind devotion for Valve instead of realizing that they have been leveraging their pseudo-monopoly on the Pc platform for years now.
after careful considerations and consulting lawyers, and doing that more then one time
> been worth it to try without the key once.
No it would make the situation worse for them, they can publish it _without any WII support at all_. But not just without the key.
Trying it without the key would be like saying "we do know it's illegal" instead of "it's clearly covered by DMCA exceptions and related law".
Removing the key without removing the whole WII functionality *is the one think they must no do no matter what*.
but in this case it wouldn't be a legal admission of guild but it would be propagated as such by Nintendo if there ever is a legal case reducing the odds of winning such an hypothetical case
The reason why Dolphin is legal is based on it being mainly a tool for playing old games you own and potentially with mods, accessibility tools and similar.
So for Nintendo to win a case they would need to convince the judge that it's mainly meant for illegal copyright infringement.
Their argument would likely be on the line of the Wii code without the ability to load legal Wii games is useless and having it would be really strange as you could only use it with illegal copies with the copy protection stripped. And stripping it is always illegal to do. So it would be designed for illegal usage. (And rare new games released that way but they would argue it doesn't matter in the grater picture).
I.e. it would be easier for them to win a legal case against Dolphin without it having been an legal admittance of guild.
no Nintendo might have enough arguments to make a DACM take down request, but from the POV of many lawyers most likely not enough legal claims to have any chance at winning the dispute in court which would likely follow
this is IMHO why they don't do a claim at all outside of steam
But Nintendo is quite worried about emulation on Steam especially with the Steam Deck. They are obsessed with controlling the games through the hardware and have low end hardware many people would love to replace with something more beefy even if it's not officially supported. So I would be surprised if Nintendo hadn't pressured Valve into an agreement that they would reject and tell them about any Nintendo emulators long before Dolphin tried to go onto steam.
Now due to the lack of DMCA claim and lack of access to steam Dolphin has two choices:
1. give up on it (for now)
2. provoke a legal case in one of multiple ways which would legally clarify if they are covered under law or not (which is expensive and while not very likely there is always the risk to lose it). Through if they are unlucky winning doesn't solve the problem as Valve could just add "no nintendo emulators allowed" to their TOS in which case they would have to sue Valve and Nintendo together for unfair market practices.
... as a non profit project it's pretty clear which option Dolphin can practically take, especially given that you still can put it on a steam deck etc. just with a bit extra steps.
Whole lotta risk for 0 net gain, and possibly steep consequences.
If Nintendo had sound legal arguments, they would have already won a lawsuit, ergo it is reasonable to assume that they're just being Nintendo (i.e. loudly screaming that emulation is illegal regardless of the actual law).
A lot of people here seem to think Nintendo would not claim it illegal without the circumvention code or wouldn't write a letter saying that. This is totally wrong and shows a complete lack of historical understanding of Nintendo and their legal threats and lawsuits going back decades. Nintendo has repeatedly sued even when they lose. Nintendo has even sued companies for making unlicensed games. Not homebrew, but commercially successful games.
Others seem to believe valve would suddenly be okay with it without circumvention code. This seems naive at best, delusional at worst. That letter includes a threat to valve on distribution. As above, Nintendo isn't going to say "it's fine now I guess". They would happily sue valve with or without the code. Valve may want to partner with them someday.
Valve may be better than most but it seems very unlikely for them to want to die on this hill. The good will does not seem worth the trouble.
Why don't we have laws to punish companies like Nintendo for this kind of harassment? What if we had one like "if a copyright lawsuit is found to be frivolous or filed in bad faith, the copyright for all of the plaintiff's works involved in the case is forfeit to the defendant"?
They're called Anti-SLAPP laws[0], but iirc they really only let you stop the current lawsuit.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...
Or you express an opinion on facebook about a political figure, and they sue you for defamation.
What we are talking about here would not be considered a SLAPP in most states.
That sounds like grounds for trolling in the other direction. Can you imagine some new IP taking off but then being grabbed by some asset flipping company that can outspend the creator?
This aspect is totally lost on so many people. Even apple partnered with them for games on their own platform.
It’s fiscally irresponsible for company directors to close that door in preference over a hobby emulator, while pretending that it isn’t intended to infringe on copyright.
I'm not sure if this applies in Valve's case, as I understand it, Valve is privately owned and held by Gabe Newell and what he says goes, so really the question is does he want to do this or not?
Nintendo is famous for its closed and closely controlled ecosystem.
Partnering with apple to release a mobile game is a bad (outlier) example as nintendo has no capabilities to release their own phone.
Why would Nintendo invite/open competition with steam deck? Why would they make it easier to pirate their games and give steam cut on the sales via steam store. All the while nintendo has their own console their own store.
Its like apple allowed android store on iOS. Sure they could do it but why would they?
Will Nintendo suffer the same fate? Highly unlikely. The Switch is doing great, the successor will probably do great. But then again, so did the Sega Genesis. There's no need to burn bridges.
> Will Nintendo suffer the same fate? Highly unlikely.
In next you suggest not to discount something "Highly unlikely".
That's basically a Pascal Wager territory.
Building closed off ecosystem is Nintendo's whole business, you making business decisions based on idea Nintendo might upend their whole business is... wasteful?
One could argue that making easy to install Dolphin is an incentive to sell steam deck. So people can play switch games without having switch
Speaking for previous experience in the music industry, It wasn't uncommon for some A&R or label to become "persona non grata" for personal or "political" (rocking the boat too much with some untouchable manager or artist) reasons and getting the boot from most if not all big publishers and distributors.
I wouldn't be surprised if something similar was going on in the gaming industry.
Gaben could put a video out tomorrow of him burning piles of Nintendo merchandise and swearing that Steam will never do business with Nintendo and both Gaben and Valve would be fine.
It's hard to conceive of how much money an entity like Valve has and how fast it continues to accumulate.
Steve Jobs was notorious for shit listing companies like AMD or Nvidia and it doesn't seem to have been detrimental to Apple whatsoever.
The difference is that Apple has alteratives to AMD CPUs and Nvidia GPUs. Whereas the Nintendo products are unique.
It might be used for that but it isn’t intended to by the developers
https://www.nintendo.com/search/#cat=gme&f=softwarePublisher...
Partnerships can go the other way too.
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
This is an edge case which on a worldwide scale is a mess.
For instance in my country, and I guess for most EU (since it was a EU directive), DRMs have a legal protection which is lost upon technical interoperability. This protects on legal grounds the people against digital golden jail/planned obsolescence supplemented with legal locks.
Well, this is what I understood.
Understandably, I don't think Valve has any interest in fighting this battle for Dolphin, but they certainly have the money to do it.
so does Sony, didnt help them one bit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment,_I....
Like people, Nintendo CANNOT restrict your right to obtain and use the Wii common key for any purpose other than you intentionally and solely helping others circumvent copyright law to steal games. It’s Nintendo’s problem, not yours, if they don’t like emulators. It’s refreshing to see such a thorough understanding by Dolphin and their lawyers.
I think what you laid out is something visible in a lot of non dolphin emulators. They have disc rippers available but don't come with the device firmware or games pre loaded.
17 USC § 1201 has quite a few parts (subsections (a) through (k)), but I don't think any of them describe the exception you claim exists. Are you referring to one or more of the time-limited narrow exceptions granted by the Librarian of Congress?
okay, can you risk that financially? There are cases where emulators have won in court, and then soon after shut down. And that was a pretty profitable venture too compared to modern open source emulation.
We're not going to properly address this until we have proper precedence to the point where it's a slam dunk. And I'm sure Nintendo chooses its battles very carefully.
The technological measures on Nintendo's consoles and games are essential for Nintendo to protect its intellectual property from piracy. When those measures are circumvented, Nintendo and third-party game developers suffer tremendous harm because, for example, individuals can then use the emulator to play pirated games. Other commercial platforms have recognized these concerns and. as an example. We understand Microsoft recently took various emulators - including Dolphin - off its Xbox Store
This isn’t an argument about interoperation, it’s an argument about piracy.
In my experience, though there is a lot of lip-service about ‘only playing games you own’, the vast majority of emulator users are playing pirated games they don’t own. This would be a different argument if it was about literally playing Wii discs directly.
[Personally I believe that the copyright terms in computer software like this are way too long, and much (most?) Wii software is really abandonware at this point, and should be allowed to be distributed - but that’s not the law]
That's not true. Pikmin uses Hagi, which is Nintendo's own emulator. Nintendo never used an open-source emulator in a release product.
See this fellow confused guy's thread: https://gbatemp.net/threads/pikmin-1-2-use-dolphin-emulator....
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/05/nintendo_accused_o...
There has been accusations that some "in house" emulators are also open source ones with superficial changes
They have also been found to use ROMs dumped by end users and posted on the normal ROM sites for their "play an old game" products.
The rom thing was only the same rom format. How are you going to tell if it's the same dumps or not? Roms are supposed to match 1:1, otherwise verification hashes projects like redump and no-intro wouldn't work.
To be fair that isn't Nintendo's fault. It's Disney's.
But I could see Nintendo doing the same thing if Disney didn't (though, it'd ironically be harder to make a case because by that point decades of disney content would be public domain).
It's like Toyota with electric cars, they could have become a leader in EVs as they had the bulk of the hybrid market (and thus experience), but they kept insisting that hydrogen was the way to go despite actual hydrogen car sales being abysmal and EV (read: Tesla) sales exploding.
It's not even a Japanese issue. Every company has this issue, but Nintendo is the oldest game developer. So they get the most flack
Sure there are some subteties to a centralized server vs. a distributed ledger, but the core goal is the same: companies want to be a platform owner, allow for generation of some speculative assets for users to trade, and take their cut as a middleman. To my knowledge, it's the middle factor that many have issue with.
Indeed a much more natural way would have been to ask Dolphin for a statement of their lawyers why they think it's legal run it then by your lawyers and maybe bill Dolphin for that, too.
Afterward you would have done more then needed wrt. oversight of your platform and can let them fight it out in curt.
It makes me believe that either of:
- Nintendo pressured Valve (or just payed well) into a NDA agreement to give them a heads up for emulator cases (seems reasonable to assume)
- Valve has some undisclosed ongoing cooperation with Nintendo wrt. some future products (unlikely, but there is a surprising overlap and I haven been joking around that both should just Team up for their next handheld hardware and just sell it as a locked-down proprietary OS Nintendo version and a unlocked linux OS Valve version ..., nah probably not)
- Valve is somehow dependent on Nintendo, e.g. patents related to handheld gaming consoles or similar
- the decisions wasn't fully thought thru (also quite likely)
Ah, this is one of those cases where you must apply a decoder ring. Valve literally sends to Nintendo "Hey, for no reason whatsoever we're just happening to ask if you've heard that Dolphin is coming out on Steam?" and Nintendo says "Here's why they shouldn't be allowed to do this with some legal reasoning".
But what actually happened was Valve said "Hey, Nintendo, are you going to sue us for any reason if we do this?" and Nintendo said "Yes". Everyone at Valve and Nintendo are fully aware of the underlying conversation.
One of the most amusing things to me about human politics, and I mean of all kinds not just national-scale governmental politics, are those cases where everyone involved understands that what is being said actually means something else entirely, and despite the fact that everyone involved from top to bottom knows what is actually being said, they still act as if there is some public or set of uninformed individuals who need that fig leaf covering over the real conversation. This is one of the simpler and more obvious cases, which makes it good practice for realizing when it's happening in other contexts. It is a super common characteristic of human politics, this constant playing to an audience that may not even exist, and everyone may know does not exist, yet we must still play to them.
And it happens because it works. We'd all be much more up in arms than we are if Valve had indeed nakedly asked Nintendo if they would be sued and Nintendo simply said yes. That's exactly what happened, and yet, the fig leaf works. (And bear in mind I said more upset. You may be upset now, and it may be justified. But we'd be even more up in arms if the actual conversation had happened rather than the fig leaf conversation.)
My package manager doesn't have a nice controller-support UI
My package manager doesn't let me set up controller mappings
I'm very confused why people these days are so happy letting one big company manage their entire library and history. Did we not learn from the 2010's?
Alternatively you can set that save backup up yourself with use of your favorite cloud application and symlinks.
I'd rather see as many popular apps as possible stay outside the garden. The bigger the user base that still uses user-controlled installation methods, the bigger the outcry if an OS tries to lock down a previously-free platform.
2. The Steam Deck is a portable game controller with a screen on it. Wouldn't it be nice to play games designed for this form factor, rather than typical PC games designed for keyboard/mouse, or typical PC/Console games designed for a large screen?
3. Games/Apps on the Steam Deck are most convenently launched by Steam
4. Dolphin emulates Wii U games (as well as Wii and GameCube games)
Yet it does emulate GameCube and Wii, completely separate consoles.
Some setups can be elaborate with Roms listed in Steam / Big Picture with box art, fan art, and various metadata. Software like Steam Rom Manager assist with this.
Considering console emulation is often played with controllers perhaps infront of TV, Steams launcher is probably more suitable for launching emulation than using a keyboard or mouse for a start menu.
The Steam Deck community already has scripts for installing & adding to Steam emulators for basically everything in one shot, and Steam isn't doing the distribution of any of these.
But also, Dolphin was also the only emulator which needed a lot of additional tweaking from the EmuDeck defaults. Wii games have a combinatoric explosion of control schemes (wiimote, sideways wiimote, +nunchuk, +classic controller, +pro gyro thingy, balance board, light gun, etc) and there are really no sensible defaults. Dolphin won't remember layouts per-game, you need to do some launcher gymnastics to make that happen.
Oh well, good thing end users need to give a shit to use an emulator. Steam or not you don't just download an emulator and have access to every game at perfect settings.
The need to tinker to get everything working correctly is generally down to the sheer number of hardware/software configurations out there, and you see this on Windows and Linux platforms. In contrast, on more strictly-defined platforms - like, say, macOS or the Steamdeck - you know the general hardware and OS combos up front and can optimize around that.
This thing isn't a computer in the traditional sense, regardless of the OS it runs. It's absolutely a good goal to provide an experience where the non-power-user doesn't need to tinker with shit randomly and go down a rabbit hole of options that they will inevitably shoot themselves in the foot with.
That's the tradeoff for the sweet beautiful freedom of a customizable emulator that people proceed to use as a reason to bash Nintendo for laziness or whatever. If you don't like something running at 30 fps you get to change it. If you don't care about that customization to begin with I question why you buy a steam deck. Becsuse thr steam deck at the end of the say is advertised as 'just being a PC". Up to the ability to ditch Steam OS and throw Windows on as a dual boot or exclusive OS.
Not particularly, no. The hardware in the Steam deck is a known parameter set and it's entirely feasible to optimize around it.
You're not really responding to my points, and instead seem to be opting to recede into user choice or customizability as a feature. I'm not dogging on either of those - I'm just saying that they don't need to be the default for a platform like this, and to imply otherwise is just weird.
Things should "just work" where they can. Expecting people to become Linux wizards is poor form.
I'm saying that we can't agree on what is "most optimal".
- Do you prefer 30 fps, 60fps, or even higher? those are different ways to optimize it.
- Do you want a pure experience or would you prefer highest internal resolution?
- Do you perhaps want to add in post processing, maybe as a way to get around what would otherwise be visual glitches?
- Preference in renderer? I guess we eliminate DX11/12, but OpenGL vs. Vulkan will give different results, even if Vulkan is in theory the better graphics API.
- and ofc there are preferences on various other nitty gritty settings that some people will be opinionated on.
A switch user just takes what they get and either accepts or grits their teeth with these opinions. But since we're ultimately talking about PC users they will be much more opinionated, and fight amongst one another. Because those supposed "linux wizards" exist and are very loud. I'm sorry if you see this as talking past your point, but my point is that we can't agree. Which ironically enough reinforces my point, I guess.
Sure, it was obvious that 2 wasn't going to work. But maybe it is still better to shut this down before launch rather than 3 days later with extra disappointment after lots of work has been done.
We should blame the legal system that Nintendo is using to bully others.
But I am disappointed in Valve and their handling of things.
Likewise SteamOS isn't some kind of freedom fight, rather not wanting to lose revenue for Microsoft.
Valve isn't "pro-consumer", but just "less anti-consumer" because it's a terribly low bar.
They pull in insane money from skins and stupid skin trades on their marketplace and basically invented the gacha mechanics for Team Fortress Hats and crates, including making it free to play to bring in more people for the whales to lord over.
With purely cosmetic skins?
And they do a good job with their PR pretending they back that statement. They simply know to only pick fights with the little guys, in private, to keep that facade up.
Why do you think you can't find Goldberg Steam emulator on Steam/Xbox/Playstation/Switch? (https://gitlab.com/Mr_Goldberg/goldberg_emulator)
Hint: it's used to play games without Steam DRM :)
Do you say that Valve's been a bully for years as well for trying to block Goldberg from Steam?
You would do the same if people made it easy to illegally distribute and use your products for free
And Nintendo is forced to do something to protect 3rd party studios/publishers as well
Nintendo's "all emulation is illegal" stance is straight up wrong, they know it's wrong, and they should not be allowed to say such a falsehood in an attempt to exert control over something they legally do not have control of. At this point they should be labeled a vexatious litigant and should not be allowed to even file these kind of cases without express approval from a judge.
If you're talking about their games, then... yeah I mean they're basically the only AAA studio that's put out pretty reliably high quality games for the past 30-40 years. People want to play fun games and Nintendo provides them.
Just like how people like Apple because they make good computers, phones, etc. We don't all make our tech purchases based on protesting the company's usage of US legal system.
See here how people are upset that Valve more or less didn't pick a fight over this for what would 100% be a moral/ethical debate. Meanwhile we see how Epic tried this 5 years ago and they became the internet's worst enemy. All a matter of PR.
But for some reason the majority here seem to love them, at least when Apple is the wall builder. :shrug
You can’t compel Valve to host something they don’t want but that also isn’t an impediment to distribution on any platform that Steam is on.
I do like steam. It is a walled garden that can be exited whenever one chooses, and exiting is trivial but also requires deliberate action. That's good. :)
I think the parent comment thought it was more strage how so many people were upset that this couldn't be submitted to said walled garden. They actively want to wall themselves further.
This doesn’t, so I do not think they will be motivated to fight Nintendo for this at all.
This is something I've learned by now in the corporate and contract world. Companies and lawyers tend to bluff and fish first. If you have beef with another party and they have a lawyer send you a letter, you will most likely be threatened with everything theoretically possible. Everything will always be jail time, millions of dollars, years you cannot work on this, and you have to give away your favorite potted plant as well.
In many, many cases, /any/ pushback from (even seemingly) legal support reduces this to more reasonable terms. Even just a confirmation of receipt from a lawyer results in interesting reactions.
Do they have the war chest to see this through?
Searching the internet for it is making me increasingly upset. No I don't mean Xbox s, I put the damn thing in quotes for a reason.
tldr: a legally binding typed signature.
No, I don't think it makes sense either.
I don't remember when Google stopped honoring the "..." convention but it's very annoying
Projects like this that are legal but in the crosshairs of massive corporations need to keep things a little bit less mainstream and on the down low so to speak.
A company like Nintendo doesn’t have to get laws changed to shut you down. They can bury you in lawsuits and threats.
>However, we do not think that including the Wii Common Key actually matters - the law could easily be interpreted to say that circumventing a Wii disc's encryption by any means is a violation. As such, it is our interpetation that removing the Wii keys would not change whether the exemption in 17 U.S.C. § 1201(f) applies to us or not. [...] And to all the armchair lawyers out there, the letter to Valve did not make any claims that we were violating a US copyright by including the Wii Common Key, as a short string of entirely random letters and numbers generated by a machine is not copyrightable under current US copyright law. If that ever changes, the world will be far too busy to think about emulation.
They are talking about the circumvention code completely.
>> ...a person may develop and employ technological means to circumvent a technological measure, or to circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure, in order to enable the identification and analysis under paragraph (1), or for the purpose of enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, if such means are necessary to achieve such interoperability, to the extent that doing so does not constitute infringement under this title.
>> 17 U.S.C. § 1201(f)(2)
Paragraph 1 requires the person using the software have a legally obtained copy:
> Notwithstanding the provisions of sub-section (a)(1)(A), a person who has lawfully obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program may circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a particular portion of that program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, and that have not previously been readily available to the person engaging in the circumvention, to the extent any such acts of identification and analysis do not constitute infringement under this title.
> 17 U.S.C. § 1201(f)(1)
which is something Dolphin can be used for.
I'm saying I like this part of the DMCA, or the way Nintendo bullies people around on things like this, but the legal area here is much more gray then the Dolphin folks seem to believe.
If you rtfa, you'll find that the first part of the email nintendo sent valve said that dolphin circumvents encryption, which is illegal under the DMCA. If dolphin were to strip the circumvention code, then nintendo would have no legal reason to ask valve not to list dolphin, and valve could ignore the request.
Dolphin don't believe Nintendo will authorise the app under any circumstances, key or not, homebrew only or not.
Since Dolphin can't force Valve to put an app on Steam, and neither Valve nor Nintendo will change their positions, the matter is closed.
The article explicitly mentions that the DMCA has an exception for interoperability that they believe applies to Dolphin:
> ...a person may develop and employ technological means to circumvent a technological measure, or to circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure, in order to enable the identification and analysis under paragraph (1), or for the purpose of enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, if such means are necessary to achieve such interoperability, to the extent that doing so does not constitute infringement under this title.
I hate Zelda today, but I have a compulsion to play all of them. I don't enjoy it, I think the games are borderline bad quality. I must play. According to chatGPT this is likely some FOMO or desperation to achieve nolstaiga.
I have such ill will toward Nintendo that I can't really have a conversation about it. They have extracted so much money from me.
Go emulators. Go team.